Samuel Barber: His Life and Legacy
by Howard Pollack
744pp. Hardback
Published 2023
ISBN 13: 9780252044908
University of Illinois Press
Barber’s music is noted for its lyrical largesse and, at times, memorable qualities. He was born 9 March 1910. His childhood was spent in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and it was in these early years that he received the support and encouragement of his aunt Louise Homer, a famous contralto and her husband Sidney, a classical composer, primarily of songs. Samuel composed his first piece aged 7 and embarked on an opera aged 10. He entered the Curtis Institute when he was fourteen, studying voice, piano, and composition. Later, he studied conducting with Fritz Reiner. It was at Curtis that he met Gian Carlo Menotti, and the two formed a lifelong personal and professional relationship.
Pollack discusses various aspects of the composer’s personality. The pianist John Browning considered him “a very complicated man” of deep contradictions. People observed his shyness, reticence and underlying melancholy, whilst maintaining a calm exterior. Yet, he could exhibit a playful wit. Menotti found him funny and charming, which could extend to mischievous pranks and childish stunts. Often his humour would have a caustic bite. Others recall his generosity and kindness.
Throughout this massive tome, interwoven into the exhaustive biography, Pollack critically explores Barber’s entire oeuvre with encyclopaedic thoroughness. Each of the works is explored in detail. There are no musical examples and the analysis I found in no way intimidating. Centred around each is a discussion of the work’s performance history and a useful discography. For example, there’s a considerable amount of discourse around what is probably Barber’s most famous composition, the Adagio for Strings, arranged from the second movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11. The author not only lists the recordings but also the films that have used the music for atmospheric effect. The music later became the setting for the composer’s 1967 choral arrangement of Agnus Dei.
Barber’s relationship with Gian Carlo Menotti lasted for more than forty years after their initial meeting at Curtis as students. They immediately took to each other. Menotti “was awed by Barber’s talent, worldliness and good looks”, and as often happens, opposites attract, “Barber was as reserved as Menotti was extroverted”. They eventually settled in a house in upstate New York called Capricorn, where each composer had his own workspace. Menotti was Barber’s librettist for two of his three operas. They did separate in the 1970s, with Barber battling depression and alcoholism, but the two maintained a close friendship until Barber’s death in 1981.
The book explores Barber’s relationship with contemporary composers. He seems to have held in high regard such names as Ernest Bloch, Walter Piston, Virgil Thomson, Roy Harris, Randall Thompson, Aaron Copland and William Schumann. Foreign names included Bax, Hindemith, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, Stravinsky, Vaughan-Williams and Sibelius. Copland he regarded with special interest, and their relationship had its ups and downs over the years. The same could be said of his relationship with Leonard Bernstein. He studied the work of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg and kept scores of their music in his library. He greatly admired the English composers William Walton and Benjamin Britten.
This splendid biography and fitting tribute to a distinguished American composer is expansive in detail, and I cannot sing its praises loud enough; kudos to Howard Pollack for this remarkable achievement. Thoroughly researched and carefully analytical, it leaves no stone unturned. It’s supplemented with a cache of well-reproduced and interesting black and white photographs. Comprehensive notes are located at the end of the book.
This is a beautifully produced hardback with dustcover. The quality of the paper is second-to-none. It offers the reader excellent access to the riches of Samuel Barber. It’s a first class study, authoritative, intriguing and well worth tracking down.
Stephen Greenbank
Help us financially by purchasing from
