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10 Musical Reasons to Love Samuel Barber ~ The Imaginative Conservative

Here’s what makes Samuel Barber stand out, in this era of increasing atonalism in classical music: He didn’t adhere to any one school or philosophy of composition. He maintained a Romantic, lyrical sound, ignored the twelve-tone racket, yet incorporated a dissonant angularity into his works that produced a decidedly 20th century result.

The list must begin with the Violin Concerto. Because it all began with the Violin Concerto. For me, at least. Sure, I’d heard Samuel Barber’s ever-popular Adagio for Strings, but although I loved it like most people do, it was simply that “that lovely, affecting tear-jerker” from a compilation CD I’d had for years and years. Had I not dipped deeply into the violin concerto repertoire, I might never have found this gem.

I acquired a copy of the CD (Barber Concerto for Violin & Orchestra, featuring Gil Shaham) in January 2004, while researching all things violin-related for my second novel. I remember the moment of discovery, popping the CD into the car player on a chilly but sunny Saturday morning, a tumble into a lush, vivid world of aural thoughts and emotions. To this day, I get the same feeling every time I revisit the concerto (always in January—my listening preferences are extremely seasonal) and its sweeping opening. There’s no introduction; the violin steps right in, immersing you into the musical journey. It will always feel very “California January” to me. Fresh. Romantic yet contemporary. Sublime melodic lines making way for a judicious sprinkling of edge and dissonance. There’s a lot of breathing space and clarity, like those January days here that can be sunny and mild but with long, dark cold nights that remind you that winter is still very much here.

Why, I wondered, were his works not listened to more? It was time to dig. 

Samuel Barber was born on March 9, 1910 into a securely middle-class family in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Dad was a doctor and Mom was an amateur pianist, giving little Samuel his first lessons on the piano. He knew from an early age was where his destiny lay. “I was 7 years old when I began composing,” he shared in a 1978 interview. “I began by improvising at the piano, the usual story. I was supposed to be a doctor. I was supposed to go to Princeton. Everything I was supposed to do, I didn’t.” All this, he confessed to his mother, at age nine, in the following letter:

Dear Mother:

I have written this to tell you my worrying secret. Now don’t cry when you read it because it is neither yours nor my fault. I suppose I will have to tell it now without any nonsense. To begin with, I was not meant to be an athlet [sic]. I was meant to be a composer, and will be I’m sure. I’ll ask you one more thing.—Don’t ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football.—Please—Sometimes I’ve been worrying about this so much that it makes me mad (not very).

Love,

Sam Barber II

In considering a musical future, the young Samuel had a tremendous source of support in his aunt and uncle. Louise Homer was a famed contralto with the Metropolitan Opera and Sidney Homer was a known composer of songs who, unsurprisingly, serving as a mentor to Samuel, dispensing lifelong advice through letters like this one:

You don’t need opinions. A little praise is pleasant if you don’t have to go too far out of your way to get it, but you will have to learn to get along without opinions.  Opinions don’t change a note of add to your stature. If you can give pleasure, well and good. Your work is your own affair and yours only.  Depending on opinion means less independence in your work. It also means laying yourself open to pinpricks which may be boresome. It can result in uncertainty. Even too much praise can do things, introduce a smirk and too much gush in your style.

At age fourteen, Samuel became one of the first students at the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia, studying with conductor Fritz Reiner, pianist Isabelle Vengerova, composer Rosario Scalero, and singer Emilio de Gogorza. Here, he developed his promising voice—he was a stunning baritone—and although composition was his destiny, he struck a double-win with his “Dover Beach,” a setting of a poem by Matthew Arnold, arranged for voice and string quartet, which he sang at his graduation exercises. (The link below in the Top 10 list features him as the singer—a must-listen.) Notable as well from his Curtis years was meeting Gian Carlo Menotti, a fellow aspiring composer who was to become Barber’s decades-long companion and professional collaborator.

Here’s what made Barber stand out, in this era of increasing atonalism in classical music: his sound defied classification. He didn’t adhere to any one school or philosophy of composition. He maintained a Romantic, lyrical sound, ignored the twelve-tone racket, yet incorporated a dissonant angularity into his works that produced a decidedly 20th century result.

The achievements and accolades rolled in quickly for Barber. His Violin Sonata took Columbia University’s Bearns Prize in 1929 and four years later he received the same award for his Overture to The School for Scandal. Then there was the Pulitzer travel grant (not to be confused with the two Pulitzer Prizes he would later win) and the American Prix de Rome prize. Then in 1938, Arturo Toscanini, the legendary conductor, chose Barber’s Adagio for Strings (an orchestral arrangement taken from the second movement of his String Quartet) for performance in a live radio broadcast with Toscanini conducting his NBC Orchestra. The public went wild.

All this, when Barber was only 28 years old. And a year later, he composed my favorite of all his works, his Violin Concerto.

