An Online Guide to
Classical Music and Composers
Albinoni, Tomasso
TOMASSO ALBINONI (c. 1674--c. 1745), Italian musician, was born at Venice. He was a prolific composer of operas attracting contemporary attention for their originality, but is more remarkable as a composer of instrumental music, which greatly attracted the attention of Bach, who wrote at least two fugues on Albinoni’s themes and constantly used his basses for harmony exercises for his pupils. ALBINOVANUS PEDO, Roman poet, flourished during the Augustan age. He wrote a Theseis, referred to in a letter from his intimate friend Ovid (Ex Ponto, iv. 10), epigrams which are commended by Martial (ii. 77, v. 5) and an epic poem on the exploits of Germanicus. He had the reputation of being an excellent raconteur, and Quintilian (x. i. 90) awards him qualified praise as a writer of epics. All that remains of his works is a beautiful fragment, preserved in the Suasoriae (i. 15) of the rhetorician Seneca, from a description of the Voyage of Germanicus (A.D. 16) through the river Ems to the Northern Ocean, when he was overtaken by the storm described by Tacitus (Ann. ii. 23). The cavalry commander spoken of by the historian is probably identical with the poet. Three elegies were formerly attributed to Pedo by Scaliger; two on the death of Maecenas (In Obitum Maecenatis and De Verbis Maecenatis moribundi), and one addressed to Livia to console her for the death of her son Drusus (Consolatio ad Liviam de Morte Drusi or Epicedion Drusi, usually printed with Ovid’s works); but it is now generally agreed that they are not by Pedo. The Consolatio has been put down as late as the 15th century as the work of an Italian imitator, there being no MSS. and no trace of the poem before the publication of the editio princeps of Ovid in 1471. There is an English verse translation of the elegies by Plumptre (1907).
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