Barber, Samuel,
American composer of
superlative gifts; b. West Chester,Pa., March 9, 1910; d. New York, Jan. 23,1981.
His mother was a good pianist; her sister was the famous opera contralto
Louise Homer. Barber began taking piano lessons as a child with William
Hatton Green; he also improvised, and composed a piano piece, entitled
Sadness. At the age of 10 he attempted to write an opera, The Rose
Tree. He played piano at school functions, and had an occasional job
as organist in a local church. At the age of 14 he enrolled at the newly
founded Curtis Inst. of Music in Philadelphia; there he studied piano with
Isabella Vengerova, composition with Rosario Scalero, and conducting with
Fritz Reiner. He also took singing lessons with Emilio de Gogorza. So
successful was he as a voice student that he ventured to appear in public
as a mellow baritone. However, it was free composition that became his
absorbing labor. At the time when most American composers exerted their
ingenuity writing sophisticated ihusic laced with unresolvable
dissonances, Barber kept aloof from facile and fashionable modernism. He
adopted an idiom, lyrical and romantic in nature, which had a distinct
originality in its melodic and harmonic aspects. His Overture to
the School for Scandal, after Sheridan (1933), attracted favorable
attention. It was closely followed by Music for a Scene from Shelley,
which had numerous performances. In 1935 Barber received a Pulitzer
traveling scholarship and the American Prix de Rome. His Symphony No.
1, in I movement, which he composed in Rome, became the 1st American
work to be presented at the Salzburg Festival of Contemporary Music (July
25,1937). On Nov. 5,1938, Toscanini conducted the NBC Sym. Orch. in
Barber's Essay for Orchestra No. 1 and Adagio for Strings (Arranged
from Barber’s String Quartet); the Adagio was destined to become
one of the most popular American works of serious music, and through some
lurid aberration of circumstance, it also became a favorite selection at
state funerals. It formed the background music at Roosevelt’s
commemorative service in 1945; the passionate serenity of its modal
strains moved the family and friends of Princess Grace of Monaco to tears
when it was played at her funeral on Sept. 18, 1982. From 1939 to 1942
Barber intermittently taught orchestration at the Curtis Inst. In the
autumn of 1942 he joined the Army Air Force, which commissioned him to
write a sym., his 2nd. The original score included an electronic
instrument producing sound in imitation of radio signals; it was
successfully performed by Koussevitzky with the Boston Sym. Orch. in 1944;
but aftç r the war Barber decided to eliminate such incidental
intercalations; this demilitarized version was performed by the
Philadelphia Orch. in 1949. Still dissatisfied with the resultant product,
he discarded the work except for the 2nd movement, which he retitled as
Night Flight, and had performed in Cleveland in 1964. Barber was
discharged from the air force in 1945 and settled in Mount Kisco, N.Y., in
a house (named “Capricorn”) that he had purchased jointly with Gian Carlo
Menotti in 1943. Barber was always devoted to the art of the theater. He
wrote a ballet, The Serpent Heart, for Martha Graham (1946), which
was later revised and produced by her group under the title Cave of the
Heart; from it he drew an arch. suite, Medea; a further version
of the music was Medea’s Meditation and Dance of Vengeance. In his
Prayers of Kierkegaard for Soprano, Chorus, and Orch. (1954),
Barber essayed the style of modern oratorio. But it was not until 1957
that he wrote his 1st opera, Vanessa, with a romantic libretto by
his lifelong friend Gian Carlo Menotti; it was produced by the
Metropolitan Opera in N.Y. on Jan. 15, 1958, and earned Barber his 1st of
2 Pulitzer Prizes in music; a revised version was produced at the Spoleto
Festival U.S.A. in Charleston, S.C., on May 27, 1978. A much more
ambitious opera, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, was Anton p
and Cleopatra, in 3 acts, after Shakespeare, produced with a grand
display of expectations at the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House
in N.Y. on Sept. 16, 1966. Unfortunately, the production was haunted by
mechanical mishaps. A specially constructed revolving stage did not rotate
properly, the acoustics were faulty, and the annoyed newspaper critics
damned the music along with the staging. Barber attempted to recoup the
work with a libretto revamped by Menotti, but the new version, performed
at the Juilliard School of Music (1975), failed to justify his hopes.
