Symphony no. 2

Abstract

Picture Samuel Barber in 1933, barely past twenty, having his Overture to The School for Scandal" premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra Picture his "Adagio for Strings:, championed by Toscanini a couple of years later, touching its audiences so deeply that it eventually, becomes a standard "in memonam" piece. A phenomanal success, expecially tor an American composer at that time. ir 0 , A decade later America finds herself at war. Barber, world-famous composer and now a Corporal in the US Air Force, is commissioned by that branch of the service to compose a symphony. 1 he Corporal flies from one air base to the next in search of ideas for the new Second Symphony, which is premiered by Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony to critical acclaim. Twenty years pass. We find Barber at his publisher s office, tearing up the parts to his Second Symphony. . „ Why? The composer's own explanation, that it is not a good work", remains frustrating and unsatisfactory. The wartime occasion called for a large-scale work, full of descriptive musical references to air combat, bold harmonies and a patriotic message. Perhaps this ran counter to Barber's natural tendencies. His most successful orchestral works are short pieces. He was never interested in making musical pictures a la Richard Strauss. Harmonically he never ventured beyond the Second Symphony's bitonalities. As a patriotic statement thepiece fails utterly. All this might have helped drive Barber to his act of destruction. If we honor Barber's wish to understand his Second Symphony as "absolute music" and look at it with a clinical eye, we can ot course find flaws. We can also find three classically constructed movements which complement one another well, we can find skillful counterpoint, logical harmony, sophisticated thematic development and inspired lyrical themes. It all depends on what we look for. r u , , But Barber was much more than a composer ot absolute music . He was the kind of tone poet who could capture perfectly the essence of his subject material. Sheridan's wit sparkles through the Overture to the School for Scandal", the First Essay is musical rhetoric at its noblest, and Barber's music emerges from Shelley's lines as if Shelley himself had dreamed it The same poetry permeates the Second Symphony..It evokes the majesty of flight, the terror of war, the loneliness of the skies at night, the triumph of victory. For this reason above all, Samuel Barber s Second Symphony deserves a better fate than the oblivion assigned to it by its own composer.