Building A Career On Barber, The Enigmatic American
As with most people, my first exposure to Samuel Barber's music was through his iconic Adagio for Strings, which I first played as an 11-year-old violinist in the Juilliard Preparatory Orchestra. I remember it being a deceptively difficult piece that required enormous control and concentration. I thought whoever wrote this piece must have been deeply emotional.
Little did I know that, 25 years later, the music of Barber would be my entry point into the world of making recordings.
Barber was born in 1910, 100 years ago this year, into a privileged life as the son of a prominent doctor in West Chester, Pa. He began piano at age 6 and started composing a year later. By the time he was 9, he announced, "I was meant to be a composer … so please don't insist on football." He had a lovely baritone voice and thought about following in the footsteps of his aunt, Louise Homer, a celebrated opera singer. But instead, he soon settled into becoming a composer. He entered Philadelphia's newly formed Curtis Institute at 14; there, he met fellow composer Gian Carlo Menotti, with whom he later formed a lifelong relationship.
Meeting Barber through his Adagio for Strings is a fitting introduction to the composer and man. Like his defining eight-minute composition, Barber himself was a complex and enigmatic man. The epitome of grace and refinement, he was profoundly emotional, but always kept those emotions in check. Although he came across as intensely private, reserved and urbane, he was known by his friends as a loyal and incredibly funny man who adored gossip and was prone to violent outbursts. Unlike his companion, Menotti -- a peripatetic world traveler -- Barber was a homebody who longed for simpler creature comforts.
Beyond The 'Adagio'
It would be a crime to think of Barber only as the composer of the Adagio for Strings. His output as a composer is enormously varied, creative and inspiring. When I was first approached by Naxos in the late 1990s to record all of Barber's orchestral works with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, I must confess that my vision of Barber was also somewhat myopic. I knew of him first through the Adagio and second through his Violin Concerto.
As I got to know the range and breadth of his music, I fell in love with him anew. Indeed, those gorgeous melodies are a hallmark of many of his compositions (just listen to the oboe solo that starts the slow movement of the Violin Concerto), but his wit and skill at developing a small cell of material into an entire piece are beyond impressive.
There's intrigue, too. Why did Barber order the score of his Second Symphony (commissioned by the Armed Forces) to be destroyed? Fortunately, a set of parts was unearthed in the 1980s, and we are able to experience this piece firsthand today. Was he embarrassed in the 1960s by his association with the U.S. military? Or did he really feel that the piece was below his standard?
The work is a symphony about the Air Force, and Barber spent time preparing to write it by accompanying fighter pilots as they performed their maneuvers. Listening to the dizzying opening of the last movement, one can hear the thrills and acrobatics of his own experience.
Barber was often vilified by colleagues for his unabashed affinity for Romantic thought and tradition. At a time when Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez were all the rage, Barber's "classicist" approach to traditional forms did not sit well. But he always followed his own inner voice and wrote music true to himself.
That's not to say he couldn't write dissonant and angular music. Listen to Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance or the Cello Concerto, and you hear a totally different side of Barber.
Getting to know Barber's music was a revelation for me, and it has played a large role in the development of my artistic profile throughout the world. Whether performing his Second Essay at Carnegie Hall Nov. 13 or bringing his Symphony No. 1 to Tokyo last year, or premiering (yes!) his Cello Concerto in Philadelphia with the Curtis Institute Orchestra several years ago, Barber has become my lifelong companion.
9(MDAyNzUwMDI2MDEyNTA3MTU5NzcyNTQyNA004))
SCOTT SIMON, host:
When you hear Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings," it is impossible not to become moist-eyed, and think about love and loss.
(Soundbite of "Adagio for Strings)
SIMON: This stirring and haunting composition was played on the radio all over the United States during the announcement of Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, at the funeral of Princess Grace, and performed in 2001 to commemorate the victims of 9/11. The BBC called Barber's Adagio for Strings the saddest classical work ever.
(Soundbite of "Adagio for Strings)
SIMON: The Adagio is the second movement of Samuel Barber's "String Quartet," the rest of that work having receded almost behind the power of the Adagio. Samuel Barber wrote many more orchestral works and songs over the course of a very long career - he composed his first piece when he was 6, and his last in 1978.
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will perform one of those pieces, Barber's "Second Essay for Orchestra," at Carnegie Hall in New York next month.
Joining us to talk about Samuel Barber and his life in music is, of course, our favorite maestro, Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Thanks so much for being with us.
Ms. MARIN ALSOP (Music Director, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra): Oh, my pleasure, Scott. Thanks for having me.
