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On hearing Barber's "Adagio for Strings"
Jul. 9th, 2000 10:56 pmI'm driving along a few days ago, listening to the radio, when this music - vaguely familiar - starts to float out into the passenger compartment and gently carry me along. It's a classical piece, for strings, and it starts slowly.
The strange thing that I soon notice is how the tones move from note to note in such a way that the music seems to repeat, but it doesn't, really. These are not the nearly mathematical progressions of variations on a theme that one finds, say, in Bach's Art of Fugue. Here, I can't "predict" where the music is going at all.
In fact, it seems to repeatedly come to what must certainly be a dead end, only to move smoothly past that point and start again, just a little higher up, with a bit more energy. As I listen, the path taken by the music seems as logical and as clean as that of a soaring bird.
The music continues to build, spiraling upward it seems to me, and as it does I stop the car in a shopping mall parking lot and focus on the music, and what it's doing to me. I am happy, in a kind of bittersweet way. I don't want the music to stop. It keeps building and finally, seems to come to some kind of climax. Then it fades away, slowly, languishing along, not really trying to go anywhere in particular. In the last couple of minutes, it tries once more to recapture its former glory, but in a more mellow way, more slowly, as if it were nodding off to sleep. Then silence.
Finally, the announcer tells me I'd been listening to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. A little 'net research uncovers some interesting tidbits. Among them is the observation that this work has become "an unofficial American anthem of mourning," having been played after the deaths of Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy. (I don't see this as funereal music, although its effect is to take you away from yourself, to a better time and place, which is probably not a bad thing to do for people who are mourning).
The same site also notes that "Barber found initial inspiration in a passage from Virgil's Georgics describing how a rivulet gradually becomes a large river." I found that an interesting take, but the Adagio is no Vltava. In fact, as I listened to the music, the time and place I found myself revisiting was the first time I made love. The low-key beginning, the new sensations during foreplay and beyond (which feel "right" beyond one's ability to comprehend), building to a climax and a post-coital afterglow all seem to parallel the music. Or does the music parallel the act? Both activities reflect human action.
Another web site notes that Barber's composition has been featured in films such as Platoon and Lorenzo's Oil. I knew I'd heard it before.
Cheers...
P.S. The sites I refer to are at classical.net and at G. Schirmer Inc..
The strange thing that I soon notice is how the tones move from note to note in such a way that the music seems to repeat, but it doesn't, really. These are not the nearly mathematical progressions of variations on a theme that one finds, say, in Bach's Art of Fugue. Here, I can't "predict" where the music is going at all.
In fact, it seems to repeatedly come to what must certainly be a dead end, only to move smoothly past that point and start again, just a little higher up, with a bit more energy. As I listen, the path taken by the music seems as logical and as clean as that of a soaring bird.
The music continues to build, spiraling upward it seems to me, and as it does I stop the car in a shopping mall parking lot and focus on the music, and what it's doing to me. I am happy, in a kind of bittersweet way. I don't want the music to stop. It keeps building and finally, seems to come to some kind of climax. Then it fades away, slowly, languishing along, not really trying to go anywhere in particular. In the last couple of minutes, it tries once more to recapture its former glory, but in a more mellow way, more slowly, as if it were nodding off to sleep. Then silence.
Finally, the announcer tells me I'd been listening to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. A little 'net research uncovers some interesting tidbits. Among them is the observation that this work has become "an unofficial American anthem of mourning," having been played after the deaths of Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy. (I don't see this as funereal music, although its effect is to take you away from yourself, to a better time and place, which is probably not a bad thing to do for people who are mourning).
The same site also notes that "Barber found initial inspiration in a passage from Virgil's Georgics describing how a rivulet gradually becomes a large river." I found that an interesting take, but the Adagio is no Vltava. In fact, as I listened to the music, the time and place I found myself revisiting was the first time I made love. The low-key beginning, the new sensations during foreplay and beyond (which feel "right" beyond one's ability to comprehend), building to a climax and a post-coital afterglow all seem to parallel the music. Or does the music parallel the act? Both activities reflect human action.
Another web site notes that Barber's composition has been featured in films such as Platoon and Lorenzo's Oil. I knew I'd heard it before.
Cheers...
P.S. The sites I refer to are at classical.net and at G. Schirmer Inc..
