aworks :: "new" american classical music

Adagio for Strings (1936). Samuel Barber /is it live or is it memorex?/

The Guardian has an article about the Vienna Symphonic Library, comprising 1.5 million sound samples from 100 instruments. A synthetic version of Adagio was compared with a traditional recording and quickly found wanting:

'It's the texture. The attack of the bow on the string. The computer version is almost too perfect. It's impressive, but you don't have the right sort of phrasing.'

Adagio for Strings (1936). Samuel Barber /friday random ten/

Friday's random ten, inspired by fredosphere's timelessness posts (and just where do I find a working 8-track player, anyway?):

• Adagio for Strings. Charlie Haden and the Liberation Music Orchestra. I had high hopes for this jazz arrangement but despite the additional color, it doesn't begin to have the impact of a good quartet version.
• Adagio for Strings. Tiesto. youtube via aworks.
• Adagio for Strings. Isaac Stern.
• Adagio for Strings. Families of Freedom Fund.
• Adagio for Strings. Leonard Bernstein.
• Adagio for Strings. aworks. This is an old aworks Adagio post digitized by talkr (talkr quit working for me soon after. ???). mp3
• Adagio for Strings. William Orbit.
• String Quartet Op. 11. Emerson String Quartet.
• Adagio for Strings. Platoon soundtrack.
• Adagio for Strings. Exile on Classical Street. Michael Stipe's selection for a classical CD assembled by rockers.

And it's not that I dislike the piece; it's just over-exposure to what may be American classical music's most "beautiful" composition.

napster: 97 adagio for string tracks charlie haden wikipedia: michael stipe charlie haden charlie sheen 8-track cartridge swicki: frequent barber-related search query youtube: alternate tiesto adagio video

Adagio for Strings (1936). Samuel Barber /the elephant man/

David Lynch raves about Adagio for Strings among other topics:

It washed over me. It was just so unbelievable beautiful and so perfect for the ending of the film...How and when the clarinet emerges, what it does and how it dies away. Cinema is like that. And time can be your friend, but it can also be your enemy. And if things aren’t working and you are with the audience, you die the death.

napster: adagio, andre previn conducting not quite 50 adagio tracks

Adagio for Strings (1936). Samuel Barber /d.j. tiesto youtube video/

I think this is exactly how Samuel Barber envisioned his music being performed...

other barber adagio videos: william orbit ferry corsten bus uncle
other composer adagio videos: albinoni albinioni bach beethoven beethoven handel rodrigo
aworks: adagio for strings samuel barber
wikipedia: tempo samuel barber adagio for strings

Adagio for Strings (1936). Samuel Barber /organ music/

In an interview, Erik Wm. Suter thinks Adagio and Sousa work well on the organ, but he wouldn't want try the music of Miles Davis.

Suter is the organist at the Washington National Cathedral.

Adagio for Strings (1936). Samuel Barber /itunes #1/

via del.icio.us/thestandingroom, the Guardian reports the number one classical music download  on iTunes is Barber's Adagio for Strings. I suppose I'm not surprised as maybe 5% of all aworks traffic is Adagio-related. This includes people searching for:

• the identity of the music from Platoon
• the identify of the music played at FDR's funeral
• a free MP3 of the work, either a traditional version or the numerous dance remixes (try this search)
• a musical analysis of the work
• the reason why Barber wrote it
• how it is "arch" form
• whether or not Philip Glass wrote it

Speaking of Adagio's use in Platoon, Barbara Heyman says that Barber's partner Gian Carlo Menotti "believes Barber would not have been amused by its success in this film and might not have even allowed the Adagio to be used." She also quotes the composer Virgil Thomson as saying that it's about "a detailed love scene."

Daniel Felsenfeld writes of Adagio:

To quickly take in the piece's structure is to peek behind the curtain at the composer's technique; the work makes three attempts to the top before finally pushing through the ceiling.

