Samuel Osmond Barber II (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981) was an American composer, pianist, conductor, baritone, and music educator. He was one of the most well-known composers of the mid-20th century. His music was mostly influenced by nine years of composition lessons with Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute and more than 25 years of study with his uncle, Sidney Homer. Barber’s music often avoided the experimental styles of musical modernism and instead used traditional 19th-century musical techniques, focusing on harmony, structure, and emotional expression. However, after 1940, he included some modernist elements in his work, such as more dissonance and chromaticism in the Cello Concerto (1945) and Medea's Dance of Vengeance (1955), and tonal ambiguity and limited use of serialism in the Piano Sonata (1949), Prayers of Kierkegaard (1954), and Nocturne (1959).
Barber was skilled in both instrumental and vocal music. His works became popular worldwide and were quickly added to the standard classical music repertoire. His Adagio for Strings (1936) is a permanent part of the orchestral concert repertoire, as is its choral version, Agnus Dei (1967). He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music twice: once for his opera Vanessa (1956–1957) and once for the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1962). His work Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (1947), which sets a prose text by James Agee to music for soprano and orchestra, is also widely performed. At the time of his death, nearly all of his compositions had been recorded. Many of his works were commissioned or first performed by notable groups and artists, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, and performers such as Vladimir Horowitz, Eleanor Steber, Raya Garbousova, John Browning, Leontyne Price, Pierre Bernac, Francis Poulenc, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
While Barber composed many instrumental pieces, two-thirds of his works were art songs for voice and piano, choral music, and songs for voice and orchestra. Some of his most frequently performed songs include the solo and choral versions of Sure on This Shining Night (solo version from 1938 and choral version from 1961), with text by James Agee, and the song cycle Hermit Songs (1953), which uses anonymous texts from Irish monks between the 8th and 13th centuries. This focus on vocal music was influenced by his brief career as a professional baritone in his 20s, which sparked a lifelong interest in vocal music. In 1935, Barber recorded his own version of Arnold’s Dover Beach for NBC, singing the vocal part with a string quartet. He also performed on NBC Radio weekly from 1935 to 1936, singing German lieder and art songs. During the 1950s, he occasionally conducted performances and recordings of his works with symphony orchestras. He taught composition at the Curtis Institute from 1939 to 1942.
Barber was in a long-term relationship with the composer Gian Carlo Menotti for over 40 years. They lived at Capricorn, a house near New York City, where they often hosted gatherings with academics and music professionals. Menotti was the librettist for two of Barber’s three operas. After their relationship ended in 1970, they remained close friends until Barber’s death from cancer in 1981.
Biography
Samuel Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, to Marguerite McLeod (née Beatty) and Samuel Le Roy Barber. He was born into a family that was comfortable, educated, and respected in society. His father was a doctor; his mother was a pianist with English-Scottish-Irish heritage whose family had lived in the United States since the American Revolutionary War. His maternal aunt, Louise Homer, was a famous singer at the Metropolitan Opera; his uncle, Sidney Homer, was a composer of American art songs. Louise Homer is known to have influenced Barber’s interest in singing. Through her, Barber met many famous singers and songs. Sidney Homer taught Barber for more than 25 years and greatly influenced his musical style.
A child prodigy, Barber showed a strong interest in music at a young age. He began studying the piano at six and composed his first piece, Sadness, a 23-measure solo piano work in C minor, at seven. Although his family wanted him to become a typical, outgoing, athletic boy, they encouraged him to play football. However, Barber was not like other boys. At nine, he wrote a letter to his mother.
At 10, Barber wrote his first operetta, The Rose Tree, with a libretto by the family’s cook. At 12, he became an organist at a local church.
As a young boy, Barber took private piano lessons from William Hatton Green. A classmate, Constant Vauclain, said Green was one of Barber’s greatest early influences. At 14, Barber joined the youth artist program at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he spent ten years studying composition, voice, and piano. During his time at Curtis, he also graduated from West Chester High School (later renamed West Chester Henderson High School) and composed the school’s song, Alma Mater, which is still used today. After graduating from high school in 1928, he entered Curtis’s adult program and graduated in 1934. At Curtis, he studied piano with George Frederick Boyle and Isabelle Vengerova, composition with Rosario Scalero, conducting with Fritz Reiner, and voice with Emilio de Gogorza. In 1928, he met Gian Carlo Menotti, a fellow student at Curtis, who became his life partner and professional collaborator. During his final year at Curtis, he became a favorite of the conservatory’s founder, Mary Louise Curtis Bok, who introduced him to his lifelong publishers, the Schirmer family.
From his early adulthood, Barber created many successful compositions, gaining recognition in the classical music world. His early works, according to Walter Simmons, reflect his "childhood" period of composition, up to 1942. Features of this time include the use of tonal harmony, unresolved dissonance, moderate chromaticism, and lyrical melodies. At 18, he won the Joseph H. Bearns Prize from Columbia University for his violin sonata (now lost or destroyed by the composer). He won the prize again for his first large-scale orchestral work, an overture to The School for Scandal, composed in 1931 when he was 21. It premiered successfully in 1933 by the Philadelphia Orchestra under conductor Alexander Smallens.
While studying at Curtis, Barber also traveled in Europe during summers and sometimes for longer periods. His first European trip in 1928 included visits to Paris, Brittany, and Italy with cellist and composer David Freed. Later that year, he traveled to Czechoslovakia, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, where he first visited Vienna, a city that would later influence his music. During this trip, he met composer George Antheil.
