Music Director
Samuel Barber (1910-1981): Adagio for Strings, Opus 11
American composer Samuel Barber was born in 1910, at a time when composers were experimenting with revolutionary techniques in response to the near exhaustion of tonality-driven forms. Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern developed twelve-tone techniques in an attempt to avoid tonality altogether. Stravinsky and Debussy used chords in non-functional ways for color effects. By the middle of the century, music became more mathematical, electronic, and intellectually dense.
It is all the more remarkable that Barber's deeply emotional Adagio for Strings (1938), (a string orchestra version of a movement from Barber's String Quartet, Op. 11), became one of the most famous classical works of the twentieth century. The work was played at the funerals of presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Princess Grace. The Adagio was also used effectively in Oliver Stone's Vietnam War film, Platoon (1986), and in Stone's film J.F.K. (1991).
Samuel Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania and studied piano. In 1924, at fourteen, he went to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia to study piano, voice, conducting and composition. He received the Prix de Rome in 1935, Pulitzer Traveling Scholarships in 1935 and 1936, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1945.
Barber's works include violin, cello, and piano concertos, two symphonies, and the ballet Medea for American dancer Martha Graham. His first opera, Vanessa, with a libretto by Barber's friend Gian Carlo Menotti, won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1958. He won a second Pulitzer in 1963 for the Piano Concerto No. 1. Anthony and Cleopatra, Barber's second opera, was commissioned for the opening of the Metropolitan Opera's new opera house at Lincoln Center in 1966.
The Adagio for Strings first achieved fame when performed by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Arturo Toscanini.
Barber was an advocate of the neo-romantic approach to composition, combining modern musical idioms with a lyrical, tonal style that was eminently accessible to audiences worldwide.
Beth Bergman Fisher