Symphony in One Movement (Barber)
Encyclopedia
Samuel Barber
Samuel Barber
Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...

's Symphony in One Movement (op
Opus number
An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...

. 9), was completed 24 February 1936. It was premiered by Rome's Philharmonic Augusteo Orchestra under the baton of Bernardino Molinari
Bernardino Molinari
Bernardino Molinari was an Italian conductor.Molinari studied under Renzi and Falchi at the Accademia of Santa Cecilia in his home town of Rome....

 13 December 1936. It lasts around 21 minutes.

Barber commenced his work on the symphony in August 1935 and completed the work at the Anabel Taylor Foundation in Roquebrune in the French Alps. It was dedicated to his long time companion Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...

 (Heyman 1994, 140). It received its American premiere by the Cleveland Orchestra
Cleveland Orchestra
The Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. It is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1918, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Severance Hall...

 conducted by Rudolf Ringwall 21 and 23 January 1937 and was performed three times on 24 March 1937 at Carnegie Hall, New York by the New York Philharmonic–Symphony Orchestra
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...

 under direction of Artur Rodziński
Artur Rodzinski
Artur Rodziński was a Polish conductor of opera and symphonic music. He is especially noted for his tenures as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic in the 1930s and 1940s.-Biography:...

 (Heyman 1994, 143). Rodziński was a strong promoter of Barber's work and conducted the Vienna Philharmonic's performance of the symphony at the opening concert of the 1937 Salzburg Festival
Salzburg Festival
The Salzburg Festival is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer within the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...

. It was the first performance of a symphonic work by an American composer at the festival.

The symphony is a condensed one-movement version of a classical four movement symphony
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...

 and is modeled after Sibelius' Symphony No. 7
Symphony No. 7 (Sibelius)
The Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105, was the final published symphony of Jean Sibelius. Completed in 1924, the Seventh is notable for being a one-movement symphony, in contrast to the standard symphonic formula of four movements...

 (Heyman 1994, 141; Pollack 2000, 195). The work is divided into four sections:
  1. Allegro ma non troppo
  2. Allegro molto
  3. Andante tranquillo
  4. Con moto


In the program notes for the New York premiere Barber explained:
Barber made some revisions to the work in 1942–43. The revised version was first performed 18 February 1944 by the Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...

 conducted by Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor. He is considered one of the best known conductors of the 20th century. Walter was born in Berlin, but is known to have lived in several countries between 1933 and 1939, before finally settling in the United States in 1939...

.

Further reading

  • Tawa, Nicholas E. 2009. The Great American Symphony: Music, the Depression, and War. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-35305-4.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK