Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber is an American composer of classical music, born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1910 and active until his death in New York City in 1981. His work is associated with classical, contemporary classical and modern classical music. He begins composing at the age of seven and later studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

Early career and style

Barber becomes a fellow of the American Academy in Rome in 1935. He generally avoids the experimentalism associated with some American composers of his generation, instead favouring traditional harmonies and forms for much of his career. His music is often described as lushly melodic and neo-romantic, although his later writing uses stronger percussive, modernist and neo-Stravinskian effects.

Major works

He is best known for Adagio for Strings, which comes from the second movement of his String Quartet in B minor. At Arturo Toscanini’s suggestion, he arranges that movement for string orchestra as Adagio for Strings and again for mixed chorus as Agnus Dei. His songs are also among the most frequently performed 20th-century songs in the classical repertoire, including Dover Beach, Hermit Songs and Knoxville: Summer of 1915.

Dover Beach is first written for string quartet and baritone. The Hermit Songs set anonymous Irish texts from the 8th to the 13th centuries. Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is written for soprano Eleanor Steber and draws on an autobiographical text by James Agee from the opening of A Death in the Family.

Orchestral, chamber and choral music

Barber writes two symphonies, in 1936 and 1944, the overture The School for Scandal in 1932, three orchestral essays in 1938, 1942 and 1978, and the late Fadograph of a Yestern Scene in 1973. His large choral works include Prayers of Kierkegaard, based on writings by Søren Kierkegaard, and The Lovers, based on Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair.

His piano music includes Piano Sonata, Op. 26, commissioned by Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin and first performed by Vladimir Horowitz, along with Excursions, Three Sketches, Souvenirs and several smaller pieces. The sonata is the first large-scale American piano work premiered by a pianist of Horowitz’s international standing.

He also writes three concertos for solo instrument and orchestra: violin, cello and piano. The Violin Concerto is written in 1939 and 1940 in Sils-Maria, Switzerland and Paris, and premiered by Albert Spalding with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. The Cello Concerto is completed in 1945 for Raya Garbousova, who premieres it with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The Piano Concerto is composed for and premiered by John Browning with Erich Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Lincoln Center in New York.

Operas and later work

Barber composes three operas. Vanessa, with a libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, premieres at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and wins him a Pulitzer Prize. It receives a cooler response at its European premiere but remains popular in America. His last opera, Antony and Cleopatra, is commissioned to open the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 1966. After its critical failure, he writes less, though the work is later received more favourably in a production at the Juilliard School with stage direction by Menotti and is subsequently recorded.

He also writes Toccata Festiva for organ and orchestra for E. Power Biggs, and the New York Philharmonic commissions an oboe concerto, though only the slow central Canzonetta is completed before his death. In addition to composing, he has a good baritone voice and considers a career as a professional singer for a time. He makes a few recordings, including his own Dover Beach.

Barber wins a second Pulitzer Prize for the Piano Concerto in 1963 and the Music Critics Circle Award in 1964. The Cello Concerto wins the New York Music Critics’ Circle Award in 1947.