Notes for: July 20, 2010
Barber’s Adagio for Strings, his most popular piece, was originally the slow movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11. Today it can be heard in four different settings – as part of the quartet, as an independent piece, as an arrangement for organ by William Strickland, and as a choral setting by Barber of the Agnus Dei section of the Roman Catholic mass.
The quartet was an early work – composed in 1936 while Barber was studying at the American Academy in Rome with the support of a Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship and Rome Prize. Barber showed the score to Arturo Toscanini, who asked him to orchestrate the adagio slow movement; the maestro then performed it with the NBC Symphony along with Barber’s First Essay for orchestra.
The Adagio is a deliberately paced, melodic chant in step-wide motion with some contrapuntal embroidery that rises to an impassioned climax.