Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1944

Samuel Osborne Barber (March 9, 1910–January 23, 1981) was a prominent, twentieth century American composer of classical music who was best known for his elegaic Adagio for Strings.

He was among several notable American composers (Aaron Copland, William Schuman, Walter Piston and Leonard Bernstein) who achieved prominence in the international arena. Though he experimented with harmonic dissonance, his lyricism and rich harmonic style were steeped in the late-Romantic conventions rather that the abstract atonal utterances of the Second Viennese School.

Like many other composers, Barber was fond of nature and found great inspiration in the natural world. "One of the physical nurturing components that makes my music sound as it does, is that I live mostly in the country...I have always believed that I need a circuference of silence."

Barber's Romantic spirit and technical prowess has made him one of America's most beloved composers.

Life and Work

Samuel Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania and began his musical studies and age six and he began to compose at the age of seven. He attempted to compose his first opera when he was just ten years old.

In 1924, while still attending high school, he became a charter student at the newly established Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. While at Curtis he studied piano, voice and composition and in 1928 was awarded the Bearns Prize for composition from Columbia University for his Sonata for Violin and Piano. His School for Scandal Overture, Opus 5, was premiered in Philadelphia in 1933 and won him a second Bearns Prize. After being awarded the Prix di Rome in 193, he became a fellow of the American Academy in Rome where he composed his First Symphony. The Rome premiere of the symphony was followed by an American premiere by the Cleveland Orchestra in 1937 under the baton of Artur Rodzinski, and it became the first composition by an American composer to be performed at the presitigeuos Salzburg Festival.

The following year he wrote his String Quartet in B minor, Opus 11, of which the second movement he would arrange, at Arturo Toscanini's suggestion, for string orchestra as Adagio for Strings, and again for mixed chorus as Agnus Dei. Barber's First Essay for Orchestra, also composed in 1937, was the first American composition that the legendary Toscanini would conduct.

He joined the composition faculty of the Curtis Istitute in Philadelphia in 1939. His Violin Concerto was written in 1939 and 1940 in Sils-Maria, Switzerland and Paris. The work was premiered by violinist Albert Spalding with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy on February 11, 1941. The concerto soon entered the standard violin and orchestral repertoire. His Second Essay for Orchestra was premiered in New York in 1942.

Style and Important Works

Barber tended to avoid the experimentalism of some other American composers of his generation, preferring relatively traditional harmonies and forms until late in his life. Most of his work is lushly melodic and has often been described as neo-romantic, though some of his later works, notably the Third Essay and the Dance of Vengeance, display a masterful use of percussive effects, modernism, and neo-Stravinskian effects.

His songs, accompanied by piano or orchestra, are among the most popular 20th-century songs in the classical repertoire. They include a setting of Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach, originally written for string quartet and baritone, the Hermit Songs on anonymous Irish texts of the 8th to 13th centuries, and Knoxville: Summer of 1915, written for the soprano Eleanor Steber and based on an autobiographical text by James Agee, the introductory portion of his novel A Death in the Family. Barber possessed a good baritone voice and, for a while, considered becoming a professional singer. He made a few recordings, including his own Dover Beach. ''Knoxville'' was introduced by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1947 under the direction of Serge Kossevitsky.

His Piano Sonata, Op. 26 (1949), a piece commissioned by Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin, was first performed by Vladimir Horowitz. It was the first large-scale American piano work to be premiered by such an internationally renowned pianist.

Barber composed three operas. Vanessa, composed to a libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti (his partner both professionally and personally), premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. It was a critical and popular success, and Barber won a Pulitzer Prize for it. At the European premiere it met with a chillier reception, however, and is now little played there, although it remains popular in America.

Barber produced three concertos for solo instruments and orchestra. The first was for violin. The second was for cello. And the third and last was for piano.

The Cello Concerto was completed in 1945. It was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the Russian cellist Raya Garbousova who premiered it on April 5, 1946. The following year the work won Barber the New York Music Critics' Circle Award.

The Piano Concerto was composed for and premiered by pianist John Browning, on September 24, 1962, with Erich Leinsdorf conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Lincoln Center, New York. The work was met with great critical acclaim. It won Barber his second Pulitzer Prize in 1963 and the Music Critics Circle Award in 1964. John Browning played the piece over 500 times in his career, securing its place in the repertoire.

Barber also wrote a virtuosic work for organ and orchestra, Toccata Festiva, for the famed organist E. Power Biggs in the early 1960s. The New York Philharmonic commissioned an oboe concerto, but Barber completed only the slow central Canzonetta before his death.

Among his purely orchestral works, there are two symphonies (1936 and 1944), the overture The School for Scandal (1932), three essays for orchestra (1938, 1942 and 1978), and the late Fadograph of a Yestern Scene (1973). There are also large-scale choral works, including the Prayers of Kierkegaard (1954), based on the writings of the Danish existential theologian, Søren Kierkegaard, and The Lovers (1971), based on Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair, by Pablo Neruda.

In addition to the sonata, his piano works include Excursions Op. 20, Three Sketches, Souvenirs, and various other single pieces.

Never a prolific composer, Barber wrote much less after the critical failure of his opera Antony and Cleopatra. This had a libretto by film and opera director Franco Zeffirelli, and had been commissioned to open the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 1966. The opera was more favorably received in 1975 presented in the intimate setting of the Juilliard School with the partnership and stage direction of Gian-Carlo Menotti, and was subsequently recorded.

He died in New York City in 1981.

See also

• Category: Compositions by Samuel Barber

External links

• A grand romance: review of Vanessa By Tim Ashley, Friday November 14, 2003, The Guardian.
• Art of the States: Samuel Barber
• Samuel Barber page at G. Schirmer, Inc.
• The Music of Samuel Barber
• NPR special on the selection of the 1938 radio debut of "Adagio for Strings" to the 2005 National Recording Registry