Samuel Barber born 9 March 1910 (d. 1981)Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of classical music ranging from orchestral, to opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings became his most famous composition and a perennial favourite.
Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania. At a very early age, Barber became profoundly interested in music, and it was apparent that he had great musical talent and ability. He wrote his first musical composition at the early age of 7 and attempted to write his first opera at the age of 10. He was an organist at the age of 12. When he was 14, he entered the Curtis Institute, a conservatory where he studied piano, composition, and voice.
Barber was born into a comfortable, educated, social, and distinguished Irish-American family. His father was a doctor, and his mother was a pianist. His aunt was a leading contralto at the Metropolitan Opera and his uncle, Sidney Homer, was a composer of American art songs. Louise Homer is noted to have influenced Barber's interest in voice. Through his aunt, Barber had access to many great singers and songs. This background is further reflected in that Barber decided to study voice at the Curtis Conservatory.
Barber began composing seriously in his late teenage years. Around the same time, he met fellow Curtis schoolmate Gian Carlo Menotti, and would form a lifelong personal and professional relationship. At the Curtis Institute, Barber was a triple prodigy of composition, voice, and piano. At the age of 18, Barber won a prize from Columbia University for his Violin Sonata (now lost or destroyed by the composer).From his early to late twenties, Barber wrote a flurry of successful compositions, launching him into the spotlight of the classical music community. At the young age of 28, Barber's Adagio for Strings was performed by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Arturo Toscanini in 1938, along with his first essay for orchestra. The Adagio had been arranged from the slow movement of Barber's string quartet op.11. Toscanini had only very rarely performed music by American composers before. At the end of the first rehearsal of the piece, Toscanini remarked: 'Semplice e bella' (simple and beautiful).
Barber served in the Army Air Corps in World War II, where he was commissioned to write his Second Symphony, a work he later suppressed. Composed in 1943, the symphony was originally titled Symphony Dedicated to the Air Forces and was premiered in early 1944 by Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He revised the symphony in 1947, then decided to destroy the score in 1964. It was later reconstructed from the instrumental parts.
Barber would go on to win a prize in 1963 for his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.
Barber spent many years in isolation (eventually diagnosed with clinical depression) after the harsh rejection of his third opera Antony and Cleopatra (which he believed contained some of his best music. The opera was written for and premiered at the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House on 16 September 1966. The elaborate production designed by Franco Zeffirelli was marred by numerous technical disasters; it also overwhelmed and obscured Barber's music, which most critics derided as uncharacteristically weak and unoriginal. In recent years, a revised version of Antony and Cleopatra, for which Menotti provided collaborative assistance, has enjoyed some success.After this setback, Barber continued to write music until he was almost 70 years old. Barber’s music in his later years would be lauded as reflective, contemplative, but without the morbidity or unhappiness of other composers who knew they had a limited time to live. The Third Essay for Orchestra (1978) was his last major work and critics received it as having all the vigour and imagination of his earlier works.
Barber died of cancer in 1981 in New York City at the age of 71.
Barber was president of the International Music Council of UNESCO, where he did much to bring into focus and ameliorate the conditions of international music. He was also one of the first American composers to visit Russia (which was then a constituent republic of the Soviet Union). Barber was also influential in the successful campaign of composers against ASCAP, helping composers increase the share of royalties they receive from their compositions. Barber was the recipient of numerous awards and prizes including the Rome Prize (the American version of the Prix de Rome), two Pulitzers, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.