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His 1958 Vanessa garnered him the first of two Pulitzer Prizes (the second was for his Piano Concerto), but, like most other American operas, it quickly dropped out of sight.
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Medea, a 1947 dance score for Martha Graham, has found greater longevity in orchestral excerpts. Equally direct in their emotional content are his three Essays for Orchestra, the second being the best crafted and most acclaimed.īarber would have seemed an ideal composer for the stage, but he had limited success in that realm. While following traditional formats, they are propelled by a dramatic expressivity that hadn't been fashionable since Sibelius. Many of these are in large forms: two symphonies, one string quartet (from which was drawn the Adagio for Strings, first popularized by Arturo Toscanini), an ambitious piano sonata, and one concerto each for violin, cello, and piano. Yet he was particularly adept at writing abstract works, such as Music for a Scene from Shelley. Barber had unerring taste in texts, and his literary interests led him to compose some allusive short orchestral pieces. His 1933 Curtis graduation piece, the spirited School for Scandal Overture, has become a beloved concert opener.īarber developed into America's most enduring composer of art songs most popular is his tender setting for soprano and chamber orchestra of James Agee's Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Barber was an able pianist and a baritone of some talent, but he was an even more precocious composer. In particular, his emotive Violin Concerto and Adagio for Strings have gained a popularity exceeded only by certain works of Aaron Copland.īarber entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 1924, where he met future opera composer Gian Carlo Menotti the two would become lifelong lovers. In his last decades he seemed to be losing the battle, but by the end of the century Barber had posthumously become one of America's most widely performed and recorded composers.
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428, one of the magnificent quartets dedicated to Haydn.An open-hearted yet tough romantic, Samuel Barber was one of the few twentieth century American composers to fight for the primacy of lyricism. The evening began less auspiciously, however, with Thouvenel’s edgy, insecure reading of Mozart’s E-flat Major String Quartet, K. Wright’s ample voice favors the darker sonorities, and he pulled out all the stops for this haunting tone poem for voice and string quartet. Assisted by the Thouvenel String Quartet, Wright declaimed Barber’s dark cadences and Arnold’s brooding verse with an eerie luminescence, although the string players provided him with a buoyant accompaniment of finely woven counterpoint. “Dover Beach” may have been the shortest work on the evening’s program, but it made the most profound impression, largely due to baritone Martin Wright’s heartfelt and subtly modulated singing. James Episcopal Church, the Pacific appeared just as calm as the opening lines of Matthew Arnold’s poem portrays the North Sea from the Dover shore. Saturday night’s setting for a performance of Samuel Barber’s “Dover Beach” could not have been more congruent.