Making Love with the Man in the Bookstore, With a Little Help from Albinoni

I am listening to Tomaso Albinoni’s adagios as I often do in the evenings when, at home alone, I am ready for love, the kind of love the man who composed this music must surely have been very capable of giving.

In his scores, Albinoni captures both the mournfulness of the human condition and its boundless joy. (Perhaps that is what I admire about Celtic music as well.) There is an intimacy to his notes that touches me very deeply. I am filled with images of a lover slowly kissing my body and of angels gently stroking my brow. The sensual and the ethereal wrapped in one package, just as I have always dreamed that love with the man who is matched to me would be.

“Adagio in G Minor” is my favorite, and I’m not alone. It is one of the most frequently recorded pieces of Baroque music. First published in 1958, the year of my birth, it is actually a reconstruction of fragments assembled after the bombing of the Dresden State Library during World War II. Much of Albinoni’s compositions and writings were turned to ashes in the ruthless decimation of this city by Allied forces. Consequently, little is known of the personal life of the composer, save that he was married and that he was independently wealthy and so did not require the patronage of royalty or the church.

Like me, Albinoni had diabetes, from which he perished in 1751 at the age of 79.

I had not known of these two links between my life and that of the composer until just a few minutes ago, when I looked Albinoni up on wikipedia. For all the years—or has it been decades!—that I have been entranced by his adagios, I had never bothered to find out anything about the man. His music is potent enough to make me weep and simultaneously be filled with otherworldly bliss, so I had no need to know anything about the man behind the music.

Years ago, perhaps 15 years ago, I met an Albinoni lover at Borders. I was speaking with the clerk, describing to him the music I had heard and wished to acquire. I didn’t know the name of the composer, I said, but I thought his name began with an “A” and he was Italian. The clerk was clueless, but the handsome Middle-Eastern man who happened to be standing next to me, said that I must be speaking of Albinoni. He said that he could recommend a tape—yes, this was before CDs—but that he would have to check his collection at home and get back to me. The next day he faxed the title of his favorite collection to me, with the salutation: “Dear Fellow Albinoni Lover.”

Of course, I followed this man’s advice and bought “Adagios,” an Erato recording. Years later, when I no longer had a cassette player, I replaced it with the CD.

Pretty much every time I play Albinoni, I think of the man in the bookstore that somehow gets jumbled in my mind as a record store. I remember the man dressed in a white tailored shirt and tan Dockers, but that could be wrong too. What I do remember is the man’s thoughtfulness, his taking the time to send me a fax.

I know this may sound strange to all the women out there who have been lavished with gifts and thoughtfulness by the men in their lives, but such genuine kindness and giving from a man have been rare occurrences for me. Had email been in common use 15 years ago, the Middle-Eastern man and I would have continued to correspond, which might have led to a romance, and perhaps he would be here with me tonight, listening to Albinoni and kissing my body.