Samuel Barber is one of the best known American ‘classical’ composers. From the early School for Scandal Overture and his First – and only – String Quartet (the slow movement of which supplied his famous Adagio for Strings) his music has been much performed and recorded.
He trained as a singer – there’s a recording, still extant, of his performance of his own setting of Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach, as baritone soloist, with the Curtis String Quartet, – so it should come as no surprise that a great deal of his output uses vocalists in one way or another. As with Howard Hanson (see last week), his music can definitely be described as a neo-Romantic.
Below is a selection of his works:
Early songs, a setting of James Agee’s Sure on this shining night…
The original string quartet version of the famous Adagio…
… plus the composer’s a capella choral adaptation of the piece (using the Agnus Dei from the Latin Mass) …
More James Agee, this time for solo voice and orchestra, the nostalgic Knoxville, Summer of 1915 which the composer described as a ‘lyric rhapsody’…
But there are also purely instrumental works – concertos, symphonies and three Essays for Orchestra; this is the second of them …
Finally, an entire song cycle: Hermit Songs, settings of translations of anonymous poetry by Irish monks…
At Saint Patrick’s Purgatory 00:00
Church Bell at Night: Sweet Little Bell 01:29
St. Ita’s Vision 02:20
The Heavenly Banquet 05:31
The Crucifixion (from “The Speckled Book”) 06:45
Sea-Snatch 09:20
Promiscuity 09:58
The Monk and His Cat: Pangur, White Pangur 10:55
The Praises of God: How Foolish the Man 13:13
The Desire for Hermitage 14:10
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Pantygwydr!
The Art of Listening 