Disillusioned in his capacity to create a modem grand opera, Barber
produced a light operatic sketch, A Hand of Bridge, to a libretto
by Menotti (1959), but it passed without much notice. However, Barber was
gloriously vindicated as an important composer by a succession of fine
works of instrumental music; particularly notable was his Piano Concerto
(1962), a striking work in an original modern idiom, spontaneously
acclaimed in repeated performances in America and Europe, which won him
his 2nd Pulitzer Prize. No less remarkable was his Piano Sonata,
introduced by Vladimir Horowitz in 1949; in it Barber made ample use of
modernistic resources, including incidental applications of 12-tone
writing. Another example of Barber’s brilliant use of pianistic resources
was his witty piano suite Excursions (1945). Barber excelled in new
American music primarily as a melodist; perhaps the circumstance that he
studied singing as a youth had contributed to his sensitive handling of
vocally shaped patterns. Although the ham-ionic structures of his music
remained fundamentally tonal, he made free use of chromatic techniques,
verging on atonality and polytonality, while his mastery of modem
counterpoint enabled him to write canons and fugues in effective
neo-Baroque sequences. His orchestration was opulent without being turgid;
his treatment of solo instruments was unfailingly congenial to their
nature even though requiring a virtuoso technique. Barber held 3
Guggenheim fellowships (1945, 1947, 1949).
WORKS: OPERAS:
Vanessa,
to a libretto by Menotti (Metropolitan
Opera, N.Y., Jan. 15, 1958; rev. version, Spoleto Festival U.S.A.,
Charleston, S.C., May 27,1978); Antony and Cleopatra, after
Shakespeare (N.Y., Sept. 16, 1966; rev. version, juilliard School of
Music, N.Y., Feb. 6,1975); A Hand of Bridge, 1-act opera, to a
libretto by Menotti, for 4 Solo Voices and Chamber Orch. (1958; Festival
of Two Worlds, Spoleto, Italy, June 17, 1959).
BALLETS:
The Serpent Heart
(perf. by Martha Graham and her dance
group, N.Y., May 10, 1946; rev, and produced under the title
Cave of the Heart, N.Y., Feb. 27, 1947).
ORCH.:
Overture to the School for Scandal,
after Sheridan (Philadelphia, Aug. 30,
1933); Music for a Scene from Shelley (N.Y., March 24, 1933);
Symphony No. 1, in I movement (Rome, Dec. 13, 1936); Adagio for
Strings, arranged from the slow movement of the String Quartet (N.Y.,
NBC Sym. Orch., Nov. 5,1938, Toscanini conducting; his Essay No. I
was perf. at the same concert); Essay No. 2 (N.Y. Phil., April 16,
1942, Bruno Walter conducting); Commando March, orig. for Military
Band (symphonic version, Boston Sym., Oct. 29, 1943, Koussevitzky
conducting); Symphony No. 2 (Boston, March 3,1944, Koussevitzky
conducting; an antiseptic version, radically cleansed of instrumental
irrelevancies, was perf. by the Philadelphia Orch., Ormandy conducting,
Jan. 21,1949; in another surgical operation, the 2nd movement was
reworked, retitled Night Flight, and 1st perf. in Cleveland, Oct.
8, 1964); Capricorn Concerto for Flute, Oboe, Trumpet, and Strings
(N.Y., Oct. 8,1944); Medea, suite from the ballet The Serpent
Heart (Philadelphia, Dec. 5,1947); Souvenirs, ballet suite
(orig. for Piano, 4-hands) for Orch. (Chicago, Nov. 13, 1953; stage
production, N.Y., Nov. 15, 1955); Medea’s Meditation and Dance of
Vengeance, a rev. version of the symphonic suite Medea (N.Y.,
Feb. 2,1956); Toccata festiva for Organ and Orch. (Philadelphia,
Sept. 30, 1960); Die Natali, choral prelude for Christmas (Boston
Sym. Orch., Lincoln Center, N.Y., Dec. 22, 1960); Fadograph from a
Yes tern Scene, after a line in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
(Pittsburgh, Sept. 10, 1971); Essay No. 3 for Orch. (N.Y., Sept.
