Samuel Osborne Barber II (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981) was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings became his most famous composition and is widely considered a masterwork of modern classical music.
Leonard Slatkin Conducts the BBC Orchestra on September 15 2001 in honor of those who lost their lives a few days prior. Visuals from BBC's 'Last Night of the Proms' and ABC's 'Report from ground zero'.
Comment from AUVIEX, poster of the video on youtube"
Adagio for Strings" is a work for string orchestra, arranged by the American composer Samuel Barber from his first string quartet. It is Barber's most popular piece.
Barber's "Adagio for Strings" originated as the second movement in his String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11, composed in 1936. In the original it follows a violently contrasting first movement, and is succeeded by a brief reprise of this music.
In January of 1938 Barber sent the piece to Arturo Toscanini. The conductor returned the score without comment, and Barber was annoyed and avoided the conductor. Subsequently Toscanini sent word through a friend that he was planning to perform the piece and had returned it simply because he had already memorized it. It was reported that Toscanini did not look at the music again until the day before the premiere. The work was given its first performance in a radio broadcast by Arturo Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra on November 5, 1938 in New York.
The composer also transliterated the piece in 1967 for eight-part choir, as a setting of the Agnus Dei ("Lamb of God"). It has since become renowned as a masterwork of the modern choral repertory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adagio_for_Strings
