Barber had an intimate relationship with the texts he set, often spending more time finding poems than composing the music.
Composer Biography
Samuel Barber (1910-1981) lived through a period of immense musical change, from late Romanticism to Expressionism and Experimentalism.
Performer Biography
The Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir has an 'enviable reputation' for its musicianship, partly due to its increasing recording presence and conductor's interest in 20th- and 21st-century British music.
Composition History
Barber's 'Agnus Dei' (1967) is an arrangement of his famous 'Adagio for Strings', which itself was adapted from his Opus 11 string quartet.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Barber's compositional approach was neo-Romantic, focusing on emotional self-expression through traditional yet individual means.
Cultural Impact
Barber's 'Agnus Dei' has become a significant piece for mourning in America, performed in memory of figures like FDR, Einstein, and JFK.
Critical Reception
Barber's music, which maintained a 19th-century idiom, was often deemed anachronistic and irrelevant by critics during his lifetime.
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