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The Composer and His Music
Oxford University Press
August 2003
On Sale: August 14, 2003
Featuring: Samuel Barber
608 pages
ISBN: 0195090586
EAN: 9780195090581
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Non-Fiction Biography
Samuel Barber (1910-1981) was one of the most important and
honored American composers of the twentieth century. Writing
in a great variety of musical forms--symphonies, concertos,
operas, vocal music, chamber music--he infused his works
with poetic lyricism and gave tonal language and forms new
vitality. His rich legacy includes such famous compositions
as the Adagio for Strings, the orchestral song Knoxville:
Summer of 1915, three concertos, and his two operas, the
Pulitzer Prize-winning Vanessa and Antony and Cleopatra, a
commissioned work that opened the new Metropolitan Opera
House at Lincoln Center. Generously documented by letters,
sketchbooks, original musical manuscripts, and interviews
with friends, colleagues and performers with whom he worked,
this is the first book to cover Barber's entire career and
all of his compositions. The biographical material on Barber
is closely interspersed with a discussion of his music,
displaying Barber's creative processes at work from his
early student compostions to his mature masterpieces. Heyman
also provides the social context in which this major
composer grew: his education, how he built his career, the
evolving musical tastes of American audiences, his
relationship to musical giants like Serge Koussevitzky, and
the role of radio in the promotion of his music. A testament
to the significance of the new Romanticism, Samuel Barber
stands as a model biography of an important American musical
figure.
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