Post by erik on Nov 11, 2023 19:39:02 GMT -5
This Veterans Day 2023 edition of the Classical Works Spotlight looks at a work by Samuel Barber that the composer didn't think much about during the final decade and a half of his life, but which is now a part of the American music landscape.
Samuel Barber: SYMPHONY NO. 2, OP. 19
Though he is often thought of as a one-hit wonder of sorts in the American classical music pantheon, via his Adagio For Strings, America’s unofficial music of mourning, Samuel Barber has had a considerable impact on his music. It may be far removed from the patriotism of Aaron Copland and even John Williams, but it has had a considerable impact all the same. Barber’s style was more of a modern approach to Romanticism, a trait that was certainly seen in his single-movement Symphony No. 1 in 1936. Eight years later, in 1944, at a time when America and her allies were gaining the upper hand in Europe in World War II, Barber came up with his three-movement Symphony No. 2. The work came about as the result of a commission from the U.S. Air Force for the composer to write “a symphonic work about flying”. At the request of Air Force general Barton K. Yount. Barber included an electronic tone-generator built by Bell Laboratories, a device intended to represent the sound of a radio beam used to guide night flyers. Although the work was premiered successfully in Boston by Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1944, it was so infrequently performed thereafter that the composer, who initially thought of it as one of his best only to feel by 1964 that it was not, ordered the score, score, parts, and all, destroyed. Although neither of those things ever took place, the original score (with the electronic tone device in the work’s second movement being replaced by an E-Flat clarinet), wasn’t seen again until 1984. Since then, the Second Symphony has found its way into the American music pantheon, even if, as some originally said back in the day, it sometimes sounded like pro-war propaganda masquerading as music.
Detroit Symphony Orchestra/NEEME JARVI (Chandos)
Included:
SYMPHONY NO. 1, OP. 9
OVERTURE TO “THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL”
ADAGIO FOR STRINGS
Samuel Barber: SYMPHONY NO. 2, OP. 19
Though he is often thought of as a one-hit wonder of sorts in the American classical music pantheon, via his Adagio For Strings, America’s unofficial music of mourning, Samuel Barber has had a considerable impact on his music. It may be far removed from the patriotism of Aaron Copland and even John Williams, but it has had a considerable impact all the same. Barber’s style was more of a modern approach to Romanticism, a trait that was certainly seen in his single-movement Symphony No. 1 in 1936. Eight years later, in 1944, at a time when America and her allies were gaining the upper hand in Europe in World War II, Barber came up with his three-movement Symphony No. 2. The work came about as the result of a commission from the U.S. Air Force for the composer to write “a symphonic work about flying”. At the request of Air Force general Barton K. Yount. Barber included an electronic tone-generator built by Bell Laboratories, a device intended to represent the sound of a radio beam used to guide night flyers. Although the work was premiered successfully in Boston by Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1944, it was so infrequently performed thereafter that the composer, who initially thought of it as one of his best only to feel by 1964 that it was not, ordered the score, score, parts, and all, destroyed. Although neither of those things ever took place, the original score (with the electronic tone device in the work’s second movement being replaced by an E-Flat clarinet), wasn’t seen again until 1984. Since then, the Second Symphony has found its way into the American music pantheon, even if, as some originally said back in the day, it sometimes sounded like pro-war propaganda masquerading as music.
Detroit Symphony Orchestra/NEEME JARVI (Chandos)
Included:
SYMPHONY NO. 1, OP. 9
OVERTURE TO “THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL”
ADAGIO FOR STRINGS