Fourth Concert of the 68th Season

Samuel Barber was of the same generation that produced Aaron Copland, Virgil Thompson, Elliot Carter, Roger Sessions, and Walter Piston, but he was unlike any of them. He has been described as America's last Romantic. In that respect, he resembles Rodrigo as Spain's last Romantic. Barber never subscribed to any of the contemporary musical trends (or fads, if you will). He was his own man, and suffered from critics of both sides of the critical spectrum. At a time when American composers were expected either to embrace the experiments of the New Viennese School, that is, the dodecaphonic and serial techniques of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, ro to throw themselves into the rush to prove themselves American through the use of folk music of various kinds (Copland, Thompson), Barber took neither route. He wrote as he pleased, without regard to fashion.

He was inspired by literature, mostly European, often Classical. This is obvious in his vocal music, but it is also apparent in his orchestral works (Medea, Overture to The School for Scandal, Essays for Orchestra, Music for a Scene from Shelley).

If the name, Barber, is not familiar to you, that is a pity, because he was one of America's most distinguished composers. What's more you have all heard and admired at least some of his music. In 1936, as the result of two awards, Barber went to Rome, where he composed at the American Academy. There were two important products of that visit, Music for a Scene from Shelley, and the Quartet, Op. 11. Barber re-orchestrated part of the second movement into what is now known as the Adagio for Strings. It has served as elegiac background music to many films, most notably Platoon, but also in an impromptu performance over the BBC immediately following the attack on the World Trade Center. It is an extremely moving work, and is known world-wide.

Barber was born to a well-to-do family in West Chester, Pennsylvania, not far from Philadelphia. In the words of biographer Paul Witke, "He was spared the virtues of poverty and never enjoyed the values of starving in a garret." he began piano lessons when he was six, and wrote his first opera when he was seven. He was strongly influenced by his aunt, who was an opera singer with the Metropolitan Opera, and his uncle, who was a writer of art songs. Although Barber is well-known for his orchestral pieces, he was drawn mostly to vocal music. He had a strong baritone voice which stood him in good stead as he promoted his opera Vanessa to the Director of the Metropolitan Opera, and on the basis of his music and his performance of it, was granted a contract for production of that opera.

Samuel Barber was, in many ways, a solitary man. He refused to talk about his music, even to his closest friends. But on the other hand, he was an urbane, cultivated, internationally minded, witty conversationalist, very much like Cole Porter. And, like Porter, he wanted his music to be accessible to the masses. Although nobody would describe Barber's music as "popular" in the sense that Cole Porter's was popular, his music was much more accessible than other music of the period.

Writer Wilfred Mellers, a specialist in American music, believed that Barber was strongly influenced by a desire to relive his childhood. So was James Agee, whose work inspired Knoxville: "Summer of 1915." This short work was a prologue to Agee's autobiographical book, A Death in the Family. Agee wrote, "We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child." The work was commissioned by the world-class opera singer, Eleanor Steber. Barber conceived the piece as if sung by a child. We can imagine Ms. Steber representing the childhood memory of a man, longing for a time of lost innocence. The poetry speaks of calm beauty, but the dissonance expressed by the orchestra suggests the contrast between the tranquil security of a child in a loving family with the unknown terrors of the "ignorant armies" (this was 1915, don't forget!). After that outburst, the music returns to a lullaby as the child is put safely to bed.

Virgil Thomson was born in Kansas and grew up in a Baptist tradition. He played organ in a number of local churches, and this early acquaintance with church music accounts for his frequent references to liturgical music throughout his life. He was not particularly religious, but like the ritual of the Church.

At Harvard, he fell under the influence of teachers who were French-trained, and eventually he visited France, where he studied with Nadia Boulanger (like virtually all other American composers of the period). He met the group known as Les Six, Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, and, most important of all, Gertrude Stein.

Satie and Les Six were busy ridiculing European seriousness, and Thomson was willing to join in. While their music took a sophisticated parodic approach, mocking the Wagnerian seriousness of much European music, Thomson and Stein used a naïve, American simplicity, which was also in contrast to the heaviness of the music of the European establishment of the time. They had the same target, butused different weapons.

While Thomson's collaboration with Gertrude Stein yielded the most important of his compositions (the operas Four Saints in Three Acts, and The Mother of Us All), his most popular works were his film scores, mostly for documentaries: Louisiana Story, The River, and The Plow that Broke the Plains.

The Plow that Broke the Plains was the background to a documentary film commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and had voice-over narration by the director, Pare Lorentz. It is divided into six sections.

I. The Prelude suggests the vast stretches of the Great Plains, 400,000,000 acres of wind-swept grass lands spreading from Texas to Canada.

II. Pastorale suggests these wind-swept plains, devoid of rivers, and scarce of rain.

III. Cattle pour into this thousand-mile pasture, and roam from the Rio Grande in winter, to the mountain plateau in summer. Then come the railroads, bringing settlers and business. Here, Thomson quotes old cowboy songs, Old Paint, The Streets of Laredo, and we hear the banjo and guitar, portable instruments of the cowboys.

IV. Blues suggests the arrival or people from the urban East, seeking a new life. The farmers begin to displace the cattlemen. But with no rivers, and little rain, the farmers plow at their own peril. Many fail. Hot sun, no rain, blowing dust. These were the war years. Farmers were exhorted to plant wheat to win the war. Support our troops, and the British, and the Belgians, and the French!

V. Drought comes. Once again the rains fail, and now there is no grass to hold moisture. Millions of acres of plowed soil lie open to the sun.

VI. Devastation. Their homes and cattle choked with dust, with little to eat, and less hope, they strike out for the West, to California, seeking a day's work along the way, for some beans to feed their children. 50,000 a month!

Aaron Copland was strongly influenced by the music of Virgil Thomson, writing to him that his score for The River was "...a  lesson in how to treat Americana."