Remo Giazotto | en

Remo Giazotto (4 September 1910, Rome - 26 August 1998, Pisa) was an Italian musicologist, mostly known through his systematic catalogue of the works of Tomaso Albinoni. He wrote biographies of Albinoni and other composers, including Vivaldi.

[He is most well know for composing an Adagio in G minor, which he originally ascribed to Tomaso Albinoni, and later claimed credit for composing - based on a fragment with a bass line.]

Giazotto served as a music critic (from 1932) and editor (1945-1949) of the Rivista musicale italiana and was appointed co-editor of the Nuova rivista musicale italiiana in 1967. He was a professor of the history of music at the University of Florence (1957-69) and in 1962 was nominated to the Acedemia Nazionale di S. Cecilia.

In 1949 Giazotto became the director of the chamber music programs for RAI (Radio Audizioni Italiane) and in 1966 its director of the international programs organized through the European Broadcasting Union. He was also the president of RAI's auditioning committee and editor of its series of biographies on composers.

He also claimed to have received a fragment of a composition of Albinoni from the hands of the Staatsbibliothek Dresden from which in 1949 he created an arrangement known as the Adagio in G minor. He stated that the fragment contained only the bass line which served as starting point for his arrangement, yet not only the composition's copyright note referring to his own name, and the fact that this fragment has never appeared in public, suggest that this is indeed an ingenious way to distribute the piece, but not an original from Albinoni himself.

(Source: Brief der Sächsischen Landesbibliothek Dresden (Fachreferentin Marina Lang) vom 24. September 1990, als Faksimile wiedergegeben bei Wulf Dieter Lugert und Volker Schütz, „Adagio à la Albinoni“, Praxis des Musikunterrichts 53 (Februar 1998), S. 13–22, hier 15. ) .