Compilation album

A compilation album comprises tracks which are compiled from other recordings, usually previously released, but sometimes unreleased. The tracks may be from one or several performers; if from several performers there may be a theme, topic or genre which links the tracks. When the tracks are by the same recording artist, the album may be referred to as a retrospective album. Compilation albums may employ traditional product bundling strategies.

Common types

Common types of compilation include:

Remo Giazotto

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

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 italiana 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 Accademia 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.

Giazotto is famous for his publication of a work called Adagio in G minor, which he claimed to have transcribed from a manuscript fragment of an Albinoni sonata that he had received from the Saxon State Library. He stated that he had arranged the work but not composed it. He subsequently revised this story, claiming it as his own original composition. The fragment has never appeared in public; Giazotto stated that it contained only the bass line, and the work was copyrighted by Giazotto.

Adagio in G minor

The Adagio in G minor for violin, strings, and organ continuo is a neo-Baroque composition popularly attributed to the 18th-century Venetian master Tomaso Albinoni, but actually composed by 20th-century musicologist and Albinoni biographer Remo Giazotto, purportedly based on the discovery of a manuscript fragment by Albinoni.

Provenance

The composition is often referred to as "Albinoni's Adagio" or "Adagio in G minor by Albinoni, arranged by Giazotto", but the attribution is incorrect. The ascription to Albinoni rests upon Giazotto's purported discovery of a tiny manuscript fragment (consisting of a few opening measures of the melody line and basso continuo portion) from a slow second movement of an otherwise unknown Albinoni trio sonata.

According to Giazotto, he obtained the document shortly after the end of World War II from the Saxon State Library in Dresden which had preserved most of its collection, though its buildings were destroyed in the bombing raids of February and March 1945 by the British and American Air Forces. Giazotto concluded that the manuscript fragment was a portion of a church sonata (sonata da chiesa, one of two standard forms of the trio sonata) in G minor composed by Albinoni, possibly as part of his Op. 4 set, around 1708.

G minor

G minor is a minor scale based on G, consisting of the pitches G, A, B♭, C, D, E♭, and F. For the harmonic minor scale, the F is raised to F♯. Its relative major is B-flat major, and its parallel major is G major.

Changes needed for the melodic and harmonic versions of the scale are written in with accidentals as necessary. G minor is one of two flat key signatures that require a sharp for the leading-tone (the other is D minor).

Mozart's use of G minor

G minor has been considered the key through which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart best expressed sadness and tragedy, and many of his minor key works are in G minor, such as the Piano Quartet No. 1 and the String Quintet in G minor. Though Mozart touched on various minor keys in his symphonies, G minor is the only minor key he used as a main key for his numbered symphonies (No. 25, and the famous No. 40). In the Classical period, symphonies in G minor almost always used four horns, two in G and two in B-flat alto. Another convention of G minor symphonies observed in Mozart's No. 25 was the choice of E-flat major for the slow movement, with other examples including Haydn's No. 39 and Johann Baptist Wanhal's G minor symphony from before 1771 (Bryan Gm1).

Adagio

Adagio [aˈdaːdʒo] (from Italian adagio 'slowly', coming from the expression ad agio, 'at ease') may refer to:

Music

Human motion