Samuel Barber
American Modern lyricist whose Adagio for Strings is an elegy for a century
1910
1981
American
Modern
Adagio for Strings, Vanessa, Knoxville: Summer of 1915
Early life
Samuel Barber was born on 9 March 1910 in West Chester, Pennsylvania. His family was musical: his aunt was the contralto Louise Homer, a leading singer at the Metropolitan Opera, and his uncle Sidney Homer was a respected song composer. Barber entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia at the age of fourteen, one of the youngest students in the school's history, studying piano, voice, and composition with Rosario Scalero. At Curtis he formed a lifelong personal and professional partnership with the fellow composition student Gian Carlo Menotti.
Career and major works
Barber gained early recognition when his Overture to The School for Scandal (1933) was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. His Adagio for Strings (1936), originally the slow movement of his String Quartet, was championed by Arturo Toscanini, who conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra in its premiere broadcast. The Adagio has since become one of the most performed and emotionally resonant works in American music, used at state funerals — including those of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy — and as a universal expression of mourning. Barber's other major works include the Violin Concerto (1939), the Cello Concerto (1945), the song cycle Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (1947), the Piano Sonata (1949), and the operas Vanessa (1958), which won the Pulitzer Prize, and Antony and Cleopatra (1966), commissioned to open the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center — a premiere whose elaborate staging overwhelmed the music, damaging Barber's reputation, though the opera has been reassessed more favourably in subsequent productions.
Musical style and legacy
Barber's music is characterised by long-arched lyrical melody, rich tonal harmony, and a Romantic expressiveness that set him apart from the prevailing trends of mid-century modernism. His vocal writing, shaped by his own training as a singer, is notable for its natural sensitivity to text and line. He spent his later years in relative creative isolation. He died in New York on 23 January 1981.