Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber is one of the best-known and most beloved concert works of all time. Derived from the middle movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11, it was premiered in 1938 by Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra. As the US struggled to emerge from the Great Depression and the prospect of war in Europe loomed, Adagio for Strings provided its audiences with a space to access their emotions, through radio broadcasts and performances across the Americas. 

For many listeners, the Adagio has long served as a cultural signpost for mourning. It was performed at Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s funeral, after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and at the BBC Proms in the wake of 9/11.  

The piece has also been sampled and remixed extensively by pop and electronic producers, where its long melodic lines and powerful harmonic swells create a sense of ecstatic joy. Above all, the Adagio offers a profound moment of heightened emotion, with its deliberate simplicity allowing for listeners to dwell in the full range of human experience. 

Wise Music is pleased to recognize this work’s unique position in the history of classical music and in the hearts of its listeners. We present a selection of works suitable for programming alongside Adagio for Strings. These works dialogue with Barber’s masterpiece through connections of instrumentation, style, allusion, and heart. 

 

Strings with Soloist 

David Amram, Theme and Variations on Red River Valley (1996), 15’ 

In Theme and Variations on Red River Valley, “the Renaissance man of American music” David Amram (Boston Globe) explores a classic of American music, the folk tune “Red River Valley.” After a gorgeous string introduction, a solo flute articulates the theme. While the melody of “Red River Valley” is variably brought out or obscured over the course of each ensuing variation, the entire work maintains an honest, affectionate engagement with its source material.   

 

Henry Cowell, Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10 (1955), 8’ 

Henry Cowell’s Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10 draws upon early American hymnody and shape note singing. This repertoire has a strikingly inclusive ethos, stemming from both its notation—intended for non-experts to read—and tradition of all being welcome to join in singing. In this concise piece for solo oboe and strings, Cowell interprets both the harmonic language of hymns and energetic quasi-canonic writing of shape note “fuguing tunes” to create an appealing work that shares Adagio for Strings’ directness of expression and archaic flavors. 

 

Aaron Jay Kernis, Lament and Prayer (1995), 25’ 

In Lament and Prayer, Aaron Jay Kernis concludes a series of works that cry out against war, suffering, and genocide. Through a core call-and-response between the violin soloist and string orchestra, Lament and Prayer sounds “a kind of cantorial mournfulness,” with “liquid string harmonies, anguished scurrying, and major outbursts” underpinning the expressive solo moments (The New York Times). With ongoing genocides in the world today, Lament and Prayer offers musical healing to those in mourning and experiencing trauma. 

 

Missy Mazzoli, Dark with Excessive Bright (2018), 13’ 

Like Barber in Adagio for Strings, Missy Mazzoli invokes echoes of Renaissance repertoires in Dark with Excessive Bright. As she wrote this concerto for double bass, Mazzoli imagined the 1580s instrument of world premiere soloist Maxime Bibeau “as a historian, an object that collected the music of the passing centuries in the twists of its neck and the fibers of its wood.” The title of the work is drawn from a description of God given in Milton’s Paradise Lost, which Mazzoli found evocative of the “dark but heartrending sound of the double bass itself.” This bittersweet quality is an apt companion for the Adagio, extending its tug on listeners’ heartstrings into more active sonic territory. In addition to the original version for string orchestra and double bass, Dark with Excessive Bright is available in an alternate scoring for solo violin and strings. 

 

Bring Forth the Harp 

Mark Adamo, Regina Coeli (2007), 8’ 

Regina Coeli is scored for harp soloist and strings and serves as an “aural meditation on the mother of Jesus as the Queen of Heaven.” Its melancholic opening leads into a warm, lush harp and string texture, creating a beautiful modern entry into the long tradition of art focused on Mary’s role as a sympathetic intercessor on behalf of humanity. Like Adagio, Regina Coeli is a derivative work, originally one of four movements that Adamo conceived through “ransacking sacred and secular texts” for angels to inspire his harp concerto. 

 

Bright Sheng, Never Far Away (2008), 24’ 

Bright Sheng’s Never Far Away draws its title from an old saying: “If your native culture is still the inspiration of your work, you are never far away from your motherland.” In this harp concerto, Sheng sources material from Chinese folk tunes, which he combines with elements of the Western symphonic tradition. This creates “an evolving musical style, fused from several different ones, expressive enough […] to comfortably and effectively communicate [his] musical thoughts.” Such fusion is done with clear affection and care, with an undercurrent of longing for the composer's homeland. This yearning is particularly strongly evoked in the first movement, which is “inspired by a Chinese folk song on a young girl’s longing, under the moonlight, for her far-away lover.”   

 

Sarah Kirkland Snider, Drink the Wild Ayre (2024), 12’ 

Sarah Kirkland Snider originally composed Drink the Wild Ayre for string quartet and later created a version for string orchestra, as Barber did with his Adagio—in Snider’s case, the addition of harp brings an additional sparkle to the larger version. Lilting rhythms articulated in pulsating, oscillating figures across the ensemble create a sense of freedom and adventure. Drink the Wild Ayre nods to both the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote from which its title is drawn and the pioneering legacy of the Emerson String Quartet, who commissioned the original version for their farewell tour. 

 

String Orchestra Classics 

John Adams, Shaker Loops (1978), 26’ 

John Adams’ Shaker Loops draws its title partially from Adams’ experience of growing up near a defunct Shaker colony in New Hampshire. Though “Shaker” was originally used as a pejorative term for members of a Quaker church, as Adams observes, it “nevertheless summons up the vision of these otherwise pious and industrious souls caught up in the ecstatic frenzy of a dance that culminated in an epiphany of physical and spiritual transcendence.” For Adams, the tension between this and the “orderly mechanistic universe of Minimalism” provides the beating heart of the work. Shaker Loops provides a stylistic contrast to Adagio for Strings in many ways, but the two share a sharp focus and both elicit intense emotional—even spiritual—experiences. 

 

Gabriela Lena Frank, Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout (2001), 24’ 

Gabriela Lena Frank’s Leyendas draws inspiration from “the idea of mestizaje as envisioned by Peruvian writer José María Arguedas, where cultures can coexist without the subjugation of one by the other.” It mixes “elements from the western classical and Andean musical traditions” over six dynamic movements. Leyendas evokes a wide range of Andean cultural icons, from the zampoña panpipe to the Incan chasqui runner, professional mourners known as lloronas to flirtatious romanceros singing love songs. The rhythmic energy and infectious playfulness of Leyendas offers a compelling contrast to Adagio for Strings and a can rousingly close out a concert half. 

 

Henryk Górecki, Three Pieces in Old Style (1963), 10’ 

In Three Pieces in Old Style, Henryk Górecki accomplished a similarly deliberate and effective simplicity as Barber’s Adagio. In Górecki’s case, he wrote the work in response to a friendly challenge from a colleague that his music lacked melody. No such criticism can be leveled at these Three Pieces, which interweave an anonymous 16th-century Polish song and a Polish folk dance to create a beautiful trio. It moves from a slow, singing textural build to a lively dance reminiscent of early Stravinsky before settling into a mournful, chorale-like conclusion.