14, 1978); Canzonetta for Oboe and String Orch. (1980; incomplete;
orchestrated by Charles Turner, and 1st perf. by the N.Y. Phil., Dec. 17,
1981).
CONCERTOS: Violin Concerto
(Philadelphia, Feb. 7, 1941; Albert Spalding, soloist; Ormandy
conducting); Cello Concerto (Boston Sym., April 5, 1946; Raya Garbuzova,
soloist; Koussevitzky conducting); Piano Concerto (Boston Sym., Lincoln
Center, N.Y., Sept. 24, 1962; John Browning, soloist; Erich Leinsdorf
conducting).
VOCAL:
Dover Beach,
after a poem by Matthew Arnold, for Voice
and String Quartet (1931; N.Y., March 5,1933); A Stopwatch and an
Ordnance Map for Male Chorus, Brass, and Timpani (Philadelphia, April
23,1940); Sure an This Shining Night, to words by James Agee, for
Voice and Orch. (1938); Knoxville:
Summer of 1915
for Voice and Orch., to a text of James
Agee from his novel A Death in the Family (Boston Sym., April 9,
1948, Koussevitzky conducting); Prayers of Kierkegaard for Soprano,
Chorus, and Orch. (Boston Sym., Dec. 3,1954); Andromache’s Farewell
for Voice and Orch. (N.Y., April 4,1963); The Lovers for Baritone,
Chorus, and Orch., to words by Pablo Neruda (Philadelphia, Sept. 22,
1971).
CHAMBER:
Serenade
for String Quartet or String Orch.
(Philadelphia, May 5,1930); Cello Sonata (1932); String Quartet (1936; 2nd
movement, Adagio, extracted from it and arranged for String Orch.,
was widely perf.); Summer Music for Woodwind Quintet (Detroit,
March 20, 1956); Canzone for Flute and Piano (1962; arranged from
the 2nd movement of the Piano Concerto); Mutations from Bach for
Brass and Timpani 1968)
(
SONGS:
The Daisies,
to words by James Stephens (1927);
With Rue My Heart Is
Laden, to words by A.E. Housman
(1928);
3 Songs to poems from Chamber Music
by James Joyce (1936);
A Nun Takes the Veil,
to words by G.M. Hopkins (1937); The
Secrets of the Old,
to words by W.B. Yeats (1938); The
Queen’s
Face on the Summery Coin,
to words by Robert Horan (1942);
Monks and Raisins,
to words by J.G. Villa (1943);
NuvoLetta, to words by James Joyce (1947); Melodies passagères,
5 songs, to words by Rilke (1951); Hermit Songs, 10 songs after old
Irish texts (Washington, D.C., Oct. 30, 1953; Leontyne Price, soloist);
Despite and Still, 5 songs to words by Graves, Roethke, and Joyce
(1969); 3 Songs for Baritone and Piano (N.Y., April •.~‘ 30, 1974;
Fischer-Dieskau, soloist).
CHORAL: The Virgin Martyrs
(1935); Let Down the Bars, 0 Death (1936);
Reincarnation, 3 songs after poems by Stephens, for Mixed Chorus a
cappella (1940).
PIANO
SOLO: Excursions (1944); Piano Sonata in E-flat minor (Havana,
Cuba, Dec. 9, 1949; Horowitz, soloist; N.Y. perf., also by Horowitz, Jan.
23,1950); Souvenirs for Piano, 4-hands, also for Orch. (1953);
Nocturne: Homage to John Field (1959); ~ Ballade (1977); also
Wanderous Love, variations on a shape- note hymn, for Organ (1958).
