Samuel BarberPub Date : 2020-01-20DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195090581.003.0015
Barbara B. Heyman
{"title":"Vanessa","authors":"Barbara B. Heyman","doi":"10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195090581.003.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195090581.003.0015","url":null,"abstract":"When it was performed in 1958, Barber’s opera Vanessa was the first new American work produced by the Metropolitan Opera since 1947 and only the twentieth since the opening of the opera house in 1883. It took Barber two decades to find a libretto, and his search finally culminated in his own backyard, as it were, when his partner Gian Carlo Menotti offered to write the libretto. This chapter narrates how Vanessa evolved, from the creation of the plot to the actors and sets. Set in an unnamed “northern country about 1905,” the story unfolds about two women: Vanessa, a lady of great beauty, who for twenty years of winter after snowy winter has awaited the return of her only love, Anatol; and her beautiful young niece, Erika. The concluding quintet is considered one of the most brilliant climaxes in the twentieth-century repertoire. The opera’s critical success led to the production of Vanessa at the Salzburg Festival, the first American opera performed there. There have been numerous productions in the United States and abroad since then, including a brilliant one at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2018.","PeriodicalId":205840,"journal":{"name":"Samuel Barber","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126437599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Samuel BarberPub Date : 2020-01-20DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190863739.003.0020
Barbara B. Heyman
{"title":"Postlude","authors":"Barbara B. Heyman","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190863739.003.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190863739.003.0020","url":null,"abstract":"Barber was a brilliant internationally recognized American composer, whose early indoctrination in European intellectual and musical tradition was compatible with his lifelong creative motivations. The frequency with which his works were performed during and after his lifetime is testimony to the vitality with which he imbued tonal language and the enduring viability of melody itself. Such elements of modernist language as dissonance, chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, and limited serialism were incorporated into his music after 1940 insofar as they allowed him to continue to pursue lyrical and emotional expression. For more than twenty-five years, Barber’s uncle Sidney Homer was his nephew’s mentor. Homer espoused the value of sincerity, clarity of expression, reverence for the proven masters, and choice of serious, vital subjects with international appeal. Above all, he urged his nephew to listen to the “inner voice that is working with you.” A striking feature of Barber’s compositional process from his earliest years was his collaborative relationship with the artists who would perform his works so that the resulting composition would reflect their strengths and predilections. . A documentary study of Barber’s career also becomes a study of patronage in the United States over fifty years—the shift from the individual philanthropist to broader-based financial sources. Communication to his audience was critical to Barber’s work; he worked slowly and laboriously to perfect his craft. His influence on younger composers continues, perhaps because of the coexistence in his music of post-Straussian chromaticism and a typically American directness and simplicity.","PeriodicalId":205840,"journal":{"name":"Samuel Barber","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123854683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Samuel BarberPub Date : 2020-01-20DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190863739.003.0008
Barbara B. Heyman
{"title":"Recognition","authors":"Barbara B. Heyman","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190863739.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190863739.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter describes Barber’s close relationship with Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini. Barber would frequently visit the conductor in his home, most days ending with music. This friendship resulted in Toscanini requesting that Barber write a work for the newly formed NBC Symphony Orchestra. This was a rare privilege, as Toscanini in the past had ignored American composers. His broadcasts were received with much enthusiasm from audiences. Toscanini further advanced Barber’s career by bringing his music to Latin America, with Barber being the first American composer whose work reached those shores. For Toscanini, Barber composed Essay for Orchestra and arranged the second movement of his earlier string quartet as the Adagio for Strings, which brought him international fame and became, as it were, the national funeral music of the United States, associated with the deaths of such famous names as Albert Einstein, Franklin Roosevelt, and Grace Kelly and with the tragedy of September 11, 2001. The chapter also covers Barber’s unaccompanied choral works.","PeriodicalId":205840,"journal":{"name":"Samuel Barber","volume":"79 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126242426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Samuel BarberPub Date : 2020-01-20DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195090581.003.0005
Barbara B. Heyman
