Samuel Barber, Adagio for Strings (1936)

This recording comes from the last night of the BBC Proms in 2001, not long after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Leonard Slatkin conducts the BBC Philharmonic:



Questions:

1. Describe the overall mood of the piece. What musical features contribute to this mood?
   
2. This piece was composed inn 1936, yet it sounds markedly different from some of the other works from the early 20th c. that we have examined. In what ways is this piece forward-looking? In what ways is it backward-looking (one might say "nostalgic")?
   
3. How much could we learn about the "meaning" of the piece if we knew about Barber's life circumstances while he composed it?
   
4. Can a piece of music inherently be sad (or happy, or angry)? How might one accomplish this musically?
   
5. This piece has been employed in a wide variety of "sad" contexts, including post-9/11 events, the movies Platoon and Lorenzo's Oil, and memorial services for a number of important figures. How might the piece's associations with these extra-musical events contribute to its meaning?
   
6. Is there a difference between sounding sad and being sad?
   
7. Why do people tend to seek out sad music when they are sad (as opposed to seeking out happy music to cheer them up)?
   

Additional resources:

• A clip from Oliver Stone's movie Platoon that uses the Adagio
  
• Luke Howard, "The Popular Reception of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. American Music, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Spring, 2007), pp. 50-80.
  
• Thomas Larson, The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. New York: Pegasus, 2010.