(b. March 9, 1910 in West Chester, Pennsylvania; d. January 23, 1981 in New York) Samuel Osborne Barber II at only nine years old laid out to his skeptical mother, manifesto-style, his calling, saying in part, “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.” Talent won out and at age 14 he entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Curtis was in a comfortable world that fit his nature, not to stray too far nor embark on any risky adventures. At Curtis, he met his life partner , who was a classmate. Barber, as a favorite of Curtis founder Mary Curtis Bok, was introduced to the Schirmer family, neatly solving a young composer's early hurdle to find a publisher. Unlike his contemporary Aaron Copland, who spent time abroad absorbing musical ideas from many cultures yet settled into a career that drew heavily on Americana, Barber was happy to concentrate on a Romanticism that wasn't overtly American. His models were more Bach and Brahms who looked at themselves as endpoints than new beginnings. Because his music sounded more familiar, his acceptance by the public was more immediate. His fame grew quickly but in a manner befitting a modest man who did not pursue the limelight. Overture to The School for Scandal Choosing to write music to introduce a play at the beginning of one's career invites comparison to Mendelssohn's Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream. Perhaps at 21, Barber was long in the tooth compared to Mendelssohn's willowy 17. Still, Barber's effort seems precocious and was an instant hit. He wrote it as his graduating thesis from Curtis. The play behind it is by Richard Sheridan and dates from 1777. In the play, English elite embrace scandal, get into wild hijinks, but in the end survive with at least the possibility that virtue may triumph. Young Sam, in his cloistered surroundings, must have been giddy to find he could be a gay man and “out” among at least a few around him. Imagine what people might think of his life if they only knew! Was scandal at Curtis in the back of his mind? It certainly fits his style that he would translate his feelings to a setting more than a century past. That is speculation for us in a different time. At any rate, this student work was premiered by the in 1933 and was awarded the Joseph H. Beams Prize given annually to young American composers. Barber's career was firmly established. Adagio for Strings CBS's John Daly broke into Wilderness Road to announce the death of President Franklin Roosevelt on the afternoon of April 12, 1945. Further details trickled in slowly. The depth of the tragedy made normal programming out of the question but when no new information was available, someone put Adagio for Strings onto the turntable. Immediately it communicated the deep grief beyond words that everyone felt and in the years since it has become the soundtrack for terrible moments in the history of the world—at JFK's memorial service, after the deaths of Princess Grace and Princess Diana, and repeatedly in the aftermath of 9/11. Adagio for Strings' genesis was modest. It was the second movement of his , Op. 11, a work he intended for the Curtis String Quartet. Unsatisfied with the finale, he reworked parts of it repeatedly so that it wasn't played in its final form until 1943. In the meantime he realized he had something special in the second movement. He decided to arrange it for string orchestra and dispatched a copy to Arturo Toscanini. When Toscanini returned it without comment, Barber was disappointed, but, in fact, Toscanini had already chosen to program it. He had memorized it at sight. The NBC Symphony radio broadcast on November 5, 1938 was a huge coup for Barber as Adagio for Strings was premiered with First Essay for Orchestra and all the more so because Toscanini rarely favored modern American works. John Adams (b. February 15, 1947 in Worcester, Massachusetts) The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra John Coolidge Adams is an American success story. A New Englander and Harvard-educated, he chose California and the beat poets instead of 12-tone avant-garde composers. In hindsight, it was a lucky escape from the sterility of musical academe of the 60s and 70s. He is often called a minimalist, but his music defies easy categorization. Whatever you call him, Adams is now a staple for concertgoers who want to hear living American composers. The Chairman Dances was a sort-of warmup for Adam's opera Nixon in China (1987)—a breakthrough work that brought him worldwide recognition. The National Endowment for the Arts commissioned The Chairman Dances. Lukas Foss conducted the Milwaukee Symphony in its first performance January 31, 1986. The Chairman is Mao Zedong and Dances is a verb. Peter Sellars (who produced the premiere) and Alice Goodman (who wrote the libretto) explain the action as follows: “Chiang Ch’ing, aka Madame Mao, has gatecrashed the Presidential Banquet. She is first seen standing where she is most in the way of the waiters. After a few minutes, she brings out a box of paper lanterns and hangs them around the hall, then strips down to a cheongsam, skin-tight from neck to ankle and slit up the hip. She signals the orchestra to play and begins dancing by herself. Mao ... steps down from his portrait on the wall, and they begin to foxtrot together. They are back in Yenan, dancing to the gramophone…” At the end we hear the needle clicking in the lock groove of the record as the machine winds down to a stop. Samuel Barber – First Essay for Orchestra, Op. 12 Barber met Toscanini a few times in 1933 and was flattered to hear that he would like to conduct one of his works. Barber wrote his Essay for Orchestra in 1937 immediately on the heels of his String Quartet with Toscanini in mind. Musical “essays” were Barber's invention. The form implies complex and thoughtful exploration of a small amount of thematic material. He wrote two more essays for orchestra, one in 1942, the third in 1978—the last major work he completed. The overall mood of First Essay is contemplative although it has moments of high energy. The ending is unusual. Three muted trumpets seem to be seeking something; the strings respond briefly but it's no answer. Aaron Copland (b. November 14, 1900 in Brooklyn; d. December 2, 1990 in Sleepy Hollow, NY) Lincoln Portrait Like Fanfare for the Common Man featured last month, Lincoln Portrait was expressly intended to support the war effort. Conductor André Kostelanetz commissioned Copland to compose a portrait of an American who expressed the “magnificent spirit of our country.” Copland's first thought was Walt Whitman, but his patron thought someone of greater stature—likely a political figure—was more appropriate. With that input, Lincoln was the obvious choice. Most of the music was original but drew on two period songs, “Camptown Races,” which Lincoln used with new words as a campaign song in 1860, and “Springfield Mountain.” The latter seems to honor Springfield, Illinois, the very flat place Lincoln came from, but the song is about Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1943 Copland wrote notes for a performance by the Boston Symphony. Here is an excerpt: The composition is roughly divided into three main sections. In the opening section I wanted to suggest something of the mysterious sense of fatality that surrounds Lincoln's personality. Also, near the end of that section, something of his gentleness and simplicity of spirit. The quick middle section briefly sketches in the background of the times he lived. This merges into the concluding section where my sole purpose was to draw a simple but impressive frame about the words of Lincoln himself. (c)2013 by Steven Hollingsworth, Creative Commons Public Attribution 3.0 United States License. Contact: [email protected]