It’s famous for more than just Platoon.  Richard Allen looks at the story behind Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings.

Thomas Larson – The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings

 

When describing instrumental music, reviewers often ascribe emotion to the pieces performed: happy, heartbreaking, hopeful, sad.  Often these attributions have as much to do with the listeners as they do with the performers; we bring our own expectations and baggage to the artistic experience.  Yet despite cultural differences, one would be hard-pressed to call “Moonlight Sonata” angry or “The 1812 Overture” mournful.  Some experiences are universal, or at least close enough to be accepted as the common interpretation.

In 2004, when a BBC poll pronounced Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” to be “the saddest music ever written,” few could fault the selection – although some were surprised that an instrumental piece ended up trumping depressive vocal classics such as “Gloomy Sunday.”  The BBC’s choice is all the more remarkable because Barber’s piece is known, in Larson’s words, as “America’s quintessential elegy,” a position many might assume would be occupied in the U.K. by “Candle in the Wind,” given its popularity in the wake of Lady Di’s funeral.

Emotion is often delegated by association, and Larson lists a draining deluge:  the Adagio was played on the radio following the announcement of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death; it was used to memorialize John F. Kennedy; it accompanied services for the victims of the Challenger explosion, the Oklahoma City bombings, and the 9-11 attacks.  For over 70 years, it has been America’s go-to piece for solemn mourning.  “Sad music,” writes Larson, “intensifies sadness, and in that intensity, solace is somehow provided.”

But why this piece?  In attempting to answer this question, Larson strings together several themes: the life of Barber, the life of the song, his own personal experience with the Adagio and a generous helping of family history as well.

While Barber’s temperament was known to be melancholic (his first piano composition, written at age 7, was titled “Sadness”), Larson refuses to credit such leanings as the Adagio’s inspiration.  If anything, the opposite should have been true; the summer of 1936 was a happy time for Barber, spent with his lover in an idyllic water-based setting.  In exhuberant fashion, Barber wrote of the piece, “Knockout!”  He first heard it on the radio while at a rest stop, “surrounded by hams, sausages and flour.”  This version was performed by Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Orchestra in November 1938; its radio debut was unusual, because until then most classical pieces had been introduced in music halls.

Why does the Adagio sound so sad?  Larson addresses this question in the chapter, “The Composition of Sorrow.”  The Adagio has a slow tempo (“adagio” is Italian for “slowly”); it’s written in a minor key; and until Barber’s later choral arrangement (“Agnus Dei”), it was performed solely by strings.  The piece is grounded by a stepwise melody, yet gains distinction through unexpected shifts; in other words, it sounds neither too familiar nor too foreign.  Tension is created by a “harmonic-melodic ambivalence” and “soft dissonances … that delay resolution.”  While this may sound like possible blueprint for a hit single, Larson warns that it is not as easy to achieve as it seems on paper, and that Barber’s instinctive skill is the essential ingredient to its success.

Larson goes on to trace the recent cinematic popularity of the Adagio through its use in films such as Platoon, The Elephant Man, Lorenzo’s Oil and Amelie.  While he appreciates each of these uses, he later laments, “These days, people cannot relate to instrumental music – especially jazzy, contemporary or experimental – in part because its abstraction is unbuoyed by our other senses.  Where, listeners ask, is the film that this weird music should be accompanying?”  As Larson lists television shows in which the Adagio has been satirized – Seinfeld, South Park, The Simpsons – and modern samplings and revisions (Puff Daddy, DJ Tiesto), he worries about a potential watering down of the Adagio’s power, but is relieved to conclude that it has so far stood its ground.

Larson’s book occasionally suffers from the over-repetition of quotes (“Knockout!”, “We were so happy!”, lines from Platoon), and in at least one instance he is unintentionally humorous:  “My grandmother cooks and listens to her radio.”  (What is the sound of a radio being cooked?  Ask Phillip Jeck.)  The parts about his father seem shoehorned in, especially when he has to resort to speculation to fill the gaps.  A description of the various affairs carried on by Barber and his lover seems unnecessarily sensational, so much so that Larson even acknowledges the reader’s possible discomfort and half-heartedly apologizes.

The author is at his best when waxing rhapsodically about the Adagio’s power, describing its impact on listeners, and ruminating on the nature of and necessity for sad songs.  (A section about a person who never wants to hear a particular song again is especially effective.)  Larson’s short list of comparable songs (including Gorecki’s “Symphony No. 3” and Joni Mitchell’s “River” made this reviewer think of his own (Mozart’s “Masonic Funeral Music” and Dead Can Dance’s “The Host of Seraphim”), and will likely spark similar responses in other readers.  And Larson’s postlude packs a surprising punch: a gut-shot of emotion that operates in the same manner as the Adagio, “intensifying sadness and somehow providing solace.”  These latter strengths vastly outnumber the book’s few minor missteps, and make it a must-read for fans of the Adagio and for all who are interested in the elegaic and emotional power of music.

Pegasus Books will release The Saddest Music Ever Written on September 15 in the U.S. and the U.K.

-Richard Allen 

Written By: jordan
Date Posted: 9/12/2010
Number of Views: 627