String Quartet Op.11 (1936-43)

Samuel Barber’s String Quartet changed his life. Although he had immense difficulty with the work – which achieved its final form as long as seven years after its first performance by the Pro Arte Quartet in Rome in 1936 –    he knew from the start that the slow movement was, as he put it, “a knockout.” That is why in 1938 he was bold enough to arrange the Molto adagio for string orchestra and send the score to Arturo Toscanin, who was then    conducting an important series of broadcast concerts in New York. For the same reason he was offended when the score was sent back to him without comment. As it turned out, however, Toscanini had returned it to the composer because he had memorised it and was preparing to perform it. The broadcast with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in November 1938 transformed Barber’s reputation from that of a promising but obscure young composer to that of the master of the Adagio for Strings – a work which, phenomenally, has become ever more popular ever since.

The opening Molto allegro e appassinato    of the String Quartet Op.11 offers no more than a hint of what is to come in the central Molto adagio. It is a comparatively tough movement based for the most part on the climbing theme emphatically presented by all four instruments in octaves at the very beginning. The melodic shape and rhythmic pattern of the first four notes, which are particularly important, remain in prominence until the opening bars are recalled in their emphatic octaves. A brief but expressive transitional passage, based on a much slowed-down version of the four-note phrase, leads to a new idea, a lyrical melody which, introduced by first violin, has something of the chant-like quality that will be such a prominent feature of the Molto Adagio. It is no much developed, however, and on the insistence of four-note phrase gives way to a third theme, of even crotchets in wide inervals on first violin. The chant-like melody is heard again only after another recall of the opening bars inititiates a recapitulation, the third theme having the all but last word on the cello in the closing bars.

The other-worldly quality of the Molto adagio derives largely from the fact that it is in neither a major key nor a minor key but is set an old church mode, which has its own distinctive harmonic identity. Based on just one melody, which slowly winds its way through the piece, it resembles nothing so much as a Renaissance motet, sensitively scored for four contrapuntal voices and beautifully shaped with an intensely emotional climax not long before the end. It could be argued that when, more than 30 years later, the composer rearranged the Adagio as a choral setting of the Agnus Dei, the work achieved its true destiny.

The problem with a “knockout” slow movement is how to follow it. After several failed attempts, Barber finally decided he could do nothing better than repeat much of the first movement, omitting the second theme and adding a Presto coda. The only way to accommodate an inspiration like that Adagio is to acknowledge its superiority and simply frame it.