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Samuel Barber, An American Composer On March 9, 1910 in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Samuel Osborne Barber II was born. His father was a prominent doctor. Barber’s musical ability emerged at an early age. At the age of 6 he began studying the piano. At the age of 7, Barber wrote his first composition and at the age of 10 he attempted his first opera and served as a church organist while still in his teens, and developed his attractive baritone voice to the point where he thought to become a professional singer. At the age of 14 he was one of the first students to attend the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in which he studied composition with Rosario Scalero, piano with Isabelle Vengerova, and voice with Emilio de Gogorza. Later on, he also studied conducting with Fritz Reiner and eventually returned to the Institute to teach orchestration and composition before he became a fellow of the American Academy in Rome in 1935. Throughout Samuel Barber’s teenage years he began composing seriously and by the age of 23, his orchestral piece Overture to the School for Scandal was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. While at the Curtis Institute, Barber met Gian Carlo Menotti in 1928, another American composer with whom he would for a lifelong personal and professional relationship. Barber also shared a home with Menotti near Mt. Kisco, NY after Barber returned from serving in the Army Air Corp during World War II. Most of Barber’s post-war works were written there including his Second Symphony. Although Samuel Barber is most known for his famous composition Adagio for Strings completed in 1938, Barber has also written many other works and compositions. Barber’s three operas are his full scale opera, Vanessa, with a libretto, or otherwise known as the written lyrics to an opera, written by Menotti, his chamber opera, A Hand of Bridge, written for four singers and chamber orchestra, and his second full scale opera, Antony and Cleopatra, with a libretto written by Franco Zefferelli, the stage designer of the new Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center in 1966 which was the opera to be commissioned to open the new opera house. Barber also composed two ballet scores which are the Martha Graham ballet Medea and Souvenirs.
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