Barber or Mascagni?

Samuel Barber

Today, we begin to explore the next two choices in our You Be the Judge! lineup. On Monday, October 25th, Orchestra Kentucky will present the audience with a series of choices between two compositions. They will decide at the concert what they want to hear.

One of the choices will be between Barber's Adagio for Strings and Mascagni's Intermezzo from his opera, Cavalleria Rusticana. Both are beautiful, slow, single-movement compositions that feature the string section (exclusively, with the Barber). This is going to be one of the more difficult decisions the audience will have to make.

Samuel Barber was born on March 9, 1910 and died on January 23, 1981. He composed orchestral, operatic, choral and piano music. He won the Pulitzer Prize in music for his opera Vanessa and his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.

Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania into a musical family. His mother was a pianist, his aunt was a famous contralto, Louise Homer, and his uncle, Sidney Homer, was a composer of art songs. Barber wrote his first musical at the age of seven and tried to write his first opera at ten. He entered Philadelphia's prestigious Curtis Institute of Music at fourteen, where he studied voice, composition and theory. I've taken the time here to point out Barber's vocal influences because of the effect they had on his compositions, especially the Adagio.

The Adagio began as the second movement of Barber's String Quartet, Op. 11, which he composed in 1936 while spending the summer in Europe. In January 1938, Barber sent the full string version of the Adagio to the legendary conductor, Arturo Toscanini. Toscanini sent the score back to Barber without comment. This upset Barber, who avoided meeting with Toscanini. Toscanini sent word through Barber's Curtis friend and composer, Menotti, that he planned to perform the piece. Toscanini returned the score because he had already memorized it! The full string version of the Adagio was premiered on November 5, 1938, when Toscanini conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra in a radio broadcast from New York.
The piece has enjoyed immense popularity ever since its premiere as a sort of requiem for the famous. It was played at the funerals of FDR, Einstein, Princess Grace, and JFK. It was also played at the last night of the Proms, a popular London music festival, to commemorate the victims of 9-11. In popular culture, it has been used in the soundtrack of the movies Platoon and The Elephant Man.

Barber's vocal background comes to the fore with the Adagio. The work is a series of long, singing, melodic lines which slowly work up to the highest registers of the string section. The emotional peak is when the string body plays its loudest, suddenly followed by silence. Barber must have also heard his work vocally. In 1967, he transcribed the piece for eight-part choir as a setting of Agnus Dei ("Lamb of God").

Here is a link to the aforementioned 9-11 performance broadcast from London's Albert Hall on September 15, 2001. American conductor Leonard Slatkin leads the BBC Orchestra. Listen here.