The first movement, as I described above, starts so beautifully, immersing you in a lyrical world. The second movement, via a poignant oboe solo, offers a pensive query that achieves its response in a ravishing, soaring melodic line. As for the third movement, to call it “rousing” would be a vast understatement. The late Orrin Howard, in program notes for the Los Angeles  Philharmonic, describes it well:

The vital last movement presents Russianisms of another persuasion—namely, the grotesquerie of Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Syncopations and counter-rhythms enhance the diabolical atmosphere of the perpetual motion whirlwinds in which the violin participates brilliantly virtually throughout. In the concluding measures, the violin’s rhythm becomes ever more precipitous (triplet eighths change to sixteenths), and the movement ends in a burst of brilliance.

Time to give it a listen.

Barber was that most fortunate of composers in that he never had to live hand-to-mouth or devote most of his working life to a dull job that paid the bills because composing didn’t. The public loved his music and he was the recipient of ample commissions. In truth, they poured in. The Cello Concerto in 1945 was a hit, winning the New York Music Critics Circle Award in 1947. In 1949, his Piano Sonata brought wide praise, with Vladimir Horowitz calling it “the first truly great native work in the form.” The ballet Medea (1946) was also deemed a success.

But in that same year his Aunt Louise and his father both become seriously ill. Deeply affected yet powerless to help his ailing loved ones, Barber composed a work set on James Agee’s prose-poem, Knoxville, Summer 1915. “I had always admired Mr. Agee’s writing,” Barber once said, “and this prose-poem particularly struck me, because the summer evening he describes in his native southern town reminded me so much of similar evenings, when I was a child at home. […] Agee’s poem was vivid and moved me deeply, and my musical response was immediate and intense.”

Interesting to note that Agee’s poem describes the time in his young life shortly before his father’s death. Bittersweetly, in May 1947, one month after the work’s completion, Barber’s aunt passed away, with his father dying three months later.

As the 1940s rolled into the ‘50s, it became increasingly difficult to escape the growing influence of the dissonant, experimental music of postwar modernism. Barber nonetheless remained eminent in the 1950s, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1958. He won two Pulitzer Prizes, in 1958 (for his opera, Vanessa) and in 1962 (his Piano Concerto). In 1966, the Metropolitan Opera commissioned Barber to compose an opera, Antony and Cleopatra, for the opening of its new home at Lincoln Center. Regrettably, it bombed. Worse, his mother died a few months later. Months later, his longtime relationship with Gian Carlo dissolved and the beloved country home they’d shared for decades was sold.

Barber’s seemingly effortless fortunes had finally come to an end.

After the trio of devastating personal blows, Barber withdrew. While he still created the occasional composition—some quite good—they were received by audiences and critics more politely than exuberantly, a quaint throwback to an old-fashioned style.

Even so, this isn’t a “sad ending,” not when you consider how successful, how fortunate Barber had been as a composer. Never destitute, commercially popular for decades, he’d lived a fruitful life composing music, determined to be his own man, have his own sound. In that, he’d been successful. “I can only say that I myself wrote always as I wished,” he once said, “without a tremendous desire to find the latest thing possible.”

That’s a life well lived.

Here are 10 reasons to marvel at the skill of Barber and ponder why you didn’t know these gems (or rejoice with me that you did). Just click on their links. They are in no particular order beyond my earlier insistence that the list must begin with the Violin Concerto. Following will be the one that most everyone knows, even if they didn’t know that they knew it until they hear it and say, “Hey, I DO know that!”

  1. Violin Concerto 
  2. Adagio for Strings, and its choral version, “Agnus Dei.”
  3. Piano Sonata
  4. Essays for Orchestra No. 1, (Op. 12)  No. 2 Op. 17 and No. 3 Op. 47)
  5. Cello Concerto (The second movement is just stunning, a must-listen.)
  6. Symphony No. 1 
  7. String Quartet (You’ll recognize the second movement!)
  8. Overture to “The School for Scandal”
  9. Dover Beach for Voice & String Quartet (This is the one where he’s the singer)
  10. Cello Sonata

Did you listen to Dover Beach? You really must. In fact, here you go …

Regarding Adagio for Strings, I gotta be honest, I’m pretty much over it. Yes, it’s beautiful, somber and elegiac, and if it doesn’t stir you in the least, check your pulse. But like most pieces popularized in the mainstream, you hear it a lot. There are the movies (Elephant Man 1980), Platoon (1986), Lorenzo’s Oil (1992), Amélie, among several others. And let’s not forget television shows, particularly those bastions of cultural influence, The Simpsons, South Park and Seinfeld. It’s like Pachelbel’s “Canon” or Dvořák’s New World Symphony. After a while, the infatuation fades. I will argue that it’s well worth your time to listen to “Agnus Dei,” even if you, like myself, are otherwise Adagio-for-Strings saturated.

I’m so enjoying his Symphony No. 1, a one-movement, twenty-minute work. This is one of those “how did I miss this gem?” kind of works. And do not miss listening to all three of his Essays for Orchestra. The same goes for his singing Dover Beach. I can’t think of any other classical-music essay I’ve written where I’ve linked the composer singing his own composition. His voice is soooo silken, his style of singing so professional.

Pour yourself a glass of wine, take an evening off from the real world and give these all a listen.

Republished with gracious permission from The Classical Girl (January 2025)

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

The featured image is “Dover” (1930) by David Cox, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. The image of Samuel Barber is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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