adagio for strings

Adagio for Strings is a piece of classical music for string orchestra composed by Samuel Barber in 1938. It is Barber's most popular piece, to the point where he is known almost exclusively for the piece, at least among the general public.

It is Barber's own arrangement of part of the last movement of his two-movement String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11, composed in 1936 (where it follows a violently contrasting first movement and is immediately succeeded by a brief reprise of the first movement material). It was given its first performance by Arturo Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra on November 5th, 1938 in New York. The composer modified the piece in 1967 into an eight-part choral work called Agnus Dei ("Lamb of God"), a favorite of choirs all over the world.

The piece uses an arch form, employing and then inverting, expanding, and varying a stepwise ascending melody.

Adagio for Strings in culture

In motion pictures

Most famously, the music was used repeatedly as the theme for Platoon to add to the film's power and emotional intensity. However, Platoon wasn't the first film to use Barber's most popular piece. It was in David Lynch's The Elephant Man (1980) that it made its debut in cinema, having been added to the final scene of the film to induce the same feeling.

A full list of movies that have included Adagio for Strings on their soundtracks can be found on IMDb.[1]

In television programmes

Adagio for Strings is often featured in television programmes such as The Simpsons episode "Strong Arms of the Ma", South Park episode "Up the Down Steroid", and in the BBC's Fast Show and automotive program Top Gear as well as Channel 4's comedy series Spaced. The piece is played at the end of Red Dwarf season 8 final episode "Only The Good", during the final deterioration of the ship. In most of these cases, it's actually used to humorous effect. The piece seemed appropriate for a memorial concert following the September 11, 2001 attacks, which a portion of the piece was also heard in the HBO Memorial Day special, In Memoriam — New York City 9/11/01.

The vocal Agnus Dei has been heard in a 1992 episode of One Life to Live in which Megan is dying from lupus, in a part of Crime of the Century where Bruno Richard Hauptmann is bound to die in the electric chair, and in the episode number 203 "The Lost" of the 10th season of ER, when Dr. Luka Kovač prays.

Modern remakes

Electronica

Adagio for strings has been one of the classical pieces that has most widely been transformed into electronic music, and arguably the many adagio for strings versions have made adagio for strings one of the most famous tunes in electronic music alltogether.

The piece has been made into electronical dance music tracks by the following notable artists.

• Antiloop ("In My Mind", 1997)
• William Orbit (a remix by Ferry Corsten became very popular internationally in 1999) #4 UK
• Tiësto (2005) #37 UK
• K-Complex
• Delerium ("Eternal Odyssey" from 2003's Chimera)
• Skip Raiders ("Another Day featuring Jada", 2000)
• O.T. Quartet ("Hold That Sucker Down", 1995)

Other

In 2004 adagio for strings was given the classical treatment by the British classical band Bond, recorded in their album Classified.

In video games

Agnus Dei is used in the computer game Homeworld, during the third level of the game, where the player's homeworld of Kharak is burned by a firestorm caused by an alien race. It also plays during the opening scene of the game.

Other

Adagio for Strings was used as a part of the 2000 Santa Clara Vanguard Drum and Bugle Corps production entitled The Age of Reverence, as well as the Reading Buccaneers Drum and Bugle Corps' 2005 championship show entitled Variations in B.

The ballet, Adagio for Strings, choreographed for American Ballet Theatre by John Meehan to Barber's music of the same title, had its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House on 8 April 1980.^[1]

It is also referred to in a key scene in Alice Sebold's bestselling 2002 novel The Lovely Bones.

Trivia

• Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Commander of UN forces in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, called the piece "the purest expression in music of the suffering, mutilation, rape and murder of 800,000 Rwandans." ^[2]

• The piece was played at the funerals of US Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, as well as at those of Princess Grace and Rainier III, Prince of Monaco.

• In 2004, Barber's masterpiece was voted the "saddest classical" work ever by listeners of the BBC's Today programme, ahead of Dido's Lament from Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell, and the "Adagietto" movement from Gustav Mahler's 5th symphony.

• The version of the piece performed by London Symphony Orchestra was, for a time, the highest selling classical piece on iTunes. ^[3]

• The Santa Clara Vanguard's on-field brassline warm-up is loosely based on the piece and can be heard here along with the battery performing their warm-up.

Audio

• BBC.co.uk Sample from the BBC
• modern-strings.de Sample from the Modern-Strings
• modern-strings.de MP3 from the Modern-Strings

References

1. ^ ADAGIO FOR STRINGS. American Ballet Theatre.
2. ^ Romeo A. Dallaire, Brent Beardsley (October 2004). Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Carroll & Graf, 322. ISBN 0-7867-1487-5.
3. ^ Big demand for classical downloads is music to ears of record industry. Guardian Unlimited.