Composers › Samuel Barber › Programme note
Adagio for strings
Gerald Larner wrote 2 versions of differing length — choose one below.
Properly speaking, the Adagio for strings is Samuel Barber’s string-orchestra arrangement of the slow movement of his String Quartet Op.11. First performed by the ProArte Quartet in Rome in 1936, the String Quartet itself did not make much of an impression. The Adagio for strings, on the other hand, was destined for a wider audience from the moment that Toscanini first performed it with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in New York in November 1938.
The immediate and lasting popularity of the Adagio for Strings is attributable, above all, to its mystic church-like atmosphere. Based on one theme - the melody which grows so naturally out of the quietly sustained B flat in the first bar - it is an essentially vocal, chant-like inspiration that rises like a prayer to an impassioned climax and falls back into contemplation at the end.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Adagio/strings/alt”
Barber: adagio for strings
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Adagio for strings
Properly speaking, the Adagio for strings is Samuel Barber’s string-orchestra arrangement of the slow movement of his String Quartet Op.11. First performed by the ProArte Quartet in Rome in 1936, the String Quartet itself did not make much of an impression. The Adagio for strings, on the other hand, was destined for a wider audience from the moment that Toscanini first performed it with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in New York in November 1938.
The immediate and lasting popularity of the Adagio for Strings is attributable, above all, to its simplicity. Based on one theme - the melody which grows so naturally out of the quietly sustained B flat in the first bar - it is an essentially vocal, chant-like inspiration. It circles round the central note in even crotchets and short melodic steps, broadening the rhythms and widening the intervals as it develops. The structural shape is, basically, an arch form but with an effectively off-centre apex. The progress towards the climax - the intensification of the harmonies and of contrapuntal elaboration, the general heightening of pitch and of the dynamic level - takes longer than the subsequent release of the tension and the return to the contemplative atmosphere of the beginning of the piece.
Gerald Larner©
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Adagio/strings”