New World Records NEW WORLD RECORDS 701 Seventh Avenue, New York, New York 10036; (212) 302-0460; (212) 944-1922 fax email: [email protected] www.newworldrecords.org Songs of Samuel Barber and Ned Rorem New World NW 229 Songs of Samuel Barber romanticism brought him early success as a com- poser. Because of his First Symphony (1936, amuel Barber was born on March 9, 1910, in revised 1942), Bruno Walter thought of him as SWest Chester, Pennsylvania. He remembers “the pioneer of the American symphony.”(“That’s that his parents never particularly encouraged not true,” said Barber almost forty years later. him to become a musician, but as his mother’s “That should be Roy Harris.”) In the late thirties sister, the renowned Metropolitan Opera singer Barber was the first American to be performed Louise Homer, was a frequent visitor to the by Arturo Toscanini (Adagio for Strings and First Barber home, the atmosphere there was not at all Essay for Orchestra), and, not long after, his inimical to musical aspirations. Barber began to music was championed by artists of the stature study piano at six and composed his first music a of Bruno Walter (First Symphony and Second year later (a short piano piece in C minor called Essay for Orchestra), Eugene Ormandy (Violin “Sadness”). When he was ten he composed one Concerto), Artur Rodzinski (First Symphony), act of an opera, The Rose Tree, to a libretto by Serge Koussevitsky (Second Symphony), Martha the family’s Irish cook. At fourteen Barber Graham (Medea), and Vladimir Horowitz entered the newly opened Curtis Institute of (Excursions and Piano Sonata). Music in Philadelphia, having arranged to be Leontyne Price introduced Barber’s Hermit excused for a couple of days a week from high- Songs in 1952, and two years later Charles school classes. At the Curtis, composition was Munch and the Boston Symphony premiered his always his first interest, and his mentor was Prayers of Kierkegaard. In 1958 the Rosario Scalero. Barber’s biographer Nathan Metropolitan Opera gave the first performance of Broder wrote: Vanessa, which won that year’s Pulitzer Prize. Barber’s Piano Concerto was heard in September, Scalero... laid more emphasis upon counterpoint 1962, at Philharmonic Hall during the inaugural than upon any other element of composition, and week of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts prescribed innumerable exercises, insisting upon and brought him a second Pulitzer Prize. In vital and meaningful writing in all parts.The bene- September, 1966, Antony and Cleopatra, com- ficial results of this intensive training are apparent missioned for the opening of the new Metro- throughout Barber’s output. His music is seldom politan Opera House, had its premiere; and in static; and even where the harmonies are ambigu- 1971 The Lovers, for baritone, chorus, and ous, the contrapuntal texture is alive. orchestra, was introduced in Philadelphia by Eugene Ormandy. Barber is now at work on an Barber also studied piano with Isabelle Vengerova oboe concerto and an orchestral piece, both of and singing with Emilio de Gogorza [New World which will be premiered during the 1978-79 sea- Records NW 247, When I Have Sung My Songs: son by the New York Philharmonic. The American Art Song 1900-1940]. He complet- Gilbert Chase once wrote of Barber’s “roman- ed his work at the Curtis in 1932. tic allegiance,”and Virgil Thomson has described Along with the deeply felt nature of his mate- Barber’s musical style as an “elegant neo-romanti- rials and the high craft of his writing, Barber’s 1 cism.” The terms “romantic” and “neo-romantic” haps in response to the eroticism of the Pablo bring to mind a kind of music that is melodic, easy Neruda poems, Barber’s romanticism (which has on the ears (that is, with a low dissonance quo- always owed a certain debt to Tchaikovsky and tient), and formally traditional.“I hate those conve- Puccini) emerges undisguised. nient labels,” Barber said recently.