On Music
SIMON, JOHN
On Music The Cosmopolitan American By John Simon America has had its share of fine composers, but when you start looking for great ones, two very different, indeed antithetical,...
...Of greater interest is the vocal music, including opera, constituting half of his oeuvre and, in itself, a guarantee of greatness...
...the orchestra the house itself...
...Handsome and of commanding presence, he struck me as a cold fish...
...Nevertheless, Barber had a greater interest in other types of music...
...Yet here the lyricism is suffused with a ruminative, wistful, indeed melancholy sense of aging...
...They exhibit great feeling for their respective solo instruments, in perfect synthesis with the orchestra...
...There ensues a nasty scherzo, its syncopation profoundly unsettling...
...The first-rate original Met cast can be heard under Dimitri Mitropoulos on a still viable recording (RCA Victor 7899...
...Much more to my liking are Barber's four concertos: the Violin Concerto (1940), Cello Concerto (1945), Piano Concerto (1962), and the Capricorn Concerto (1944) for flute, oboe, trumpet, and strings...
...First written for piano four hands (1951), it can be heard rambunctiously played by John Browning and Leonard Slatkin (RCA Victor 60732...
...A setting of a prose poem by James Agee, touchingly recalling a Southern, smalltown evening from a child's perspective, it is, in Norman Lebrecht's words, "as evocative as a Wyeth painting photographed in monochrome...
...It was Barber's first work performed by a major orchestra (appropriately the Philadelphia in 1933), yet the composer wasn't even there...
...It is a triumphant vindication of Barber the opera composer, but the broken man whose health was failing did not write much thereafter...
...Barber never quite recovered from the failure...
...Best heard on Telare 80441, with the Atlanta Symphony under Yoel Levi...
...By turns pensive, playful and declamatory, it is much sharper, more angular than the usual Barber...
...On Music The Cosmopolitan American By John Simon America has had its share of fine composers, but when you start looking for great ones, two very different, indeed antithetical, candidates are left: Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber...
...Turn to Secrets of the Old, his complete songs (Deutsche Grammophon 435 867, two disks), and you will find settings of Swinburne, Joyce, James Stephens, Housman, Hopkins, Agée, Rilke, Robert Graves, Theodore Roethke, Georg Heym, and modern Polish and medieval Irish poets among others...
...The First Essay encapsulates in its likewise nine minutes the essence of Samuel Barber...
...It had a similarly progressive parturition, however...
...Though never maudlin, the piece has the aura of farewell about it, what with the doomful drumbeat often lurking in the background...
...He worked slowly and his output was relatively small...
...Vanessa, an aging beauty in an isolated villa, awaits the return of a lover, Anatol...
...For the female voice, it provides a fluid, luminous release of pent-up sentiment...
...Although the composer wrote Souvenirs' nostalgic evocations of pre-World War I social dances "with affection, not in irony," the ballet turned it all into an amiable spoof that worked just as handily...
...The disk, a cross section of Barber's orchestral music, contains in addition the two earlier Essays for Orchestra, Medea's Dance of Vengeance and, yes, Has Adagio for Strings...
...To approach him one might begin by listening to a 1989 CD entitled Music of Samuel Barber (EMI 49463), with Leonard Slatkin conducting the St...
...Oddly enough, the Adagio is itself an adaptation: Barber's orchestration of his string quartet's slow movement...
...The chastened and intensified opera, with a younger and more agile cast, was presented in Spoleto in 1976 and recorded in 1983 (New World Records 3222/23/ 24...
...Barber's fortune and misfortune was to have composed the Adagio for Strings, probably the most popular piece of American classical music, used at state funerals and on movie soundtracks...
...the oboe, Menotti...
...It begins in a stately, grave, somewhat Sibelian mode, then, just past the middle, the strings sneak in with a sprightly, skittish theme that builds and eventually harmonizes with the solemn woodwinds from the opener, rises to a triumphal tutti, and subsides into a brief, pensive finale...
