Classical Music | Baritone

Recorded on 08/12/2009, uploaded on 11/08/2011

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Samuel Barber is perhaps the most gifted composer of vocal music yet seen in America. Despite being remarkably well-read in English literature, he was also versed in the writings of the most eminent French, German and Italian poets, and showed a keen sensitivity to his chosen text when setting it to music. Among Barber’s vocal music, Mélodies passagères (“Passing melodies”), is a cycle of five songs based on poems by the German poet Rainer Marie Rilke. Composed in two parts during 1950-51, it contains the only songs in which Barber made use of poems in a language other than English—in this case, French. The first, fourth and fifth songs of the cycle were composed first, in 1950, and were premiered by the soprano Eileen Farrell, accompanied by Barber himself, at a concert in Washington D.C. in April 1951. The other two songs were composed that same month. The cycle in its entirety was then premiered in Paris by Pierre Bernac and Francis Poulenc in February 1952.

Though Barber’s vocal music to this point was largely influenced by the extensive German lieder tradition before him, the songs of Mélodies passagères is tempered with the stylistic traits of the great French composers, perhaps drawn forth by the texts themselves. “Puisque tout passe” (“Since all is passing”) opens the cycle, and one of its lines grants the cycle its title. Cleverly disguised within the song’s enchanting fabric, Barber makes use of his proficient skill at counterpoint by constructing the accompaniment from canonic entries of the vocal melody’s opening notes. Barber masterfully captures the imagery of a swan gliding elegantly across the water in “Un cygne” as rippling arpeggios and tremolos depict the melancholy scene of Rilke’s text. “Tombeau dans un parc” (“Grave in a park”) is solemn with a harsh and cold austerity created by the open intervals of the accompaniment. Against this severe background, the vocal melody, however, gives a passionate intonation of Rilke’s poem. The vocal melody of the fourth song, “Le clocher chante” (“The bell tower sings”), is more like a recitative than the preceding. The piano accompaniment, however, continues in the word-painting already heard by depicting the sounds of bells. In the final song, “Départ” (“Departure”), the poet’s parting from his beloved is intoned against the dissonant accompaniment provided by the piano.      Joseph DuBose

The Steans Music Institute is the Ravinia Festival's professional studies program for young musicians.