Wikipedia has the definitive list of its use in popular culture including Adagio being featured in, egad, South Park.

aworks on adagio: cumulative as in "24" suitable for marching band? at a cure concert flute version at emusic troy cady essay blog quotes midi version the word whisperer more quotes beethoven and barber in warwickshire acj's peace at the Olympics similar to autechre which sheen? as a memorial

Adagio for Strings (1936). Samuel Barber /24/

In a review of 24 from this week's New Yorker, Nancy Franklin comments:

(By the way, judging by the soundtrack of "24," when a nuclear bomb does go off the accompanying music will sound something like Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. Good because Pachelbel's Canon is so 1990).

Yikes.

Adagio for Strings (1936). Samuel Barber /marching band/

Message in a Bottle suggests music that should not be performed by marching band.

Adagio for Strings (1936). Samuel Barber /the cure?/

We were at a wedding in Baltimore which seems to have interrupted my blogging flow. To get back into it, I'll start with some Adagio blogging. Kristy on Little Ubiquitous points out The Cure used Adagio for Strings for pre-concert music:

The shows were at the Greek Theater, and there was no opening band. Instead, they played a recording of Barber's Adagio for Strings, so ethereal under the summer evening sky. Magical.

I think I own a Cure CD, a live one from Detroit (Cobo Hall?). I can't check though. When we moved, I stopped alphabetizing my CDs, which makes random access difficult.

Not much of musical significance while we were in Maryland. I couldn't find a good classical station while in the car so ended up listening to DC101 and then to substitute, made a quick trip to the Daedalus remaindered books and records outlet in Columbia. I picked up several CDs including Stefan Hussong playing more Cage on accordion (I've decided to be a Cage on accordion completist), John Cage to David Byrne: Four Decades of Contemporary Music (from the LA County Museum of Art), and the musical highlight so far, Andres Diaz and Samuel Sanders playing Barber's Sonata, Op. 6 (along with some Bernstein and Foote). I also bought Anarchy by John Cage, "a book-length lecture compromising twenty mesostic poems." Seeing the mesostic form may have prompted me to try the crossword puzzle on the flight home, which sought four letters given the clue of "Beatty and Rorem."

I could blog more on weddings and anarchy but discretion prevails...

I did make it back home in time for last night's tsunami warning, though. Weird. Wikipedia points out that of West Menlo Park "none of it is covered by water." I suppose had that changed last night, I would have edited the Wikipedia page to ensure it was up-to-date.  celesteh has East Bay tsunami coverage here and here.

Adagio for Strings (1936). Samuel Barber /emusic/

Time for this month's download of 40 tracks at .25 each from eMusic. The selection is generally obscure but with back catalog of Frank Zappa, Innova Recordings, Canteloupe Music etc., I can always find tracks I'm interested in.  This month, I chose two versions of Samuel Barber's Adagio, one by the  Flutes Fantastique, apparently a Chicago-based flute quartet, and one by Danney Alkana, on an album entitled Rock the Bach. I was wary about the flute recording, thinking back to fourth-grade flutophone but the performance was somber and low-key. No liner notes from eMusic but I gather that the quartet includes alto and bass flutes, giving the music more gravity than I expected.

On the other hand, the Danney Alkana recording... It starts off with some gratuitous thunder but then splits off into the standard Adagio played on keyboard but with an electric guitar solo on top throughout the piece. Granted, the solo is tasteful and my jazz side says that this is arguably analogous to the practice of improvising on top of chord changes of a standard pop song. But nonetheless, my classical side is appalled. 

At 25 cents a pop, I also bought Alkana's recording of Vivaldi's Concerto in B Minor. This has a lead rock guitar, playing what was probably close to what was written. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say that the timbre of the electric guitar gives the music some of the shimmering feel that baroque music can have at its best. But the drum kit and synthesizer solo seem completely out of place. Emerson, Lake, and Palmer anyone?