I do much of my reading in bed, in the hour or two before lights-out, frequently beneath drooping eyelids and interrupted by intervals of nodding; so it can take me a while sometimes to get through a book. In this case, it took me five or six weeks, probably, but they were unquestionably pleasurable ones, passed in the company of one of America’s greatest composers.
If you’re at all interested in American art music of the mid-20th century, I’m confident you too will enjoy Howard Pollack’s exhaustive biography “Samuel Barber: His Life & Legacy,” issued last month by University of Illinois Press.
The book has to be the culmination of years of research – of the 686 numbered pages, 118 are devoted to footnotes and index – yet the content is often astonishingly up-to-date, with references to performances, recordings, and even YouTube content so recent, it would seem as if it couldn’t possibly have been included by the time the book went to press.
It’s also pleasant to find people I’ve known or worked with drifting in and out of the narrative. For instance, I had no idea that Karl Haas, longtime host of the radio series “Adventures in Good Music,” was responsible for commissioning Barber’s “Summer Music.” Nor did I realize the series began in 1959!
Another radio personality, David Dubal, now host of “The Piano Matters,” but then music director of New York’s WNCN, preempted the station’s regularly-scheduled programming to broadcast an hour of Barber’s music in the afternoons during the composer’s final days, and Barber listened.
And H. Paul Moon, who I have interviewed on the air a couple of times about his film projects, and now count among my concertgoing companions and friends, is acknowledged for his lovely, award-winning documentary, “Samuel Barber: Absolute Beauty.” Paul also receives credit for assisting the author in compiling the book’s photographs.
Of course, Barber had many important connections to the Philadelphia area, having attended and taught at the Curtis Institute of Music and had many of his works, including a few premieres, played by the Philadelphia Orchestra. He also exhibited a lifelong affection for his birthplace of West Chester, PA – which, as a small-town Pennsylvania boy myself, I find relatable and touching.
Barber was buried in West Chester in 1981, next to a gravesite held vacant for Gian Carlo Menotti, his friend, frequent collaborator, and romantic partner of decades. The two met during their student days at Curtis. Menotti would be buried in Scotland, but the West Chester would-be grave is marked by a headstone that reads, as per Barber’s request, “To the Memory of Two Friends.”
Pollack’s biography is successful not only in expanding the reader’s knowledge of the composer’s sizeable and varied output – more varied than one might suspect on the evidence of his most frequently played works – but also in conveying a real sense of the man, who could be patrician and impeccably turned out, often aloof in public, with a waspish sense of humor, but also warm and supportive to his friends. And even, on occasion, unexpectedly whimsical. He once remarked that because of his fondness for soup, his coffin should be pelted with croutons. At his burial service, his friends took him up on it.
There is also a charming anecdote earlier in the book, about how once Barber was attempting to get something straightened out with a utility company. In an unorthodox method of identity confirmation, the phone representative asked the composer to sing a few bars of his “Sure on This Shining Night.” Barber later remarked, “I’m afraid I sounded nervous. I had never sung for the telephone company before.”
Pollack’s writing is everything it should be: lucid, informative, and engrossing. There’s nothing to jerk a reader out of the narrative (save perhaps the frequent use of “tellingly,” which after a while becomes endearing). One doesn’t have to be a specialist to get something out of the book, and it is frequently an enjoyable read, though I grant that some chapters will be more compelling than others, depending on the depth of one’s devotion to Barber’s music. The chapters of purely biographical and historical interest are especially absorbing. One will learn a lot, unquestionably, as even I have.
With so many interviews and so much information to assimilate, I really don’t know how Pollack does it. I only just finally got around to reading his Copland bio, “Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man,” this past November, and the book, which was released over twenty years ago, is equally praiseworthy. And he’s done similar service for Marc Blitzstein, John Alden Carpenter, George Gershwin, Walter Piston, and lyricist John LaTouche. This guy deserves every award he’s ever received.
You’ll find more about Pollack’s latest here:
80 years ago today, Barber’s “Commando March,” written while he was serving in the U.S. Army Air Force, received its first performance in Atlantic City, with the Army Air Force Technical Training Command Band under the direction of the composer. Hear it performed at the link by “The President’s Own” U.S. Marine Band:
Barber’s final work, and one of his loveliest – the trunk of an oboe concerto he was too ill to complete – the “Canzonetta,” first performed posthumously in 1981:
“Sure on This Shining Night,” frequently heard in an arrangement for choir, here sung by a baritone, as it would have been by Barber himself to the telephone company:
“Summer Music,” commissioned on the recommendation of Karl Haas:
“Samuel Barber: Absolute Beauty”
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