The Saddest Music Ever Written · the Story of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings

*"Whenever the American dream suffers a catastrophic setback, Barber’s Adagio plays on the radio.”* —Alex Ross, author of *The Rest is Noise*

In the first book ever to explore Samuel Barber’s *Adagio for Strings* , music and literary critic Thomas Larson tells the story of the prodigal composer and his seminal masterpiece: from its composition in 1936, when Barber was just twenty-six, to its orchestral premiere two years later, led by the great Arturo Toscanini, and its fascinating history as America’s secular hymn for grieving our dead. Older Americans know *Adagio* from the funerals and memorials for Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy, Albert Einstein, and Grace Kelly. Younger Americans recall the work as the antiwar theme of the movie *Platoon*. Still others treasure the piece in its choral version under the name *Agnus Dei*. More recently, mourners heard *Adagio* played as a memorial to the victims of the 9/11 attacks. Barber’s *Adagio* is truly the saddest music ever written, enrapturing listeners with its lyric beauty as few laments have.

The *Adagio* ’s sonorous intensity also speaks of the turbulent inner life of its composer, Samuel Barber (1910-1981), a melancholic who, in later years, descended into alcoholism and severe depression. Part biography, part cultural history, part memoir, *The Saddest Music ever Written* captures the deep emotion Barber’s great elegy has stirred throughout the world during its seventy-five-year history, becoming an icon of our national soul.