Adagio for Strings

Melancholic yet sensuous, Barber’s Adagio for Strings is a go-to score for occasions demanding solemn contemplation or national mourning. The brief work for string orchestra was composed on a request from conductor Arturo Toscanini, who was seeking a contemporary piece for his NBC Symphony Orchestra. Barber adapted the slow movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11 (1936), which he knew early on was a “knockout”. Though Toscanini was no great champion of modern American music, he introduced the Adagio and Barber’s Essay for Orchestra in a broadcast concert in 1938; two years later he took the Adagio on tour to England and Argentina. The work’s association with solace was established with a radio broadcast following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and continued with performances at the funerals of US presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy and in memorials after the attacks of 11 September 2001. The music’s driving element is a three-note motif that is passed around in a dialogue of string voices; dissonances build up and resolve with tremendous tension and release. Though Barber expressed ambivalence about the Adagio’s success, he fashioned a choral arrangement of it, the 1967 Agnus Dei. The Adagio received a notable boost with an appearance in the 1986 Vietnam War film Platoon, and in the early 2000s, an electronic dance version became an unexpected hit.