March 2, 2010
Remembering Sam
The yin and yang of musical fashions and fads shift every 20 or 25 years, and always have done. In the 1950s, concert music fledged itself from new music in traditional tonal style and notation toward an increasing respect for serial music, and in the process up popped Elliot Carter, John Cage, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, and the like. In that process, perfectly respectable and popular composers got pretty much shoved out of the nest. Performances of the major American composers of the early 20th century have radically dwindled, with the exceptions of Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein.
None of the major American composers of the 1930s and ‘40s stands more deserving of another listen than Samuel Barber, whose centennial birthday is March 9. Barber stands in danger of becoming another Johnny-One-Note composer like Paul Dukas. For, despite all his early success, the only real current standard repertory piece of Barber has become his Adagio for Strings.
I suppose that many classical music lovers know Barber’s name, but few among even professional musicians know much about the man. That’s understandable, as he was something of a recluse. A shy man, Barber wasn’t given to bragging, or even teaching, and never wrote a book on music, let along a tell-all autobiography. (Try as mightily as I could, I’ve never found either a Barber anecdote or a funny remark or nasty comment from his lips.)
Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, into an upper-middle-class family, his father a doctor and his mother a competent pianist. As she was the sister of Metropolitan Opera contralto Louise Homer, there was always music in the Barber home, as well as trips to concerts in nearby Philadelphia. Barber never used his full name (Samuel Osborne Barber II), and to his friends he was simply “Sam.” He felt single-minded about composition, so much so that at age 8 or 9 (sources vary) he wrote a note to his mother who, that day, wanted him to go outside and play football, stating, “I’m no athlete. I was meant to be a composer, and will be I’m sure.” He wished to be a composer, and nothing more than that.
He is rarely credited with being a prodigy, though he was, and at a Mozartean level. He wrote his first opera, The Rose Tree, at age 10, his first piano pieces at age 7. Armed with these pieces, and more, Barber was accepted at the Curtis Institute of Music the year it opened, 1924. He was 14 years old. (He never allowed any of his juvenilia to be published.)
Aside from possessing serious talent, Barber was lucky. He had excellent teachers at Curtis: piano from Isabelle Vengerova, composition from Rosario Scalero, conducting from Fritz Reiner, voice with Emilio de Gogorza. He disliked giving public performances, yet he did record in all those musical areas. He displayed a pleasant, rich baritone in an early recording of his Dover Beach for voice and string quartet, Op. 3. He also conducted London-label recordings of his Symphony No. 2, Op. 19, and his Medea Suite, Op. 23, and accompanied Leontyne Price when she recorded his Hermit Songs, Op. 29. Barber also participated as one of the four pianists in a recording of Stravinsky’s Les Noces, conducted by the composer. (His cohorts on that session were all illustrious: Roger Sessions, Lukas Foss, and Aaron Copland.)
Writing From Heart and Head
As for his compositions, Virgil Thomson summed up Barber’s style this way: “Romantic music, predominately emotional, embodying sophisticated workmanship and complete care.” Nicolas Slonimsky called him “A composer of superlative talents.” Some works are better than others, naturally, but Barber was never sloppy. He was not one to dash things off, which likely accounts for his relatively small catalog of music: fewer than 50 published works.
He was, as far as I know, the first and only resident composer of the U.S. Air Force, which he joined in 1942. What’s funny is that his commander told Barber he ought to be writing in a more-modern style if he intended to represent the Air Force. And so he increased the levels of both dissonance and rhythmic complexity in his Second Symphony, the Cello Concerto, and his little piano suite, called Excursions. That last was written to please ordinary airmen and features a boogie-woogie first movement, followed by a blues, a western song, and a square dance.
Along the way, Barber won a Prix de Rome, two Pulitzer Prizes — one for his opera Vanessa, and the other for the Piano Concerto — along with three Guggenheim awards and an honorary doctorate from Harvard in 1953. When Barber submitted his First Essay for Orchestra to Toscanini in 1937, the conductor said he’d do the premiere, but wanted something more to fill out the program; he suggested that Barber rescore the slow movement of his First String Quartet for string orchestra, and thus was born the ubiquitous Adagio for Strings. Toscanini promptly recorded both compositions.
On his Prix de Rome visit, Barber finished his stunning First Symphony, which was premiered there, then taken to the Salzburg Festival. Conductor Bruno Walter heard and liked it, whereupon he recorded it with the New York Philharmonic. And Barber was lucky, too, with performers throughout his career. The list reads like a who’s who of major musicians: conductors Toscanini, Walter, Eugene Ormandy, Serge Koussevitzky, Georg Szell, Rafael Kubelik, Dmitri Mitropoulos, Leonard Bernstein, and Zubin Mehta; vocalists Eleanor Steber, Regina Resnik, and Leontyne Price; pianists Horowitz, Rudolf Firkušný, and John Browning; and on and on. Those are merely the top of the list.
