Samuel Barber's first and only string quartet didn't end up the way he intended it to, for the second movement eventually overshadowed the entire opus when he transcribed it for string orchestra as the Adagio for Strings. In addition, a projected last movement never really came together, and the piece as a whole became marked as a vehicle for bringing the Adagio to life. The first movement has merit, however, in that it shows Barber experimenting with a style somewhat removed from his usual hyper-melodic idiom. Barber composed the piece in the summer of 1936 at St. Wolfgang, Austria, a small mountain town near Salzburg, where he and Gian Carlo Menotti had rented a cottage. It was premiered at the American Academy in Rome by the Pro Arte Quartet in December of the same year. The finished work has two movements. The first, Molto allegro e appassionato, is structured in a loose sonata form. Reminiscent of Beethoven and unlike, in terms of rhetoric, most of Barber's works, it is structured around rhythmic motifs rather than on the basis of a central, emotionally charged melody. The second movement, Molto adagio; molto allegro, begins with one of the most famous melodies in history, the slow, sensitive cantilena which became the Adagio for Strings. The second half of the movement, Molto allegro (originally intended to be the last movement) is a rather unexciting and perfunctory recapitulation of first-movement material.

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2.Molto adagio (attacca; basis for 'Adagio for Strings')

The Adagio, now almost invariably played in its orchestral version, comes from the slow movement of Barber's String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11 (1936), and must be counted among the most familiar pieces of American concert music; it has become a popular classic and even exists in a choral version. The music has something of the archaic dignity of Renaissance polyphony; a rhapsodic ascending phrase is repeated, inverted, expanded and embellished before rising to a brittle climax, then fading into silence. The gradual build-up and slow release of tension—the archetypical "arch" form—gives the work an inexorable quality. In the quartet it serves the work well, giving point and focus to its neighboring movements, though somewhat upstaging them by its eloquence.

The orchestral version, first performed in 1938 by the NBC Symphony Orchestra and Arturo Toscanini (on the same occasion as Barber's First Essay for Orchestra), conveys both tranquillity and grief, and has frequently been chosen to mark occasions of public mourning; it was, for instance, played at the funerals of F.D.R., J.F.K. and Princess Grace, and has appeared in the scores to a number of poignant films, including The Elephant Man and Platoon. Since then it has frequently been heard all over the world, and was one of the few American works to be played regularly in the Soviet Union during the cold war. It is, however, not necessary to regard the Adagio as a lament. The work is an intense meditation by a composer who, in his 26th year, already possessed the confidence and craftsmanship to make a powerful personal statement with clarity and sincerity. Its poignancy, simplicity, and dignity have been praised by such composers as Ned Rorem, Roy Harris, William Schuman and Aaron Copland.

© Roy Brewer, All Music Guide