Samuel Barber by Carl Van Vechten
As a part-time organist at Westminster Church in West Chester, Barber earned $100 per month at the age of only twelve. Two years later he was one of the first pupils to enrol at the new Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. His studies there included composition, conducting, piano and singing.
Barber had a fine baritone voice and, while at the Curtis Institute, he considered becoming a professional singer. But he was destined for a career in composition. By the time he graduated, Barber had composed several outstanding works, including the Serenade for String Quartet and the song, Dover Beach.
Barber twice won the Bearns Prize from Colombia University, firstly for his Violin Sonata (1928) and then for The School for Scandal (1933), an orchestral overture based on a comedy by Richard Sheridan. The prize money took Barber to Rome where he studied and composed his (first) Symphony in One Movement.
In 1936 Barber wrote what was to become his most popular piece. The conductor Arturo Toscanini requested that the second movement from the String Quartet, a molto adagio, be arranged for string orchestra. The resulting Adagio for Strings was first performed by Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1938 and was instantly and enduringly popular.
From 1939 Barber spent three years teaching composition and orchestration at the Curtis Institute before joining the Army Air Corps in 1942 for the duration of the Second World War. The Air Corps commissioned Barber’s Second Symphony (or Symphony Dedicated to the Air Forces) in 1943 and it was first performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1944.
After the war Barber continued composing, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Music on two occasions, for his first full opera, Vanessa (1958), and for his Piano Concerto (1962). The libretti for Vanessa and his second opera, A Hand of Bridge, were written by his partner, and former fellow student at the Curtis Institute, Gian-Carlo Menotti.
A third opera in 1966, Antony and Cleopatra, based on the Shakespeare play, was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera Association for the opening of its new opera house at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The performance was a disaster, mainly due to the excessively flamboyant production and libretto from its director, Franco Zeffirelli.
Following this failure, and despite a reworking of the libretto by Menotti in 1974, Barber wrote very little for the remaining years of his life. He struggled through periods of depression and retired to the Italian Alps.
Barber’s health deteriorated and he died of cancer in New York on 23 January 1981. He was buried next to his mother at Oaklands Cemetery in his home town of West Chester.
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