The Strange Genius of the Adagio for Strings

[First published in WRTI’s Arts Desk 2 Nov 2015] Samuel Barber Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings didn’t start out the way we know it now. In this feature for WRTI, I look at the inescapable strangeness of this work that is now one of the most heard and most moving pieces in the repertoire. https://kilesmith.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/ad2barberadagio110215.mp3 When Samuel Barber wrote Adagio for Strings, it was for string quartet, and it was the middle movement of three. That explains a goo [...]