by neufer » Mon Sep 11, 2017 1:44 pm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adagio_for_Strings wrote:
The Adagio for Strings has been performed on many public occasions, especially during times of mourning:
- Broadcast over the radio at the announcement of Franklin D. Roosevelt's death;
Broadcast over the television at the announcement of John F. Kennedy's death
Played at the funeral of Albert Einstein
Played at the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco
Broadcast on BBC Radio several times after the announcement of the death of Princess Diana
Performed in 2001 at the Royal Albert Hall to commemorate the victims of the September 11 attacks.
<<Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings began as the second movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11, composed in 1936 while he was spending a summer in Europe with his partner Gian Carlo Menotti, an Italian composer who was a fellow student at the Curtis Institute of Music. The inspiration came from Virgil's Georgics. In the quartet the Adagio follows a violently contrasting first movement (Molto allegro e appassionato) and is succeeded by music which opens with a brief reprise of the music from the first movement (marked Molto allegro (come prima) – Presto).
In January 1938 Barber sent an orchestrated version of the Adagio for Strings to Arturo Toscanini. The conductor returned the score without comment, which annoyed Barber. Toscanini then sent word through Menotti that he was planning to perform the piece and had returned it simply because he had already memorized it. It was reported that Toscanini did not look at the music again until the day before the premiere. On November 5, 1938, a selected audience was invited to Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center to watch Toscanini conduct the first performance, a radio broadcast which was also recorded. Initially, the critical reception was positive, as seen in the review by The New York Times's Olin Downes: "We have here honest music, by an honest musician, not striving for pretentious effect, not behaving as a writer would who, having a clear, short, popular word handy for his purpose, got the dictionary and fished out a long one.">>
[quote=" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adagio_for_Strings"]
The Adagio for Strings has been performed on many public occasions, especially during times of mourning:
[list] Broadcast over the radio at the announcement of Franklin D. Roosevelt's death;
Broadcast over the television at the announcement of John F. Kennedy's death
Played at the funeral of Albert Einstein
Played at the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco
Broadcast on BBC Radio several times after the announcement of the death of Princess Diana
Performed in 2001 at the Royal Albert Hall to commemorate the victims of the September 11 attacks.[/list][float=right][img3="[b][color=#0000FF]Samuel Barber, photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1944[/color][/b]"]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Samuel_Barber.jpg[/img3][/float]<<Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings began as the second movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11, composed in 1936 while he was spending a summer in Europe with his partner Gian Carlo Menotti, an Italian composer who was a fellow student at the Curtis Institute of Music. The inspiration came from Virgil's Georgics. In the quartet the Adagio follows a violently contrasting first movement (Molto allegro e appassionato) and is succeeded by music which opens with a brief reprise of the music from the first movement (marked Molto allegro (come prima) – Presto).
In January 1938 Barber sent an orchestrated version of the Adagio for Strings to Arturo Toscanini. The conductor returned the score without comment, which annoyed Barber. Toscanini then sent word through Menotti that he was planning to perform the piece and had returned it simply because he had already memorized it. It was reported that Toscanini did not look at the music again until the day before the premiere. On November 5, 1938, a selected audience was invited to Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center to watch Toscanini conduct the first performance, a radio broadcast which was also recorded. Initially, the critical reception was positive, as seen in the review by The New York Times's Olin Downes: "We have here honest music, by an honest musician, not striving for pretentious effect, not behaving as a writer would who, having a clear, short, popular word handy for his purpose, got the dictionary and fished out a long one.">>[/quote]