Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber Patrick Swayze Surprising Link

I’ve been remiss in not posting about it for a little while, but I’m still having a blast making my way through Howard Pollack’s 700-page Samuel Barber biography. Lots of great stuff in there, for music geeks, for anyone interested in local history (by local, I mean if you happen to live in the Pennsylvania/New Jersey/New York area or have been to Tanglewood), and more broadly, for anyone interested in the cultural and social history of 20th century America.

There are too many amusing or even startling connections to itemize, but surely one of the most surprising is that actor Patrick Swayze, who I think most people are aware was a dancer as well as an actor, once appeared in a ballet choreographed to Barber’s solo piano work “Excursions.”

Swayze, a principal with the Eliot Feld Ballet, was one of an ensemble of six who danced in the premiere of Felds’ “Excursions” at New York Public Theater in October 1975.

“Excursions” is distinguished in Barber’s output as one of his few works evidently touched by American popular idioms (“Souvenirs” is another), with the influence of blues, folk ballads, and fiddle tunes. In its breezier moments, it almost seems as if the composer had been listening to Vince Guaraldi – which couldn’t possibly be the case, since the four movements were written between 1942 and 1944. The last movement is a barn dance, which inevitably calls to mind Aaron Copland (“Rodeo” was first performed in 1942), but Barber approaches the material very differently.

The first movement was written for Jeanne Behrend, the composer’s friend and former classmate at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Then Vladimir Horowitz took an interest. He gave the debut of movements I, II and IV at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music. Subsequently, he took them to Carnegie Hall. The third movement was yet to be written. The official premiere of the complete set was given by Behrend, who performed all four movements in December 1948. Personally, I like the third movement best. It just makes me happy.

I’m not sure that Barber ever did any dirty dancing, but clearly he’s having the time of his life. Nobody puts Barber in a corner!

Listen to “Excursions” here, performed by John Browning, the pianist for whom the composer wrote his Pulitzer Prize winning Piano Concerto:

You’ll find more information about Howard Pollack’s “Samuel Barber: His Life and Legacy,” released earlier this month by University of Illinois Press, by following the link. Highly recommended, if you’re at all interested in classical music of the 20th century. (Barber lived from 1910 to 1981.) What a life, and how much the country has changed!

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=c044908&fbclid=IwAR0FtgkjO_EeSqjbfWEJB-0Wlh7eSldgHy1PqBSG200sXh_SdOBrSP5ntbQ

April 25, 2023
Barber’s Adagio Good Friday Service

Among the musical selections at church this afternoon for today’s Good Friday observance: Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings!

April 7, 2023
Barber Antheil Hollywood Bowl Find

In a post earlier today about Howard Pollack’s new Samuel Barber biography, I mentioned a meeting between Barber and Trenton’s own George Antheil. The meeting took place in Vienna in 1934. Barber was surprised by Antheil’s congeniality and touched by his genuine interest in his music. In fact, in a letter to his parents, Barber specified that he felt they had parted the best of friends. Unfortunately, the two were not to have very much contact in the future.

Interesting, then, that I should stumble across this audio for a concert with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra from 1950. The first half of the program is devoted to Barber’s “School for Scandal Overture” and Antheil’s Symphony No. 5! (Clearly, Antheil was on a Prokofiev kick at the time of its writing.)

The second half features Gershwin’s Concerto in F, with an assortment of encores, performed by Gershwin friend and acolyte, Oscar Levant. Last and least is a suite from Jerome Kern’s “Showboat.” Artur Rodzinski, notorious for packing heat on the podium, is the conductor.

A gem of a find and a remarkable coincidence that Barber and Antheil would wind up shoulder-to-shoulder on the same concert!

April 4, 2023
Samuel Barber’s Life and Musical Legacy

One of the pleasures of reading Howard Pollack’s latest biography, “Samuel Barber: His Life and Legacy,” is being reminded of just how many interesting musicians Barber encountered. As a lover of film music, I’ve long been aware of Alex North’s birthplace of Chester, PA, not far south of Philadelphia, but I never really thought about the fact that he and Barber were exact contemporaries and indeed classmates at West Chester High School.

Later, Barber knew Nino Rota from the Curtis Institute (but disliked his music) and Bernard Herrmann, who invited him to guest conduct the CBS Orchestra for his radio series “Invitation to Music.”

Fascinatingly, Barber sang one of his breakout masterpieces, “Dover Beach,” for Ralph Vaughan Williams, during the latter’s visit to Bryn Mawr to deliver a series of lectures in 1932. The text, by Victorian poet Matthew Arnold – a honeymoon poem written shortly after his marriage to Frances Lucy Wightman – is pervaded by melancholy: in an uncertain world, love is the only source of comfort and peace.

“He seemed delighted,” Barber recollected of Vaughan Williams’ reaction. “He congratulated me and said, ‘I tried several times to set ‘Dover Beach,’ but you really GOT it!’”

Traveling on a scholarship to Vienna in 1934, he met George Antheil, Trenton’s “Bad Boy of Music,” whose “Ballet Mécanique” had caused a riot in Paris in 1926. The two talked music and shared scores. Barber liked what he saw and heard, and Antheil, ten years older, was “surprisingly enthusiastic” about the young man’s work. Barber found Antheil likeable and sincere and wrote to his family that the two had “parted, the best of friends.”

