Detroit Symphony Blog: Samuel Barber: A Centennial Tribute

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Samuel Barber: A Centennial Tribute

by Marilou Carlin

American music has always enjoyed a place of pride in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's classical repertoire, and will again in the 2009-2010 season, the first to be fully programmed by Music Director Leonard Slatkin. But among the many American composers that the DSO has championed over the years, none is more important than Samuel Barber.

Barber figured prominently in the DSO's award-winning "American Series" recordings in the 1990s, appearing on four different releases. Importantly, his works have also been performed regularly on the DSO's classical series.

Meanwhile, Leonard Slatkin, one of the country's most ardent promoters of American composers, has also had a long affinity for Barber. He recorded a dozen Barber compositions with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and also conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a recording of Vanessa, the composer's most successful opera.

So it is entirely fitting that the DSO should join with many other American orchestras this year to celebrate Samuel Barber's centennial with a season-long tribute. These performances offer audiences a unique opportunity to enjoy and explore the contributions of one of our country's greatest composers.

"Perhaps no other American composer was as misunderstood as Samuel Barber," said Leonard Slatkin. "In many ways a throwback to the 19th century, his musical language seemed at odds with the time in which he lived. However, during the past decade, we now regard him as a true individualist with a distinctive voice and prodigious musical gifts."

Born on Mar. 9, 1910 in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Samuel Barber was one of the first students to study at the Curtis Institute of Music, which he was enrolled in at the age of 14 and where he studied composition, voice and piano. He went on to win the Prix de Rome as well as two Pulitzer Prizes, and many of his works have since become part of the core classical repertoire. Hailed for the rich lyricism and melodic beauty of his music, his compositions are most often characterized as deeply emotive and exquisitely crafted.

Still, Barber's enduring legacy was not a foregone conclusion during his life. At a time when American composers were more often being lauded for breaking away from European tradition, Barber unabashedly built upon that tradition, particularly the Romantic aesthetic. His music was sometimes labeled "anachronistic" and critics unfavorably compared him to some of his more groundbreaking contemporaries such as Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions, Virgil Thomson and Elliott Carter.

Despite the critics, Barber developed a following and was championed by many of the 20th century's most celebrated conductors and musicians. Some of his greatest successes came early, such as the Overture to the School for Scandal (1931) and the Adagio for Strings (1936), both of which will be performed in the first DSO Barber program of this season (Oct. 1-3) under Slatkin's direction.

The Adagio for Strings is perhaps Barber’s most well known work. It is an orchestral arrangement of the slow movement of his String Quartet No. 1. The renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini, who was acquainted with and impressed by Barber's work, requested a short piece to play on tour with the NBC Symphony, the resultbeing the Adagio. It had its premiere in 1938 with Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony in a nationally broadcast radio concert heard by millions, bringing greater fame to the composer and instant popularity for the work.

Although Barber insisted that it was "just music," the achingly beautiful piece, infused with a sense of tragedy, resonates on a deep emotional level with nearly all who hear it. Featured on numerous soundtracks, it has added eloquent gravitas to such films as Platoon, The Elephant Man, El Norte and Lorenzo's Oil. It has also come to be performed regularly on solemn occasions, including the funerals of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prince Rainier of Monaco. In fact, Leonard Slatkin conducted the BBC Orchestra in the Adagio just four days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 in a live televised performance filmed in tribute to the victims and heroes of those tragedies.

Barber's Adagio had its premiere when he was just 26, and scholars have noted that the composer "found himself" as an artist at a very early age. But while this and other early pieces established his career, works that he wrote in middle age earned him the highest honors, namely the Pulitzer Prize. His first Pulitzer was awarded for the 1957 opera Vanessa, the libretto of which was written by Gian Carlo Menotti, Barber's lifelong personal and professional partner. His second Pulitzer came in 1962 for his Piano Concerto. Barber died all too young in 1981, at the age of 71.

According to those who knew him well, Samuel Barber was urbane, sophisticated, witty, melancholy and brilliant. He was also an uncompromising and meticulous artist who firmly and unequivocally established the validity of the American composer. According to the musical scholar Paul Wittke, "The taste and refinement of the America that gave us a Samuel Barber is rapidly disappearing – but it is there in his music if we but listen."

Labels: Noteworthy