...Copland was cheerful, convivial, pleasantly avuncular...
...Finally frenzy, the Medea motif again, heightened by merciless drumrolls...
...The Third Essay is somewhat longer, 12 minutes...
...He] was as canny and cultured a companion as one could desire on his good days, yet with on occasion the cutting manners that only those born rich can get away with...
...It spans almost 50 years and comprises six works, from his earliest significant composition, Overture to the School for Scandal (1931), to the last piece he completed, the Third Essay for Orchestra (1978...
...The bedizened socialite audience diverted the attention of the press and of everyone else...
...it was Barber's graduation piece from the Curtis Institute...
...I skip over some lesser works to get to the operas, not least among them a touching 10-minute chamber composition, A Hand of Bridge (included on Vanguard 4016), with a text by Menotti...
...Sam was the nephew of Louise Homer, the distinguished American contralto, married to the song composer Sidney Homer...
...I prefer the Second Symphony (revised in 1947), despite Barber's disowning it...
...Barber's cosmopolitanism, coming from an American, may have hurt him in European eyes and ears too...
...It also evinces a mysterious quality, starting with a slow crescendo for timpani, joined later by a more ethereal, almost otherworldly contribution from the xylophone...
...People fond of choral music, which I am not, will also enjoy Samuel Barber: Choral and Organ Works, handsomely performed on Guild 7145...
...After all, abstraction is not usually dramatic, any more than drama is likely to be abstract...
...Essay," moreover, implies the contemplative aspect of so much he wrote...
...As Sidney Finkelstein has aptly observed, it is a miniature symphony, having "the unity within variety that Barber achieves through the transformation of one motif into another, and the subtle linking of all the motifs together...
...It later became Medea's Dance of Vengeance...
...For an excellent disk offering both symphonies, consider Marin Alsop and the Royal Scottish Orchestra (Naxos 559024...
...His last recorded work is the slow movement of a projected oboe concerto, available as Canzonetta from José Serebrier and the London Symphony (Phénix 111), a dignifiedly elegiac autoepitaph that harks back to Barber's beginnings...
...In 1953, Barber wrote Prayers of Kierkegaard, a setting of three prayers by the Danish philosopher, for soloists, chorus and orchestra...
...Posthumously rediscovered, this "darkest and tonally most forwardlooking of his major works," in Richard Whitehouse's view, became a well-deserved success and can be heard in an animated performance by Schenck and the New Zealanders (Stradivari 8012, which includes the delightful early Music for a Scene From Shelley...
...Sheridan was a good excuse for a neoclassical vein suggesting 18thcentury wit and elegance, but imbued with a 20th-century sensibility...
...Premiered by Toscanini in 1938, the Adagio's nine melancholy minutes suited the mood of those anxious years...
...But then wrath: The xylophone supplanted by timpani, followed by a tonitruant return of the Medea motif, with the syncopation more insolently clangorous, as trumpets and kettledrums dominate...
...It was written for Eleanor Steber, who overwhelmed me—andmany others—at its Boston premiere in 1948...
...Barber responded by composing the First Essay for Orchestra and orchestrating the Adagio...
...Barber, from a rich, WASP Pennsylvania family, was cold, taciturn, unapproachable...
...Between Copland and Barber, the majority would unhesitantly prefer Copland...
...Next on the disk is the Adagio, arranged by Barber for Arturo Toscanini, who had been impressed by the young man's First Symphony, the first American work performed at the Salzburg Festival (1938...
...Most impressive is his last piece of this type, The Lovers (1971), for baritone, mixed chorus and orchestra, based on nine early love poems by Pablo Neruda (like Prayers, on Koch International 7125...
...the flute, Barber...
...Commissioned for the opening of the Met's new house at Lincoln Center in 1966, it had a libretto from Shakespeare's words by Franco Zeffirelli, who also designed and directed...
...his friends, Fizdale and Gold, did so fortwo pianos...
...clearly, this is Medea betrayed, spoiling for vengeance...
