Samuel Barber

Barber’s Violin Concerto: Aaron Rosand’s 1960 New York Philharmonic Debut

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“Romanticism on the violin had a rebirth last night in Carnegie Hall,” wrote New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg in 1970, following a recital by American violinist Aaron Rosand (1927-2019). A decade earlier, in October of 1960, Rosand made his New York Philharmonic debut, performing Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto. Leonard Bernstein was on the podium, and Barber was in attendance. Bernstein and Rosand had agreed to record the Concerto, but the …

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Barber’s “Excursions”: A Celebration of American Musical Vernacular

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Completed in 1944, Excursions, Op. 20 was Samuel Barber’s first published work for solo piano. Using traditional compositional forms such as the rondo and theme and variations, its four brief movements venture deep into American musical vernacular. Barber referred to the collection as “nothing but bagatelles.” He wrote, These are ‘Excursions’ in small classical forms into regional American idioms. Their rhythmic characteristics, as well as their source in folk material and their …

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Barber’s Overture to “The School for Scandal”: Reflecting a Playful Spirit

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Composed in 1931, the Overture to The School for Scandal, Op. 5 was Samuel Barber’s first orchestral work. Barber was completing studies at the Curtis Institute of Music, and the piece served as a graduation thesis. Two years later on August 30, 1933, it was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Alexander Smallens. The eight-minute-long concert overture appeared on programs across the country, helping to establish Barber as one of the …

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Barber’s “To Be Sung on the Water”: Conspirare

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Themes of loneliness, isolation, and loss emerge in the late works of Samuel Barber. One of the most poignant examples can be heard in To Be Sung on the Water, Op. 42, an a cappella setting of a poem by Louise Bogan (1897-1970). Composed in December of 1968, the music unfolds over an ostinato which suggests the gentle, hypnotic motion of a rowboat through the night. We become aware of the persistent flow …

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Barber’s Toccata Festiva: A Celebratory Flourish for Organ and Orchestra

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On a day in 1960, Mary Curtis Zimbalist phoned Eugene Ormandy, music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, with exciting news. The wealthy patron and founder of Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music had decided to provide the Academy of Music, the orchestra’s home at the time, with a pipe organ. Additionally, Zimbalist would commission Samuel Barber, the esteemed American composer who had enrolled in Curtis’ first class in 1924, to write a piece …

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Barber’s Cello Sonata: Echoes of Brahms

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Imagine the kind of music Johannes Brahms might have written had he lived into the twentieth century. Chances are good that it might have sounded something like Samuel Barber’s Cello Sonata, Op. 6. The Sonata’s harmonic language is firmly rooted in the twentieth century, even as it renounces the prevailing twelve tone atonality in favor of C minor. At the same time, its melodic construction, deep, rich piano voicing, and Romantic pathos …

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Barber’s Cello Concerto: Music Which Stands on Its Own Terms

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Lushly Romantic, nostalgic, and autumnal, Samuel Barber’s Cello Concerto, Op. 22 has, in recent years, begun to emerge from the shadows of obscurity. Completed in November of 1945, around the time of Barber’s discharge from wartime service in the United States Air Force, it is the second of the composer’s three concerti, bookended by the Violin Concerto (1939) and Piano Concerto (1962). The work’s neglect has been attributed to its extreme technical …

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