Quad City Symphony Orchestra PROGRAM NOTES Masterworks II: Conflict By Jacob Bancks Associate Professor of Music Augustana College SAMUEL BARBER (1910-1981) electronic remixes. Whatever the context, Adagio for Strings Barber’s endless staircases of melody, his weighty and inconclusive harmonic progres- Instrumentation: String orchestra. sions, and the intense pathos of a room full Premiere: Adagio for Strings was first performed as of vibrato never fail to elicit a highly emo- the third movement of Barber’s String Quartet tional audience response. in B minor, Op. 11, on December 14, 1936 in Rome. As a stand-alone arrangement for string The work is an arrangement of the slow orchestra, the work premiered just under two years later, on November 5, 1938, in a radio movement of Barber’s String Quartet in B broadcast by the NBC Symphony Orchestra, minor, written when the composer was 25 conducted by Arturo Toscanini. and already a rising star in the American QCSO Performance History: The QCSO has per- classical scene. Since its premiere, the Ada- formed Adagio for Strings four times previously: gio has appeared in a seemingly infinite in 1956, 1961, 1979, and 2008. number of arrangements, including a choral setting by the composer himself, using the In classical music, we have warhorses (e.g., text of the Agnus Dei. His own reaction to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5), tear-jerkers the work’s infamy was apparently somewhat (e.g., Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2), and ambivalent. “They always play that piece,” even a few warhorse tear-jerkers (e.g., he said in a radio interview. “I wish they’d “Nimrod” from Enigma Variations). And play some of my other pieces.” then, in a class of its own, we have Barber’s Adagio for Strings, the most-often-per- Adagio for Strings formed work of American classical music Listening Guide and the most ubiquitous tear-jerker in the ¯ TEXTURE: Although there are typi- modern world. Aside from its use in con- cally five sections of strings in the or- certs, it has been often employed to under- chestra (first violins, second violins, vio- score heart-rending cinematic moments in las, cellos, and basses), in this work Bar- films as varied as David Lynch’s Elephant ber often uses the technique of divisi, or Man and Oliver Stone’s Platoon. It’s also dividing the sections into smaller sub- much-used as a means for expressing civic sections in order to include more than grief at national tragedies, from the assassi- five distinct parts. nation of President John F. Kennedy (who ¯ HARMONY: Most of this work is in loved the work) to commemorations of the the key of B-flat minor (five flats), which terrorist attacks of 9/11. Most recently, it has has a particular color when played on become a favorite in dance clubs via string instruments: players make very lit- JOHN ADAMS (b. 1947) tle if any use of open strings, and the The Wound-Dresser notes they do play lack sympathetic res- onance with the any unsounding open Instrumentation: Solo baritone voice; 2 flutes strings. Following the piece’s highly dra- (first doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, clarinet, bass matic climax, Barber removes all the clarinet, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 1 trumpet (dou- bling piccolo trumpet), timpani, keyboard sam- flats for a brief passage; though this mu- pler, and strings. sic is very soft, see if you can notice an Premiere: The Wound-Dresser was premiered by increase in natural resonance from the Sanford Sylvan, baritone, and the St. Paul instruments in this moment. Chamber Orchestra on February 24, 1989, ¯ RHYTHM/MELODY: Pay attention to with the composer conducting. when the stair-step melodies seem to QCSO Premiere. come to a resting point. In one sense, the rhythms of these melodies are sim- The composer writes: ple, made up of nothing but evenly spaced quarter notes. However, Barber Walt Whitman spent the better part of the will frequently and unexpectedly change Civil War years in Washington, D.C., living in meter by adding or subtracting beats. a series of small, unfurnished rooms, all the When you combine these metrical ambi- time supported by the meager salary of a guities with the use of rubato, or flexi- federal clerkship. His sole, consuming pas- bility in tempo, a good part of the ten- sion was his self-appointed task of minister- sion of this work can be attributed to the ing to the tens of thousands of sick and unpredictability of its rhythm. maimed soldiers who crowded the hospitals ¯ TEXTURE: Listen for Barber’s patient in the surrounding area, many