...In 1946, Barber did a dance score for Martha Graham based—unlike Copland's distinctly American Appalachian Spring, done for her in 1944—on the universally riveting Medea myth...
...You may find the early String Quartet and the late wind quintet Summer Music more satisfying than I do...
...Barber's second and final full opera, Antony and Cleopatra, has a sad history...
...The Third Essay explores, in Philip Kennicott's words, "characteristically Barberesque heights of lyricism and tuneful appeal...
...Notwithstanding, some ephemeral and artificial incursions into the Stravinskian and 12-tone realms, styles he used like momentary dominoes, he remains eclectic and epigonous even in the traditional sphere, often lacking in personality" It is also symptomatic that New York Philharmonic: An American Celebration (NYP 9902/3), Sedgwick Clark's twovolume, 10-CD compilation of New York Philharmonic selections, contains eight Copland items and only two by Barber...
...Barber then transcribed it for solo piano...
...Barber called it "absolutely abstract music, essentially dramatic in character," a description deserving scrutiny...
...Though not one of Barber's best efforts, it is religious music that manages to sound commendably unchurchy...
...This too is on the abovementioned Sony disk, as is Andromache s Farewell (1962), performed by Martina Arroyo and the New York Philharmonic under Thomas Schippers...
...Characteristically for a composer who said "I have always had a sense of the written word," Barber went back to the Spanish text and brought the translations closer to the originals...
...Rendering the banal words and troubled thoughts of two card-playing couples, it creates melody, mood and memorable drama in miniature...
...The music is tender at first, as Medea longs for her children (carried by placid, pastoral woodwinds), but builds with several repetitions from coolly melodious to awe-inspiring...
...First called The Serpent Heart, then musically and choreographically overhauled as Cave of the Heart (1947), it was further adapted by Barber into a seven-movement suite for enlarged orchestra called Medea— well-performed, incidentally, by Andrew Schenck and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (Koch International 7010...
...I translate from Claude Rostand's musical dictionary, italicizing its condescension: "Barber (1910-81) made himself known early with well-behavedly neoromantic works in Brahms wake...
...A work of dolorous majesty, it is best with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (Sony Masterworks 46727) or Thomas Allen (Virgin 45033...
...he also had an intensely American, in fact multi-American, style: Danz?n Cubano, El Salon Mexico, Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, Rodeo, The Tender Land, and so on...
...Barber's only other ballet, Souvenirs, is the diametrical opposite of Medea's Dance of Vengeance...
...PROBABLY the most spectacular piece on the CD is the last one...
...I just go on doing, as they say, my thing...
...The beautiful theme presently bursts upon us with arrogant majesty, suggesting Medea's boundless pride...
...he was traveling in Europe with the prize money received for that piece...
...Ned Rorem, who knew Barber well, wrote: "Sam had a debonair wit and a way with mimicry...
...The Second Essay, written four years later and running slightly over 10 minutes, was introduced by Bruno Walter and the New York Philharmonic...
...About the other three concertos I'll only add that they are so tuneful, your mind feels compelled to hum along inwardly...
...The rather forced Isak Dinesenish plot notwithstanding, the opera is full of splendid numbers, and enjoys periodic revivals...
...Barber, the aristocratic insider, wrote European music...
...THERE IS NOT all that much instrumental music by Barber, though the Piano Sonata, Cello Sonata and Excursions are noteworthy works...
...In the brief but fatalistic coda, there are two portentous, climactic whiplashes and a precipitous conclusion...
...Barber, my subject here, I encountered at a party, and I recall merely his standoffishness and the impossibility of coaxing conversation out of him...
...Barber's titling three of his finest pieces "essays" denotes a love of literature that shows up in his choices for musical treatment, and affirms his predilection for short forms...
...Having a mellifluous baritone himself, he included voice among his studies at Curtis and briefly considered a career as a singer...
...These 110 items range from charming to superb...
