# Barber's Adagio for Strings



## Tapkaara (Apr 18, 2006)

I usually fall asleep listening to the radio. Last night, at about 3:00 am, I awoke to Barber's Adagio for Strings being played. Half-asleep in the absolute still of a mid-December night, I was transfixed by this music in a way I hadn't been previously. I have always loved it and I feel it is one of the single greatest compositions by an American composer. It is achingly, overwhelmingly beautiful. The fact that it is so well known and universally admired is a testament to the pure emotional impact the music has on just about anyone who hears it.

After the piece gently faded into nothing, I felt as if I had awaken to see a mournful ghost who vanished into the darkness of my room almost as quickly as he appeared. Maybe because I was in that "altered state" of being half-awake, I felt so unusually touched and saddened by what I heard. Also, the piece never sounded more perfect to me as it did in that moment.

What are your opinions about this work?


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

It saddens me that the music has been so massively overused and abused - but, hey, if you can make a buck out of that, what the hell.

It also exists in a choral version, setting the text of the Agnus Dei. It is a tough sing because much of it, if I remember rightly, is in 4/2 and, at a very slow tempo, it is years between barlines.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I still prefer the original version, the centre movement of his string quartet.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

Nice experience, Taapi. I'm glad you finally felt it that way. I was lucky enough to have seen this when I was about fifteen at a live performance by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra where I went to go see the Mozart concerto for two pianos, kv365 and this work I'd never heard of was on the bill. Oh, either this was the best behaved classical audience ever or I was truly in the trance I recall which was very similar to yours. Maybe it was because I'd gotten the tickets late and was at the very back of the lower section and was on the aisle and not surrounded; maybe it was the amazing performance of it; maybe it was the composition which is so wonderful. Either way, it was an experience and I try and relive it each time I hear it recorded or live but like a first-anything-good it is very difficult to do so.


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

Jeremy Marchant said:


> It saddens me that the music has been so massively overused and abused - but, hey, if you can make a buck out of that, what the hell.
> 
> It also exists in a choral version, setting the text of the Agnus Dei. It is a tough sing because much of it, if I remember rightly, is in 4/2 and, at a very slow tempo, it is years between barlines.


I have to agree. The first time I heard it it struck me in a wonderful yet sad way. But after that I just heard it over and over, in films, tv. It looses its power...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

A great work, and I believe it's used traditionally when a President of the USA dies. It's broadcast over the radio that that time. I know that occured when J.F. Kennedy died. Maestro Toscanini called this work "dolce e bella" (sweet and beautiful). Barber was the only living American composer whose music the old Italian championed, as far as I know...


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

I hope I'll get to enjoy it in a similar way eventually, at the moment whenever I hear it all I can think of are crappy war films, and it gets on my nerves. 

Someday, someday...


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## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

I like it a lot as well, it was one of the pieces that initially got me interested in classical music. I used to think that I actually didn't like classical at all, but that was just because I had only heard such a small amount of it (only the super-popular stuff, such as the intro. of Beethoven's 5th, Ride of the Valkyries, Hallelujah chorus, etc.). Not to say those are bad, but they are really overplayed and don't really fit my personal tastes very much. However, once I heard this and a couple of my now-favorite Beethoven pieces, I was hooked for life, and have amassed quite a collection of music since then!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

It's a great work, period. 

The people who must reject popular works will trash it, but hopefully we can get beyond that nonsense.


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