Classical Music | Music for Quartet

Recorded on 10/05/2004, uploaded on 01/25/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings is a perennial favorite of American concert music, and has taken its place among many other great works as one of the most recognizable pieces in classical music. During the tumult of the early 20^th century, in which a violent philosophical upheaval touched nearly every aspect of human existence, including the arts, Samuel Barber was one of the few composers to fully embrace and fight for the lyrical tradition of music handed down by the last of the Romantics. Perhaps nowhere else is this more evident than in his Adagio. Supple melodic lyricism, combined with the imitation of Renaissance polyphony, create a remarkable musical landscape that never fails to stir the hearts of its listeners. A melancholic tune, heard at the beginning in the first violin, is the central idea of the work. It is properly worked out, building to a heart-wrenching climax of distressed, yet simple, chords. As if unable to fully regain its strength after this cathartic event, the melody resumes softly, and in the same manner as it had begun, before fading away into nothing.

Though the Adagio is primarily known (and most often heard) in its arrangement for string orchestra, it was originally the second movement of Barber’s String Quartet, op. 11, completed in 1936. Barber arranged the movement that same year. In 1938, he sent the orchestratal arrangement to the conductor Arturo Toscanini. To Barber’s chagrin, the score was returned without comment. He later learned, however, that Toscanini intended to premiere the work, and had only returned the score because he had already committed it to memory. On November 5, 1938, before a select audience at Rockefeller Center, Toscanini premiered the Adagio as part of a radio broadcast. It was met with favorable reviews, and Toscanini took the work on tour with him throughout Europe and South America. Though Barber continued to revise the String Quartet for some years, the Adagio has taken on a life of its own apart from its parent work. Indeed, he even returned to it thirty years later to use it as the music for a setting of the Agnus Dei portion of the mass.      Joseph DuBose

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.