Knoxville: Summer of 1915

A rapt, nostalgia-soaked setting of a text by James Agee, Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for soprano and orchestra evokes the sweet charms of small-town American life in the early 20th century. With a commission in 1947 from the soprano Eleanor Steber, Barber turned to Agee’s prose poem of the same title, which was published in the Partisan Review and later became a preamble to his book A Death in the Family. Barber was particularly drawn to the prose style, with its numerous alliterations and word repetitions, but also to the impressionistic tale of a young boy lying in his back garden one summer evening in Knoxville, Tennessee. “You see,” Barber explained, “it expresses a child’s feeling of loneliness, wonder and lack of identity in that marginal world between twilight and sleep.” The composer weaves in musical effects suggesting a passing tram, buzzing insects, the spray of a garden hose or adults chatting outside their houses. Though Barber hailed from Pennsylvania rather than Tennessee, he and Agee were both five years old in 1915. Barber’s own father was dying at the time of composition, and overcome by the poem’s gentle nostalgia, Barber finished the score in just a few days. Serge Koussevitzky conducted the premiere in 1948 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Steber as soloist.