Biography
Claudio Dall’Albero is a composer, choral director and musicologist from Rome. A pupil of Domenico Bartolucci, Edoardo Farina and Carlo Cammarota, he obtained degree qualifications in Choral Music and Choral Conducting, Classical Guitar, Sacred Music, and Polyphonic Composition for Voices. He holds the teaching chair of ‘Choral Music and Choral Conducting’ at the St. Cecilia Conservatory in Rome. His compositions have been performed in Italy, France, UK, Germany, Malta, Finland, Switzerland, Belgium, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Netherlands, Azerbaijan, USA (Arizona, California, New Mexico, Virginia, New York), Ecuador, Colombia, Honduras, Costa Rica, Argentina, Brazil and Australia.
As a composer he has received commissions from the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, from the Rotary Club International, from Sidney Sussex College Cambridge, and from RTI Mediaset. In 2017 the British recording company Resonus Classics brought out a CD entitled Polyphonia in Excelsis: Sacred Music by Claudio Dall’Albero, conducted by David Skinner, welcomed with enthusiasm by The Guardian and by other international critics; in 2022 the same label released another CD entirely dedicated to his music, entitled Vespertina Hymnodia.
He has been Maestro Emeritus of the Cappella Giulia at St. Peter’s in Rome. As founder and director of the vocal group I Cantori di S. Carlo he pursued a busy programme of concert activity up until the early years of the new millennium, including numerous tours all over the world. He founded and directed the Caeciliani Cantores, an ensemble drawn from within the ranks of the choir of Accademia di Santa Cecilia.
Nominated by Luciano Berio, he superintended a series of concerts held at the Palazzo Barberini (Rome) and at Santa Maria della Scala (Siena), for which he prepared and directed an orchestra of historical instruments. He was consultant in Italian Renaissance madrigal repertoire to Claudio Abbado, at whose suggestion he taught at the University of Potenza on the Master’s programme in Early Music set up by Dinko Fabris. As musicologist he has published with Rugginenti (Volonté&Co) of Milan:
– the collection Celebri Arie Antiche, a philological version of the anthology of Alessandro Parisotti, in collaboration with Marcelo Candela (1997);
– the monograph Carlo Milanuzzi da Santa Natoglia – Musica sacra, 2008;
– the six-volume Opera omnia of the composer Domenico Massenzio of Ronciglione, in collaboration with Mauro Bacherini (2009), whose first volume includes his scholarly article A Mensural Muddle in the Altemps Sitientes.
An enthusiast for Arab studies and for the musical culture of the Middle East, particularly with reference to song and to the phonetics of Arabic, he wrote and published in 2017 for Edizioni Mediterranee, in collaboration with the Lebanese violinist Maher Victor Karam, the book Ma che parlo arabo?!? 60 letture per imparare l’arabo o l’italiano, (‘Do you think I’m speaking Arabic?!? 60 Readings for Learning Arabic or Italian’), which also contains his essay Pronuncia dell’arabo e dizione nel canto lirico. Un approccio fonetico in comune(‘Pronunciation of Arabic and Diction in Lyric Song. A Joint Approach through Phonetics’).