SIMON: I've got to tell, I am so glad you are throwing attention on Samuel Barber because I know enough about his life to know that he was - I don't mind saying - rather inanely mocked by so-called sophisticates during his career.
Ms. ALSOP: Well, it's a great opportunity because this is the hundredth centenary of his birth, and he's a composer who, as you say, during his lifetime he really had to fight against the trends in classical composition, which were headed toward the avant-garde, dissonance, atonal music. And he was an unabashed romantic. And you know, at the end of the day, of course, his music has endured.
SIMON: Why did you choose the "Second Essay"?
Ms. ALSOP: You know, Barber wrote three pieces that he called essays, and each one of them is - very much like the literary term, it's really a composition based on an idea, and he develops it. It's really, it's a - almost like a short story unto itself.
(Soundbite of "Second Essay")
Ms. ALSOP: The "Second Essay" was written just at the outbreak of the Second World War. So it has, I think, this sense of ominous dread to it but also excitement, you know, what's going to happen, this - you know, so its very dramatic. It starts quietly with a theme, but then just builds and builds and builds to a fabulous end. And it's a wonderful opener, and I thought for the Baltimore Symphony at Carnegie Hall, what better a way to start than this.
(Soundbite of "Second Essay")
SIMON: As authentically American as Copland, I think.
Ms. ALSOP: Yeah, that's always an interesting question, isn't it? What makes an American sound? I mean, to me, this sounds quintessentially American. But Barber wasn't considered, really, a patriotic composer. And his music, it was always thought of as European. Sort of Euro...
SIMON: Because it was romantic and lush...
Ms. ALSOP: I think so, and there's also a sophistication about his music. And I think when people think about Copland, there's a primitive quality, you know, a rawness to it that somehow evokes more of an Americana response. But for me, Barbers music is completely American.
(Soundbite of "Second Symphony")
SIMON: Tell us, please, about his "Second Symphony."
Ms. ALSOP: Barber wrote his Second Symphony" - he was commissioned by the Armed Forces to write music. He wrote a march called The Commando March," which I've also recorded. And his Second Symphony," they wanted him to go around with the fighter pilots and experience flying, and write a piece about it.
Now, if you heard the "Second Symphony" without me telling you that preamble, I'm not sure you would know that it's about flying. But once you know that, it really does have this sense of space and motion and excitement to it.
(Soundbite of "Second Symphony")
Ms. ALSOP: Its very different from many of his other pieces. I mean, this is one of the things about a great composer like Barber. We know one side of him -one dimension, the Barber-Adagio dimension, and yet he wrote this music that was angular and dramatic and often quite dissonant and atonal, and it shows such a skill on his part.
(Soundbite of "Second Symphony)
SIMON: Youve been very kind enough to - I made a specific request, I think for the first time that I can recall, because as it turns out, Samuel Barber wrote one of those pieces of music that affect me most deeply.
Ms. ALSOP: Yeah.
SIMON: And thats Knoxville 1915," and this is a piece of music that is written alongside the heart-piercing words of James Agee. And I believe this is the open to Agee's novel "A Death in the Family."
Let's listen to your recording with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and we should say this is Karina Gauvan singing.
(Soundbite of Knoxville 1915)
SIMON: This is the section, for those of us who know Agee, that begins: Were talking now of a summer evening in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that I lived there, so successfully disguised myself as a child.
Ms. ALSOP: The ability that Barber has to create this incredible intimacy, you feel that it's your dearest archetypal parent, you know, singing you a bedtime story, and it's so simple. You know, all simple things, I think, are the most complex to create, aren't they?
SIMON: Yeah. Help us understand, how much can the kind of criticism that he had to contend with, can that really make a gifted composer unhappy?
Ms. ALSOP: I do think that toward the end of his life, he sought refuge from his own demons. You know, I mean, we all have our demons, but he drank too much, and so he sort of spiraled downward toward the end of his life. And I think that was probably related to the enormous criticism that his last opera experienced. And also, you know, he was not fashionable, ever. He was always out of fashion, and I think that's a hard line to tow your whole life. But, you know, when I bring his pieces to Japan or to Europe - I mean, many of these pieces aren't heard often - the audiences respond so enthusiastically: Why haven't we heard this piece? And you know, you realize that this music affects people, and isn't that what we want art to do?
SIMON: Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. And next month, the BSO will perform Barbers Second Essay at Carnegie Hall.
Always a pleasure. Thanks so much.
Ms. ALSOP: My pleasure, Scott. Thank you.
(Soundbite of Knoxville 1915)
SIMON: You can hear more of Samuel Barber's greatest works - and you should - and read maestro Marin Alsop's essay about the composer, at NPRmusic.org.
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
