Barber’s Knoxville, Summer of 1915

Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is based on a prose poem written by James Agee. This work offers a nostalgic reflection on a summer evening in Knoxville, Tennessee, viewed through the eyes of a child. Barber described it as a “lyric rhapsody.”

Composer Highlight:

Samuel Osmond Barber II (1910–1981) is considered one of the most celebrated American composers of the 20th century. He also excelled as a conductor, baritone, and music educator. Barber was skilled in both instrumental and vocal music. His “Adagio for Strings” has become one of the most iconic pieces associated with mourning and remembrance. Its haunting, slow-moving melody and emotional depth have made it a staple at funerals, memorials, and moments of collective grief.

Barber began studying piano at the age of six and composed his first work by the age of seven. Despite his interest in music, his family encouraged him to become a typical extroverted, athletic American boy, specifically urging him to play football. However, Barber was not a typical boy, and at the age of nine, he wrote to his mother:

“Dear Mother: I am writing to tell you my worrying secret. Now, don’t cry when you read this, because it is neither your fault nor mine. I suppose I have to tell it now without any nonsense. To begin with, I was not meant to be an athlete. I was meant to be a composer, and I will be, I’m sure. I’ll ask you one more thing—please don’t ask me to try to forget this unpleasant fact and go play football. Sometimes I’ve been worrying about this so much that it makes me mad (not very).” From: https://www.americanpianomusic.com/post/samuel-barber

Barber attended the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he began to achieve success as a composer. Throughout his long career, he received numerous awards and accolades, including two Pulitzer Prizes, the Rome Prize, the Henry Hadley Medal, and the Gold Medal for Music from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He was elected as a Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

At the time of Barber’s death in 1981, Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Donal Henahan wrote in The New York Times that “probably no other American composer has ever enjoyed such early, persistent, and long-lasting acclaim.”