of them little use of polyphony, or multiple simultane- more than unheated and unventilated can- ous melodies. The piece begins with a vas tents hurriedly constructed by the unpre- single melody in the violins accompa- pared Army of the Potomac. Virtually every nied by simple chords, but after its first day, barring his own illness or ever-increas- statement, listen for how the violins con- ing exhaustion, Whitman rose early and tinue their melody even as the violas went to the hospitals, going from ward to take up the original tune underneath. ward to visit with the sick and wounded young men. For those who were unable to do so, he wrote letters home. For others he provided small gifts of fruit, candy or to- bacco. He dressed the wounds of the maimed and the amputees and often sat up throughout the night with the most agoniz- ing cases, almost all of whom he knew on a first-name basis. It was surely no poetic ex- aggeration when he later said that during these years many a young soldier had died in his, Walt Whitman’s, arms. 2 QCSO Program Notes 2019-20, Masterworks II Because the scope of his work is so grand words: “Those who love each other shall be- and inclusive, and because he yearned come invincible…” throughout his life to embrace the entire uni- —JOHN ADAMS verse in his poems, it has been tempting for December 22, 1988 succeeding generations to appropriate Whitman for any number of causes or points TEXTS of view. For instance, one would easily as- sume the poet’s sentiments to be fervently Walt Whitman (1819-1892) anti-war. In fact this was not the case, as the Excerpts from The Wound-Dresser poems in Drum-Taps reveal. This slim vol- ume, the only literary work he allowed him- Bearing the bandages, water and sponge, self to compose during the war years, is re- Straight and swift to my wounded I go, markably honest in that it expresses not just Where they lie on the ground after the bat- the horror and degradation of war, but also tle brought in, the thrill of battle and the almost manic ex- Where their priceless blood reddens the hilaration of one caught up in a righteous grass the ground, cause. Whitman hated war—this particular Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or un- war and all wars—but he was no pacifist. Like der the roof’d hospital, his idol, Lincoln, he never ceased to believe To the long rows of cots up and down each in the Union’s cause and in the dreadful ne- side I return, cessity of victory. To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss, The Wound-Dresser is a setting for baritone An attendant follows holding a tray, he car- voice and orchestra of a fragment from the ries a refuse pail, poem of the same name. As always with Soon to be filled with clotted rags and Whitman, it is in the first person, and is the blood, emptied, and filled again. most intimate, most graphic and most pro- foundly affecting evocation of the act of I onward go, I stop, nursing the sick and the dying that I know of. With hinged knees and steady hand to It is also astonishingly free of any kind of hy- dress wounds, perbole or amplified emotion, yet the detail I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp of the imagery is of a precision that could yet unavoidable, only be attained by one who had been there. One turns to me his appealing eyes – poor boy! I never knew you, The Wound-Dresser is not just about the Yet I think I could not refuse this moment Civil War; nor is it just about young men dy- to die for you, if that would save you. ing (although it is locally about both). It strikes me as a statement about human com- On, on I go, (open doors of time! open passion of the kind that is acted out on a hospital doors!) daily basis, quietly and unobtrusively and The crush’d head I dress, (poor crazed unselfishly and unfailingly. Another poem in hand tear not the bandage away,) the same volume states its them in other The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through examine, QCSO Program Notes 2019-20, Masterworks II 3 Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed al- (Many a soldier’s loving arms about this ready the eye, yet life struggles hard, neck have cross’d and rested, Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these (Come sweet death! be persuaded, O bearded lips.) beautiful death! In mercy come quickly.) The Wound-Dresser From the stump of the arm, the amputated Listening Guide hand, ¯ TIMBRE: Like in Barber’s Adagio, this I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, work has a near-absence of percussive wash off the matter and blood, sounds in the orchestra.