Samuel Barber
Composer
Samuel Barber thought little of moving with the times: “I just do my thing, as they say,” he said in an interview in 1971. What he meant was music that remained committed to tonality and the spirit of late Romanticism – perfectly crafted and with a particular fondness for expressive melodies. With this style, Barber became one of the most successful American composers of the 20th century at an early age.
A musically gifted child, Samuel Barber began composing at the age of seven. As a teenager he was organist at the West Chester Presbyterian Church and was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia while still at school, where he studied piano, composition, conducting and singing until 1932. He received numerous prizes for his works early on – and in 1936 he was also awarded a Pulitzer Prize for the second time, something no composer had ever achieved before. This allowed him to travel to Europe and spend time at the American Academy in Rome. It was there that Barber completed his Symphony in One Movement, the first work by an American composer to be performed at the Salzburg Festival. In Salzburg, Barber met Arturo Toscanini, who promoted him considerably, for example by conducting a national radio broadcast with the National Broadcasting Company Symphony Orchestra, which played the famous Adagio for Strings, among other works. Barber returned to the Curtis Institute to teach composition, but ended his teaching career after three years. From 1942 to 1945, he served in the Air Force, to which he also dedicated his Second Symphony (Flight Symphony). Together with Gian Carlo Menotti, his partner of many years, the composer bought a house during this time in Mount Kisco (New York), where most of his works were written over the next 30 years. Barber received the Pulitzer Prize in 1958 and 1962 for his opera Vanessa, which was also performed in Salzburg, and for his piano concerto. His opera Antony and Cleopatra, based on Shakespeare, was created for the reopening of the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1966 and staged by Franco Zeffirelli. In the last years of his life, Barber composed little. He died of cancer at the age of 70 on 23 January 1981.