{"title":"Uncertainties","authors":"Barbara B. Heyman","doi":"10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195090581.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195090581.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"At the Curtis Institute of Music, Barber pursued further studies in foreign language and literature, mostly of a European background. He aimed for perfection of his craft and was inspired by English, Irish, and German literature, poetry, and music. He continued to travel in Europe together with his closest friend from the Curtis Institute, Gian Carlo Menotti, and subsequently spent a year at the American Academy in Rome. At the same time, his orchestra pieces started to be performed regularly in New York; Dover Beach, for voice and string quartet, especially, earned good critical reviews. The Overture to The School for Scandal won him a second Bearns Prize. He also pursued a career as a singer as a means of earning extra income, his first recording being Dover Beach. The “Angel Mary” Bok continued to foster his career. Following their graduation from Curtis, Barber and Menotti moved into an apartment in New York.","PeriodicalId":205840,"journal":{"name":"Samuel Barber","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128996506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Samuel BarberPub Date : 1994-07-28DOI: 10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780195090581.003.0009
Barbara B. Heyman
{"title":"Prelude to War","authors":"Barbara B. Heyman","doi":"10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780195090581.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780195090581.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter reveals the most accurate account of Barber’s first major commission, the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. It was commissioned in 1939 by Samuel Fels of Fels-Naptha soap for his ward Iso Briselli, a young violinist prodigy. Barber’s work on the concerto in Switzerland was interrupted by the impending Nazi invasion in Poland and, on arriving home, the illness of his father. As the work could not be completed in time for Briselli’s debut, it was premiered instead by Albert Spalding and the Philadelphia Orchestra and received a generous response, newspapers reporting it to be an “exceptional popular success.” The chapter also features four songs on texts by Gerard Manley Hopkins, James Agee, W. B. Yeats, and Frederic Prokosch, a friend of Barber’s. It mentions the piano trio he wrote for the wedding of Barber’s sister Sara and his nomination to the National Institute of Arts and Letters as its youngest member.","PeriodicalId":205840,"journal":{"name":"Samuel Barber","volume":"201 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132357759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Samuel BarberPub Date : 1994-07-28DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195090581.003.0012
Barbara B. Heyman
{"title":"Composer as Conductor","authors":"Barbara B. Heyman","doi":"10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195090581.003.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195090581.003.0012","url":null,"abstract":"With an offer from the London FFRR label to conduct and record his works, including the Medea Suite and the Cello Concerto with Zara Nelsova, Barber studied conducting with Nicolai Malko in Denmark. He bravely took the challenge and was well accepted. Rehearsals proceeded well, and eventually he was invited to Berlin to conduct his Violin Concerto with Charles Turner as soloist. After answering an invitation by Charles Munch to conduct his Second Symphony with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Barber decided he was “tired of rehearsing his own music.” He believed that good composers did not make good conductors, and he decided to devote all his energy toward his primary creative passion: composing music.","PeriodicalId":205840,"journal":{"name":"Samuel Barber","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133276343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Samuel BarberPub Date : 1994-07-28DOI: 10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780195090581.003.0007
Barbara B. Heyman
{"title":"The American Academy","authors":"Barbara B. Heyman","doi":"10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780195090581.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780195090581.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Barber continued to receive numerous recognitions and awards for his work. In 1935, he was given the Prix de Rome, for being the most talented and promising music student at the time. With the award, he was granted two years of study at the American Academy in Rome, with full lodging and a regular stipend. In this new environment, Barber continued to flourish, winning a Pulitzer traveling scholarship, which provided him with an extended stay at the American Academy, where his fSymphony in One Movement was composed. His uncle, Sidney Homer, proudly observed Barber’s triumphs as he read stories in the local newspaper about his music being performed in America. Uncle and nephew continued to communicate regularly through letters, exchanging queries, comments, and criticisms about Barber’s new compositions. Correspondence between Mary Bok and Barber flourished. Barber wrote many songs on emotionally charged poems, which seem biographically pointed. During the summer, he and Menotti lived in a game warden’s cottage in St. Wolfgang, Austria; there he began work on the String Quartet in B minor, the second movement of which later became the famous Adagio for Strings. Both the symphony and the String Quartet were premiered at the American Academy.","PeriodicalId":205840,"journal":{"name":"Samuel Barber","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128313477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Samuel BarberPub Date : 1994-07-28DOI: 10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780195090581.003.0017
