Samuel Barber was born on March 9, 1910 in West Chester, Pennsylvania into a distinguished Irish-American family.  His father was a doctor and his mother was a pianist.  His aunt was Louise Homer, a leading contralto with the Metropolitan Opera.  Her husband, a composer of American art songs, was Sidney Homer.  Showing his interest in music at an early age and most-likely influenced by his aunt, Barber composed his first piece of music at the age of 7 and attempted to write his first opera at the age of 10.  At the age of 14, Barber entered Philadelphia’s newly founded The Curtis Institute of Music.  While at Curtis he studied piano with Isabelle Vengerova, composition with Rosario Scalero, singing with Emilio de Gogorza, and conducting with Fritz Reiner.  It was during his time there that he met fellow student Gian Carlo Menotti, with whom he formed not only an essential professional relationship, but also a personal one as the two were lifelong partners.

After graduating, Barber studied singing in Vienna and traveled throughout Europe thanks to winning the 1935 American Prix de Rome.  His recitals, radio broadcasts, and a recording of his song Dover Beach for voice and string quartet soon attracted the attention of the era’s leading conductors including, most famously, Arturo Toscanini.  In 1938, when Barber was only 28 years old, Toscanini directed the NBC Symphony Orchestra in Barber’s Adagio for Strings, which had been arranged from Barber’s String Quartet, op.11.  The Adagio for Strings has become his most recognizable and beloved compositions, being used in films such as Platoon, The Elephant Man, El Norte, and Lorenzo’s Oil.

From 1939 to 1942, Barber taught composition at The Curtis Institute of Music.  During World War II, Barber served in the Army Air Corps, completing military training and clerical work during the day and composing at home at night.  During this time he composed his Second Symphony, which was originally titled Symphony Dedicated to the Air Forces, and Commando March, which was written especially for the United States Army.  After the war, Barber wrote his first ballet, Medea, for Martha Graham’s dance company and was commissioned to write vocal pieces such as Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Mélodies passagères, and the Hermit Songs.

When the Metropolitan Opera approached Barber to write an opera, he turned to his partner Menotti, a celebrated opera composer and librettist himself, to write the libretto.  Using Menotti’s story and libretto, Barber wrote his first opera, Vanessa, which opened in 1958 to great success.  It earned him a Pulitzer Prize and election into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  Riding on the success of Vanessa, Barber and Menotti collaborated again in 1959 to write the chamber opera A Hand of Bridge.

With the opening of the new Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Opera turned to Barber again to write the opera Antony and Cleopatra to kick off their 1966 season in the new opera house.  Based on Shakespeare’s play and with libretto, direction, and design by famed opera director Franco Zeffirelli, the opera was not well received.  By all accounts, it was the opera’s over-elaborate direction and mechanical malfunctions were largely to blame.  Believing that the opera contained some of his best work, Barber spent the next decade revising the piece with Menotti’s help. In 1975 the revised version was performed by the Juilliard School, with Menotti directing a much more intimate, musically developed, and shorter Antony and Cleopatra. 

The initial failure of Antony and Cleopatra weighed heavily on Barber and though he wrote a handful of pieces after its premiere, his work slowed down quite a bit.  With his health declining Barber completed the song cycles Despite and Still, which was first performed by Leontyne Price, and Three Songs, written for the German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, as well as his last major work, Third Essay for Orchestra.  Samuel Barber died of cancer in 1981, at the age of 70, with his longtime companion, Menotti, was at his bedside.

Photo Credit: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USZ62-54231]