Barber would earn further admiration internationally, with works performed in Europe and the Soviet Union. The idea of Yevgeny Mravinsky conducting Barber is as tantalizing as Gustav Mahler’s interest in performing Charles Ives.

As someone born in small-town Pennsylvania, and later having lived in Philadelphia for over three decades, I was also very interested to learn about some of the early works Barber composed for his hometown of West Chester and for Longwood Gardens. Barber knew the Du Ponts and performed on the organ there. Of course, he studied at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, on Rittenhouse Square, and had many works performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The book follows the pattern of Pollack’s Copland biography, interleaving biographical detail with chapters in which the music is treated in greater depth. I hasten to add that the writing is not overloaded with technical jargon, so that it always remains fully accessible – and interesting – to the general reader. Of course, it helps if music is your passion. At the same time, there are abundant notes in the book’s appendices for anyone who would like to dig deeper.

Most happily, the book accomplishes what any undertaking of this sort should do, and that’s inspire the reader to revisit Barber’s music. I don’t own a smartphone, so I’m not one of those people who is always riveted to an electronic device in public. I generally have some reading material or my thoughts to keep me company. However, last week I found myself in a situation where I was stuck someplace with nothing to do, and kept myself entertained by trying to remember the musical details of as many of Samuel Barber’s pieces as possible. It’s astonishing, the amount of information we’re able to call up from our brains!

The composer adored Brahms at a time when such an enthusiasm might have seemed regressive to more limited souls. His close relationships with Gian Carlo Menotti, his teachers, his advocates, and his patrons, ensured he often had one foot in Europe.

He was seldom as overtly “American-sounding” as Copland or Bernstein or Roy Harris or William Schuman. His music is imbued with more Old-World elegance, perhaps, than was common among his peers. If anything, it makes it seem all the sturdier, and all the more enduring.

Howard Pollack’s “Samuel Barber: His Life and Legacy,” published by University of Illinois Press, is out today, available online or through your local bookstore. For more information, follow the link.

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=c044908&fbclid=IwAR0FtgkjO_EeSqjbfWEJB-0Wlh7eSldgHy1PqBSG200sXh_SdOBrSP5ntbQ

“To Longwood Gardens”

“Fresh from West Chester”: II. Let’s Sit It Out, I’d Rather Watch

“Dover Beach,” with Barber and the Curtis String Quartet

The Brahmsian “School for Scandal Overture”

April 4, 2023
Samuel Barber: A Composer’s Humorous Side

I’ve been reading Howard Pollack’s absorbing biography, “Samuel Barber: His Life and Legacy,” in advance of its release on Tuesday by University of Illinois Press.

Barber is one of our great American composers. You’ll probably recognize his “Adagio for Strings,” at the very least, from its use in so many movies (“Platoon,” “The Elephant Man,” “Lorenzo’s Oil,” “Amélie”) and on occasions of national mourning (such as the deaths of presidents and the terrorist attacks of 9-11).

I must say, Pollack is doing a fabulous job of shedding light on the composer’s multifaceted character. Barber’s manner could be reserved – some would say aloof – and his patrician demeanor and assumed mid-Atlantic accent, rooted in an upper-middle-class upbringing in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and his close identification with his New England forebears, may now seem like affectations from a bygone world.

But he also had a sense of humor, offering the occasional sardonic, or even barbed observation. Once in while, he even teetered over into the downright zany. From the passage below, you’ll see he was a very capable practical joker. I thought it only appropriate to share it with you for this April Fool’s Day.

Barber had moreover what his cousin Katharine Homer Fryer called, in reference to the Beatty side of the family, a “Beatty sense of humor,” meaning, explained Barbara Heyman, “a love of the ridiculous.” As an example, one might cite Barber’s remark to [Nathan] Broder, apropos for his fondness for soups, “I would like to be buried with a sprinkling of croutons over my coffin.” Barber showed a proclivity for childish stunts and mischievous pranks, whether in his student years interrupting a tedious concert by noisily spilling coins on a dare from [Gian Carlo] Menotti, or in later years pretending to topple down a flight of stairs spewing manuscript pages to the amusement of his sister and her children. Planning a visit home while at the American Academy in Rome in the mid-1930s, he hatched a particularly elaborate ruse, telling his parents that he was sending them a portrait of himself and arranging for Menotti, then in New York, to bring a life-size frame to West Chester. “So I brought this empty frame to West Chester,” recalled Menotti, “and I said [to Barber’s parents], ‘Now you all get out of the room because I want to unveil it.’ So then Sam sneaked into the house and he sat inside the frame and then I unveiled the thing and there was Sam who said ‘Hello.’ Poor Mrs. Barber almost fainted!”

“Samuel Barber: His Life & Legacy” is scheduled for release on April 4. I haven’t finished it yet, but if you think it’s the kind of thing that might interest you, it’s a great read. I’ll have a more complete report by the end of the book. In the meantime, you’ll find more about it here:

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=c044908

April 1, 2023

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