In 1929, Barber returned to Italy with Menotti as his travel companion. He returned to Paris in 1930 and studied composition with Rosario Scalero in Montestrutto, Turin, while staying with Menotti’s family in Cadegliano during summers in 1931 and 1933. After winning the Bearns Prize again in 1933, he stayed in Europe longer to study in Vienna, focusing on developing his skills as a vocalist and pursuing a career as a baritone. He also studied conducting independently and made his professional conducting debut in Vienna on January 4, 1934. He returned to Philadelphia in March 1934 to finish his studies at Curtis.
After graduating from Curtis in 1934, Barber studied conducting and singing with John Braun in Vienna during summers in 1935 and 1936, supported by a Pulitzer traveling scholarship. He later won the Rome Prize, which allowed him to study at the American Academy in Rome from 1935 to 1937. He also received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1946 and studied conducting privately with George Szell.
In his early career, Barber briefly performed as a professional baritone, appearing on the NBC Music Guild concert series and earning a weekly radio contract in 1935. Musicologist Barbara Heyman noted that Barber’s recording of his own version of Arnold’s Dover Beach was praised for its "singular charm and beauty" and was sung by a naturally beautiful voice. His experience as a singer and deep understanding of vocal music influenced the many songs that make up about two-thirds of his work.
Barber’s first orchestral work to gain international attention was his Symphony in One Movement, composed while studying in Rome. It premiered in Rome in 1936 by the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under Bernardino Molinari and was later performed by orchestras in New York City and Cleveland. It was the first symphonic work by an American to be performed at the Salzburg Festival in 1937.
In 1938, when Barber was 28, his Adagio for Strings was performed by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini, along with his first Essay for Orchestra. The Adagio was adapted from the slow movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11. Toscanini rarely performed music by American composers before, except for Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2 in 1933. After the first rehearsal of the Adagio, Toscanini said, "Semplice e bella" (simple and beautiful). From 1939 to 1942, Barber taught composition at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.
During this time, a major change occurred in Barber’s music. In 1940, he wrote a choral piece based on Stephen Spender’s war poem, A Stopwatch and an Ordnance Map. From this point, World War II influenced his second phase of composing, which was greatly shaped by composers such as Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Bartók.
Achievements and awards
When Samuel Barber died in 1981, Donal Henahan, a music critic who won a Pulitzer Prize, wrote in The New York Times that "probably no other American composer has ever enjoyed such early, such persistent and such long-lasting praise."
Barber received many awards, including the Rome Prize, two Pulitzer Prizes, the Henry Hadley Medal in 1958, and the Gold Medal for Music at the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1976. He was chosen to join the American Academy of Arts and Letters and, in 1961, became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 1980, Barber was given the Edward MacDowell Medal by the MacDowell Colony for his work in the arts. In 1998, the American Classical Music Hall of Fame honored him after his death.
Besides composing, Barber worked with groups that helped musicians and promoted music. He led the International Music Council of UNESCO. He tried to improve difficult situations for musicians and music organizations worldwide. He was one of the first American composers to visit Russia (then part of the Soviet Union). Barber also helped composers successfully push for changes to ASCAP, a group that helps musicians get money for their work, to ensure composers received more payment.
Music
Samuel Barber became well-known for his musical compositions, which were performed by famous conductors such as Artur Rodziński, Eugene Ormandy, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Bruno Walter, Charles Münch, George Szell, Leopold Stokowski, and Thomas Schippers. His successful works include the Overture to The School for Scandal (1931), Music for a Scene from Shelley (1933), Adagio for Strings (1936), First Symphony in One Movement (1936), First Essay for Orchestra (1937), and Violin Concerto (1939).
Among his compositions are four concertos: one for violin (1939), one for cello (1945), one for piano (1962), and a neoclassical Capricorn Concerto for flute, oboe, trumpet, and string orchestra (1944). He also wrote a Toccata Festiva for organ and orchestra (1960).
Barber’s final composition was the Canzonetta for oboe and string orchestra (1977–78), Op. 48, which was originally meant to be the second movement of an oboe concerto.
For the piano, Barber’s most important and frequently performed works include Excursions, Op. 20, which reflects four styles of classic American music, such as boogie-woogie and blues, and the Piano Sonata in E-flat minor, Op. 26. Another respected piece is the Nocturne (Homage to John Field), Op. 33. In 1977, the Van Cliburn Foundation asked Barber to write a Ballade, Op. 46, for the fifth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
Gian Carlo Menotti wrote the libretto for Barber’s opera Vanessa. Menotti also contributed the libretto for Barber’s chamber opera A Hand of Bridge. In 1956, Barber performed and sang the score of Vanessa for Rudolf Bing, the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, who accepted the work. The opera premiered in January 1958 and won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize, becoming the first American grand opera to gain widespread acclaim.
Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra was commissioned for the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center and premiered on September 16, 1966, at the opening of the Opera House. The production, designed by Franco Zeffirelli, faced many technical problems and overshadowed Barber’s music, which critics criticized as weak and unoriginal. This rejection deeply affected Barber. A revised version of Antony and Cleopatra, with assistance from Menotti, has received some recent success.
In 1939, Philadelphia industrialist Samuel Simeon Fels asked Barber to compose a violin concerto for Fels’s ward, Iso Briselli, who graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in 1934 (as Barber did). Books about Barber by Nathan Broder (1954) and Barbara B. Heyman (1992) describe the creation of the concerto during its commission and the year before its first performance. Heyman interviewed Briselli and others for her book. In late 2010, previously unpublished letters from Fels, Barber, and Albert Meiff (Briselli’s violin coach at the time) became available to the public from the Samuel Simeon Fels Papers archived at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.