Barbara B. Heyman
{"title":"Lincoln Center Commissions","authors":"Barbara B. Heyman","doi":"10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780195090581.003.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780195090581.003.0017","url":null,"abstract":"For the opening week of the new Philharmonic Hall at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 1962, Barber composed a piano concerto in honor of the 100th anniversary of his publisher. The concerto was tailored to the technical prowess and individual style of John Browning, reflecting the Russian influence of his piano teacher Rosina Lhévinne. The second movement was a reworking of an earlier piece, Elegy, written for Manfred Ibel, a young art student and amateur flute player, to whom Barber dedicated his piano concerto. This chapter details Barber’s compositional process and influences for each movement of the concerto and describes the enthusiastic reception of the debut performance. Nearing completion of the concerto, Barber was invited to Russia as the first American composer ever to attend the biennial Congress of Soviet Composers, where he freely discussed his compositional philosophy and methods. For the concerto, Barber won his second Pulitzer Prize and the Annual Award of the Music Critics Circle of New York. His second composition for the opening season of Lincoln Center was Andromache’s Farewell, for soprano and orchestra. Based on a scene from Euripides’s The Trojan Women, the piece displayed deep emotional expression and striking imagery. With a superior opera singer, Martina Arroyo, singing the solo part, the success of Andromache’s Farewell presaged Barber’s opera Antony and Cleopatra.","PeriodicalId":205840,"journal":{"name":"Samuel Barber","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116868345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Samuel BarberPub Date : 1994-07-28DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195090581.003.0003
Barbara B. Heyman
{"title":"A Serious Student","authors":"Barbara B. Heyman","doi":"10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195090581.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195090581.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"When the Curtis Institute of Music opened in 1924, Barber was one of its first students. Due to founder Mary Curtis Bok’s vast cultural background and contacts, the faculty at the school was highly regarded. Early in his studies at the institute, Barber was the first to have a triple major: studying piano with Isabelle Vengerova, voice with Emilio de Gogorza, and composition with Rosario Scalero. He focused intensely on his studies, choosing only a few friends and living a lonely life. It was at Curtis that he met some of the artists who would eventually launch his career, as even his fellow students admired and respected his talent. During this time, Sidney Homer’s unwavering mentoring persisted, and Homer continued to press for excellence and high standards in Barber’s work through their exchange of letters. While Barber worked at Rogers Rock, Lake George, during the summer of 1927, he produced eight songs on texts by James Stephens, many of which are published by G. Schirmer.","PeriodicalId":205840,"journal":{"name":"Samuel Barber","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130031537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Samuel BarberPub Date : 1994-07-28DOI: 10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780195090581.003.0018
Barbara B. Heyman
{"title":"A New Opera House","authors":"Barbara B. Heyman","doi":"10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780195090581.003.0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780195090581.003.0018","url":null,"abstract":"The commission that was one of the greatest tributes to Barber’s career turned out to be his nemesis. Antony and Cleopatra, written for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in New York, was handicapped by the inflated Franco Zeffirelli production, with its problematic paraphernalia, including camels and goats and a malfunctioning pyramid, which eclipsed serious evaluation of the music. This chapter narrates how the opera based on Barber’s favorite Shakespeare play came to life, how he handpicked the major characters ̶—Leontyne Price for Cleopatra and Justino Díaz for Antony ̶—and how these artists devoted themselves to the literature and history of their roles. Although Barber’s work here was no less brilliant, the critics felt that the failure of the opera was due to overproduction, with an infusion of mechanical and technical failures. After the premiere, Barber boarded the SS Constitution for Europe. Over the next decade, he devoted his energies intermittently toward a revision of the opera in collaboration with Menotti. In 1975, four performances of the more intimate version with increased lyric meditation were presented at the Juilliard School. Critical reviews of a production at the Spoleto Festival in Italy after Barber died gave much attention to the musical strengths of the opera, with uniform appreciation of Barber as a master of orchestra and choral writing. Performances followed in Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia.","PeriodicalId":205840,"journal":{"name":"Samuel Barber","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128255744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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