Man Without a Country Today, however, Barber’s music is rarely performed in his own country, though he’s often performed in Europe. France has a Samuel Barber Society that performs and lauds his works. Withal, you can hardly find a live performance of Vanessa for the centennial year. (There’ll be one in British Columbia.) San Francisco has yet to stage the opera.
And that’s too bad, because Barber’s music pleases audiences, as several popular pieces show. Besides the Adagio for Strings, you may have heard Knoxville, Summer of 1915, a work for soprano and orchestra that Jessica Rivera will sing in a Berkeley Symphony Orchestra concert next month. What’s remarkable is the general quality of his scores. Very few failures, like the Toccata Festiva for organ and orchestra, are to be found in his output.
Among his super pieces are the early Overture to The School for Scandal, the First and Second Essays for orchestra, the First Symphony, the suite from his ballet Medea, Die Natali (a large choral prelude for orchestra based on popular Christmas carols), Commando March (originally for band), four Concertos (one each for violin, cello, and piano, plus the zesty Capricorn Concerto concerto grosso for flute, oboe, trumpet, and strings), a Cello Sonata, Op. 6, and the Piano Sonatas, Op. 26, Excursions and suite for piano duet, Souvenirs, that the ZOFO piano duet team (Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi) will play on March 28 at Old First Concerts. I’ll take a breath, and then also mention Andromache’s Farewell for soprano and orchestra; and the 10 Hermit Songs, Op. 29.
Barber’s final years were not happy ones. He fell short of money, as his music had been shoved aside. He became depressed by his fall from high esteem, and he broke up with his life partner, the composer Gian Carlo Menotti, and had to sell their home (“Capricorn”), which they’d built in Mount Kisco, N.Y. It’s reported that Barber was drinking a lot, possibly a factor in some very late works of his (Essay No. 3 and several short piano pieces) falling flat.
Still, the great accomplishments of Barber’s first 35 creative years stand as a monument to one of America’s finest Romantic composers. Some major tributes ought to be raised to “Sam.”
SFCV Previews
- Fri February 10, 2012 8:00pm
Comments
It saddens me that Barber was so unheralded in his own time, simply because he followed his own path and would not write in the compositional trend du jour. His music begs for more airtime, both live and broadcast. While the Violin Concerto has gained some currency of late, his other concerti deserve more attention.
In addition to Mr. Tircuit's fine selections, I would like to recommend all of Barber Songs, many of which may be heard on a fine new recording made by new baritone lion, Gerald Finley, and Julius Drake, a sterling collaborative pianist. Another fine work is "Prayers of Kierkegaard" for chorus and orchestra, which deftly walks the line between the spiritual and the philosophical. It may be heard on an outstanding Robert Shaw recording on Telarc paired with equally worthy pieces by Bartok and Vaughan Williams. It's a gem and you can buy it for less than a dollar on Amazon!
There is one charming story about Samuel Barber that I have heard often enough to have some faith in its having some foundation in truth. At one point when he was attempting to have phone service connected in a new apartment (or possibly transferred from an older one), he reached an operator who was overly zealous in demanding identification. Unable to convince her by more conventional means, the story goes, Barber said "I am the composer of Sure on this Shining Night" and proceeded to sing the song to her over the telephone. According to the story, the operator was convinced and the telephone order was duly put in the works.
True or not, the fact is that not too long ago (I am speaking of the early 1960s when I was a student at Northwestern -- and often saw Huewell Tircuit along with mutual friends), Barber songs often appeared in the programs of the aspiring singers in the music school. "I Hear an Army", "Sleep", "Sure on this Shining Night"....and it is a great pity that so many singers don't know them nowadays. Nor can I understand the paucity of performances of that remarkable Piano Concerto -- not to mention the Violin Concerto, which is available in an unsurpassed recording by Gil Shaham (same CD as the Korngold concerto - who could ask for anything more!)
The story of Barber's end is very sad, made only more tragic by the story of Gian Carlo's end. The two of them had planned to be buried together, but the grave at Barber's side stands empty today, due to the enmity between Barber and Chip Menotti, Gian Carlo's latter-life partner and eventual adopted son. Gian Carlo's devoted nursing of Barber in the last years of his illness may be the only bright spot in that sad story.
Thank you for this consideration. Many of the fine American composers of Barber's generation and general style have been rather forgotten over the years - I have a particular liking for Howard Hanson - but Barber's case may be the most cruel, for the way he was mocked by the serialist hegemony for declining to take up their fashion.
Many composers have premiered their own works on instruments, but Barber is the only notable composer I can think of who premiered his own work as a singer.