“But I suppose it would be silly to deny that my musical impulses A TALK WITH SAMUEL BARBER tend to correspond to what is generally meant by ‘romantic.’” PHILLIP RAMEY: From when do your earliest songs Barber’s music is distinguished above all by a date? pronounced lyricism, not only in his songs and operas but also in his chamber and orchestral SAMUEL BARBER: From when I was very young. scores. As Broder wrote,“[Barber] is a lyric poet... My first songs were children’s songs, Mother Goose aloof from the swirling currents in which many of and things like that. From age thirteen or fourteen his colleagues are immersed.” Unlike many of his on, I wrote quite a few songs, none of which were American contemporaries—for instance Aaron ever published. My first printed song was “The Copland, Roy Harris, William Schuman, Roger Daisies,” written in 1927 (it was dedicated to my Sessions, or Walter Piston—Barber was never an mother, whose name was Daisy). Many young com- innovator, never experimented with technical posers start with songs—at least they did in my devices, and was satisfied to work in a familiar day. Writing songs just seemed a natural thing to idiom. (In 1936 Copland stated that the then twen- do. Of course, I was influenced by the fact that my ty-six-year-old Barber composed “in a somewhat aunt, Louise Homer, was a famous Metropolitan outmoded fashion.... So excellent a craftsman Opera contralto. And her husband, Sidney Homer, should not content himself forever with the emo- was a very fine song composer. tionally conventional context of his present man- ner.” In 1977 I asked Copland if that rather severe P. R. Was your aunt enthusiastic about your becom- opinion still stood, and he replied:“Sam Barber is a ing a musician? very gifted man who writes expertly in a style that may not be everyone’s cup of tea but which is, S. B. Yes and no. She and Uncle Sidney encouraged nonetheless, perfectly acceptable. A composer of me to become acquainted with only the finest real personality, he is a credit to American music.”) music. Above all, she did not want me to be a dilet- Since 1939 Barber has made occasional use of tante, and it was not until I was fourteen and had modern techniques, but he remains at heart a con- entered the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia that servative. Illustrative of this is his little-known they gave their full approval. It was by then obvi- Symphony No. 2 (1944, revised 1947), a tense and ous that I was to be a composer, for good or bad. dissonant score that caused its first audiences to But I often had to persuade Aunt Louise to try think that Barber had adopted a markedly acerbic out something of mine: I’d ask, and she would say, new style. He hadn’t. For all its modern trappings, “Sammy, I’m sorry, I’m out of voice”; then I’d plead the Second Symphony is another study in its com- and she’d say,“Well all right I’ll look at it.” She was poser’s somewhat elegaic romanticism, an impres- often tired when she visited us in West Chester, sive score that has been, unfortunately, withdrawn. particularly if, as often happened, she had been As one critic aptly put it, the Second Symphony recording that day in Camden, New Jersey, for “harnesses modern discords to basically nine- Victor, with people like Caruso and Galli-Curci. teenth-century modes of construction.” If Barber has remained a traditionalist, he does P. R.: Did she ever program anything by you? occasionally combine the old with the new: in the Piano Sonata (1949) and the Piano Concerto S. B.: There was a never-published series of songs (1962) classical forms are enriched by twelve- which she sang for me privately, and she did per- tone writing and irregular rhythms; in the form one,“Watchers,” on one of her last tours, and Capricorn Concerto (flute, oboe, trumpet, and had a success with it. I heard her do it at Carnegie strings; 1944) and the Cello Concerto (1945) by Hall, and there were a few good reviews, but irregular, varied rhythms and a more secco scoring “Watchers” was not a very good song, though it than usual; in the Second Symphony and the was highly dramatic and had a big range—from dance score Medea by aggressive polytonality. low A below C to high A. However, in his recent cantata The Lovers, per- 2 P. R.: You said that at age fourteen it was “obvious” drifting minds in one; She cancelled all her engage- that you were to be a composer. Do you remember ments, she climbed over the bannisters, she gave a when you were first aware that you wanted to chilly, chudly, cloudy cry” except to set them devote your life to music? instinctively, as abstract music, almost like a vocalise? S. B.: When I was about nine I left a letter on my desk one day when I went to school. It read: P. R.: I assume that you normally let the text dictate “NOTICE to Mother and nobody else—Dear the form of a song. Mother: I have written this to tell you my worrying secret. Now don’t cry when you read it because it S. B.: You pretty much have to if you don’t want to is neither yours or my fault. I suppose I will have to distort the text, although sometimes I cut out a tell it now without any nonsense.To begin with, I verse here and there.