{"id":259,"date":"2012-08-12T18:29:55","date_gmt":"2012-08-12T17:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/?p=259"},"modified":"2012-08-12T18:29:55","modified_gmt":"2012-08-12T17:29:55","slug":"samuel-barber-in-the-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/?p=259","title":{"rendered":"Samuel Barber in the 21st Century"},"content":{"rendered":"

Samuel Barber Remembered: A Centenary Tribute<\/strong>\u00a0 Peter Dickinson University of Rochester Press\u00a0Many \u00a0middle-aged music lovers with a taste for powerful tonal orchestral music remember all too well the orthodoxy that ruled unshakeably throughout the 1960s. Such music was felt to be deeply unfashionable, and only rebarbative twelve-tone pieces (or compositions heavily influenced by this hegemony) held sway. The BBC under Sir William Glock was, of course, a bastion of this unyielding thinking, and composers such as Malcolm Arnold were shamefully neglected. A somewhat similar prejudice held sway in the United States, and few composers suffered this implacable demand for new fashion more than Samuel Barber. But how things have changed \u2013 and how unimportant such prejudices now seem, given that composers such as Barber and Arnold are now recognised as the Masters that they always were, while much of the once-fashionable music has fallen away. Not that such posthumous recognition does much good for Barber, who might be bemused (were he still alive) to see just how much more of a grip his compositions (other than the ubiquitous Adagio for Strings<\/em>) have attained in the 21st century, though recognition on the scale of Copland has remained elusive.<\/p>\n

Peter Dickinson’s fascinating, detailed book takes a prismatic approach to the composer’s achievement, and the word \u2018tribute\u2019 is well found \u2013 all aspects of the composers protean talent are examined here from a variety of perspectives, and the American composer\u2019s music (with its capacity for exquisite yearning beauty and muscular suppleness) is examined with skill and understanding \u2013 though a little pruning of the repetitive writing about the ubiquitous Adagio for Strings<\/em> would have been profitable. The composer\u2019s homosexuality and his relationship with fellow musician\/partner Gian Carlo Menotti are discreetly addressed. Particularly valuable are the interviews with fellow American composers such as William Schuman, which throw a fresh light onto a once neglected talent. But be warned: the book will cost you money \u2013 not just its cover price but to send you to acquire those Barber items you don’t possess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Samuel Barber Remembered: A Centenary Tribute\u00a0 Peter Dickinson University of Rochester Press\u00a0Many \u00a0middle-aged music lovers with a taste for powerful tonal orchestral music remember all too well the orthodoxy that ruled unshakeably throughout the 1960s. Such music was felt to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}