Of his orchestral music, I would especially recommend the Violin Concerto, a very fine and beautiful work. And in instrumental music, his Piano Sonata is especially intriguing.
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music has showcased Barber in a couple of concerts this week. Last night, pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi presented a program featuring the solo piano works of Barber, even throwing in his piano version of the Adagio for Strings as an encore. Tomorrow evening (March 10) at 8 p.m., the voice department will present Barber's complete published songs. And it's free.
Steber's connection to "Knoxville" was more than that of just an interpreter: she had commissioned the piece to start with, and its meditation on the power (and powerlessness) of our complex relations to our parents, uncles and aunts was particuarly meaningful to her, since her own father had died very recently at the time she asked BArber to write it for her. There are few performances (recored or otherwise) that match hers as a near-perfect wedding of sound, song and meaning.
Bravo to Mr. Tircuit for celebrating Barber's centenary with a wonderfully detailed yet concise tribute! I too am saddened to see that SF Opera did not choose to produce Vanessa this year - that seemed like an obvious move to me. It's one of those contenders for the "Great American Opera" but we have yet to see it here. Likewise too bad that SF Symphony has no Barber programmed in 2010. Fortunately other groups are paying some tribute, like Berkeley Symphony (Knoxville), Marin Symphony (2nd Essay), Santa Rosa Symphony (1st Symphony), Diablo Symphony (Adagio) and of course the SF Conservatory is to be saluted for presenting his complete piano works (by excellent pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi) and his complete published songs. Perhaps when performing groups announce their 2010-11 seasons we will see more scheduled for the fall.
Barber was unique in that he pretty much covered all genres of composition. One area not covered by Mr. Tircuit is his wonderful choral music. As mentioned above, the Prayers of Kierkegaard is a major work, wonderfully recorded by Robert Shaw. One my favorites is The Lovers, an intense and powerful song cycle of Pablo Neruda's poems for baritone, chorus, and orchestra. But then there are the a cappella works - I will be directing Voices of Musica Sacra in performances of Barber's complete works for chorus this June throughout the Bay Area - my contribution to his centenary. It's an ambitious and daring undertaking, as these works are difficult, yet very rewarding for performer and audience member alike. There is, of course, Barber's own choral arrangement of the Adagio (set to the text of the Agnus Dei), and the next best-known Reincarnations (including the beautiful The Coolin), but also many other fine gems that just are not performed often enough, if at all.
Mr. Tircuit did not mention the fiasco with Barber's opera Antony and Cleopatra, a work desperately in need of re-evaluation. Its premiere was a failure, though not due to the quality of the work itself. But it is a large part of what caused the depression of the later years.
I would disagree slightly with Mr. Tircuit regarding the late works (which I would define as post-Antony and Cleopatra, or after 1966). Many consider his Third Essay for Orchestra to be a fascinating and relevant work, plus the afore-mentioned wrenchingly beautiful The Lovers, some of his finest songs (the cycle Despite and Still and the Three Songs, op. 45), and the only movement he completed of a proposed oboe concerto which he did not live to complete (Canzonetta for Oboe and Strings).
Barber's music was an incredible combination of intense and nostalgic lyricism (and occasional touches of humor) with brilliant craftsmanship, and those elements were present as early as the School for Scandal overture right up through the final Canzonetta for oboe. Granted, his style only developed slightly over his lifetime (and, like his idol Brahms in the previous century, courageously staying true to his own musical values despite the trends of the rest of the 20th century around him), but there is no denying his unique and recognizable musical voice - one of the greatest this country has produced that should stand alongside the giants Copland and Bernstein (and followed by a long list of excellent but neglected other composers).
Hardly a failure! Just listen to the recent Philadelphia Orchestra recording. It is music written
for a symphony hall organ's dedication and works just fine. How many times can we listen to the Poulenc and Saint Saens. Barber may be over-long, but it shows off more organ, has some
fine moments and builds to a terrific ending.
I'd gladly hear one less performance of the Poulenc and give "Sam" his chance!
Its really great information on Who is Sam, i know him from his great music but didn't know his history
Regards
Grandonk
Thank you so much for the informative biography of this great man. Why is it that all genius and talented people who could have been millionaires die broke, alone and depressed? Such a shame.
Great compositeur, one of my favorits music it's "Rosée de Diamant"
J'aime ces musique sont émouvante, relaxant. un chanteur comme on en vois plus, on nous matraque que de stupide chanteur au regime et diet type lady gaga et compagnie ...
This is quite a good, brief background on the late Sam Barber. One of the greats that will truly be missed.
Congratulations to Mr Tircuit for this brief and thorough essay !
For more informations about Barber, his life and works, check the Samuel Barber Society website : www.samuelbarber.fr. You'll find an up-to-date concert agenda, discography, many videos and audio links, as well as a detailed biography and other things related to the Society's activity.
PB