...Toscanini, about to head up the new NBC Symphony, asked the American to do something for him...
...The only thing he had in common with Copland was homosexuality...
...Louis Symphony...
...An entire CD has recently been devoted to different versions of the piece—some approved by Barber, others posthumously foisted on him...
...Here some of Barber's finest music is condignly performed by Cheryl Studer and Thomas Hampson, accompanied by the Barber specialist John Browning and the Emerson Quartet...
...Indeed it did—especially if "my thing" was some of the most unfashionably romantic, songful yet classically restrained music ever written...
...The last, named for the house at Mt...
...Of his two symphonies, the First (1937), a one-movement work with markedly contrasting sections, is less romantic, less overpoweringly tuneful than much of his output: Classical in spirit, it reflects a dignified sobriety...
...Copland, the son of immigrants, became the most American of composers...
...Despite some modest experimentation, Barber was a traditionalist without an easily identifiable trademark style...
...This is the Medea theme that, from the outset, has a troubling undercurrent from the xylophone, as if a faucet were dripping ice water...
...Fully orchestrated in 1955, it became a huge success in an apt choregraphy by Todd Bolender...
...Copland, who lived longer, produced more and experimented more...
...After 20 years, it is his son, another Anatol, who shows up, and on the very first evening seduces and impregnates her niece, Erika...
...The boy must have imbibed music, especially vocal music, from them...
...and most often performed...
...He must have meant free from the crowd-pleasing topographical references in such works as Appalachian Spring, An American in Paris or Four Places in New England...
...Translated by W. S.Merwin and Christopher Logue, the poems inspired some of Barber's most passionate music...
...In fact, one of the reasons he tried to destroy his Second Symphony (1943)—commissioned from the then corporal by the Army Air Force —was its jingoistic subtext...
...Even lovelier is Knoxville: Summer of 1915, for soprano and orchestra (1947...
...His musical Europeanness was paradoxical, since he studied exclusively at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute, whereas Copland studied in Pans with the celebrated Nadia Boulanger...
...Perhaps that has something to do with personality...
...He overloaded the as yet untried stage machinery with mammoth sets and ponderous costumes, the turntable broke down, and there were endless intermissions...
...Still not satisfied, the perfectionist composer shortened it to a tone poem for very large orchestra, Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance (1956...
...The composer, whom Michael Oliver rightly called "a melodist before everything," touchingly declared himself: "It is said that I have no style at all, but that doesn't matter...
...Next, a respite, as the sorceress coldly plots...
...A modern equivalent of a classical scena, it is a translation from Euripides' The Trojan Women: Hector's widow bids good-bye to her little boy whom the Greeks are about to kill—as shattering as anything composed by an American...
...Then Menotti shortened the libretto and Barber revised the music...
...Of the full-length operas, Vanessa (1958) is a romantic tale of the frozen north, again with a Menotti libretto...
...I once heard Copland lecture at Harvard, and he came across as a warm human being...
...Each of them, by my reckoning, is a masterpiece...
...There exists a recording of him as soloist in his first important vocal work, Dover Beach (1931), a setting of Matthew Arnold's great despairing poem, for baritone and string quartet...
...Kisco that Barber shared for 30 years with his companion and frequent collaborator Gian Carlo Menotti, was composed when the poet Robert Horan was staying with them...
...The trumpet is said to represent him...
...The overture was not composed for any production of Sheridan's play...
...The work shows influences of both the Bach of the Brandenburg Concertos and the jazz-oriented Stravinsky in a delightful blending...
...Following various peripeteias, Anatol goes off with Vanessa, while Erika, who aborts her child, becomes a waiting recluse in her turn...
...It should be clear by now how literate and astute Barber was in his text selections...
...The malign scherzo once more, this time reaching hysteria: pandemonium punctured by cymbal clashes hurtling into deadly silence...
...I believe this takes a certain courage...
...Showered with prizes and honors, he is one of the least American musicians, but the best known...
Vol. 83 • November 2000 • No. 5
