Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber ( 1910-1981): Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning composer who ranks with Bernstein, Copland and Gershwin as the Americans whose concert music is most frequently performed.

Adagio for Strings

The justly famous Adagio for Strings was premiered by Toscanini when Barber was only 28, and it was played at the presidential funerals of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, and for both Princess Grace and Prince Rainier of Monaco. Arranged for string orchestra from the slow movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11, Barber also arranged the piece as an Agnus Dei for unaccompanied mixed choir. The Adagio has been featured in several films, including The Elephant Man, Platoon, and Lorenzo’s Oil.

--Intermezzo Sunday Concerts, April 22, 2007 (UNF String Ensemble)

The Monk and His Cat (from Hermit Songs)

Sure on this Shining Night

Barber's art songs are among the finest written by any American composer. In his The Monk and His Cat (Hermit Songs, op. 29, no. 8, 1953) a medieval friar compares his own scholarly pursuits with the antics of his feline companion, as translated by W.H. Auden (1907-1973) from an anonymous Old Irish verse discovered in the margins of an illuminated manuscript. Barber's luminous Sure on this Shining Night (op. 13, no.3, 1938), on a poem from Permit Me Voyage by James Agee (1909-1955), probably has had more performances than any other American art song.

--Summer Serenade, July 25, 2007 (Lindsey Tuller / Clinton Weinberg)