Samuel Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on March 9, 1910. He began piano lessons at the age of six and started to compose at seven. He entered the Curtis Institute in 1924, and studied piano with Isabelle Vengerova (1877–1956), composition with Rosario Scalero (1870–1954), and voice with Emilio de Gogorza (1874–1949). During his eight years at the Curtis Institute, he composed a few enduring works, such as Dover Beach (for voice and string quartet, 193D, which shares stylistic traits with works of his maturity in its vocally inspired melody, conservative harmonic language, sensitive text-setting, and idiomatic command of instrumental resources.
Barber was awarded the Beams Prize of Columbia University for his Violin Sonata in 1928, and yet again in 1933, for the overture for The School for Scandal. In 1935, he won the Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship and the Rome Prize. These awards enabled Barber to travel throughout Europe in 1935 and 1936 and to study at the American Academy in Rome, where he composed his Symphony No. 1 (1935–36) and the String Quartet (1936). In 1938, Arturo TOSCANINI conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra in premieres of two works by Barber on the same program: the First Essay for orchestra (1937) and the Adagio for Strings (1936), a transcription of the second movement of the String Quartet for string orchestra. The Adagio’s rich sonorities and seamless canonic imitation, which crescendo to a deeply emotional climax, have made it one of the most popular American works for string ensemble.
During the late 1940s and much of the 1950s, Barber created a number of significant works as a result of important commissions: the powerfully violent Medea (The Cave of the Heart) (1946), reminiscent of STRAVINSKY, for the Martha Graham Dance Company; the intimate and poetic Knoxville-. Summer of 1915 (1947), based on a prose fragment by James Agee, for the American soprano Eleanor Steber (1916–90); and the potent, elaborately resourceful Piano Sonata (1949) for the League of Composers, championed by Vladimir HOROWITZ. The four act opera Vanessa (1957), libretto by Gian Carlo MENOTTI, was first performed by the Metropolitan Opera and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1958. The vivid and popular Piano Concerto (1962) contains references to DEBUSSY and PROKOFIEV, and won a second Pulitzer Prize for Barber.
Barber’s ambitious opera Antony and Cleopatra (1966) premiered at the opening of the Metropolitan Opera’s new house at the Lincoln Centre, but received disastrous reviews. After this, Barber moved to Europe, where he stayed until 1971. Upon his return to the U.S., he observed about his own creative process: “I write what I feel. I’m not a self-conscious composer. I think that what’s been holding composers back a great deal is that they feel they must have a new style every year. I just go on doing, as they say, my thing. I believe this takes a certain courage.” Never in the vanguard as an innovator, Barber was embittered to find his use of traditional forms, contrapuntal techniques, and tonal harmonic orientation dismissed by critics as conservative and antiquated. Such criticism overlooks the pungent dissonances of the Moto perpetuo movement of the Violin Concerto (1939–40), and the portentous 12-tone ostinato chords of the Adagio mesto of the Piano Sonata. Barber composed little during his last years, and died of cancer on January 23, 1981.
Hao Huang
SEE ALSO:
OPERA; ORCHESTRAL MUSIC.
FURTHER READING
Hennessee, Don A. Samuel Barber: A Bio-bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985);
Heyman, Barbara. Samuel Barber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Adagio for Strings; Cello Sonata; Hermit Songs; Knoxville: Summer of 1915; Medea: The Cave of the Heart (concert suite); Piano Concerto; Piano Sonata; String Quartet; Vanessa; Violin Concerto.