Adagio for Strings
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Adagio for Strings is a piece of classical music for string orchestra arranged by Samuel Barber in 1938. It is Barber's most popular piece, to the point where he is known almost exclusively for the piece, at least among the general public.
It is Barber's own arrangement of the second movement of his three-movement String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11. composed in 1936. It was given its first performance by Arturo Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra on November 5th, 1938 in New York. The composer modified the piece in 1967 into an eight-part choral work called Agnus Dei ("Lamb of God"), a favorite of choirs all over the world.
The piece uses an arch form, employing and then inverting, expanding, and varying a stepwise ascending melody.
Use in popular culture
The ballet, Adagio for Strings, choreographed for American Ballet Theatre by John Meehan to Barber's music, had its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House, 8 April 1980.Most famously, the music was used repeatedly as the theme for Platoon to add to the film's power and emotional intensity. However, Platoon wasn't the first film to use Barber's most popular piece. It was in David Lynch's The Elephant Man (1980) that it made its debut in cinema, had it been added to the final scene of the film to induce the same feeling. A full list of movies that have included Adagio for Strings on their soundtracks can be found on IMDb.
The Agnus Dei has been heard in such different places as the computer game Homeworld to a 1992 episode of One Life to Live in which Megan is dying from lupus, to the part of Crime of the Century where Bruno Richard Hauptmann is bound to die in the electric chair, to the 10th season premiere of the television show ER (episode number 204 "The Lost", when Dr. Luka Kovač prays).
The orchestral piece is often featured in television programmes such as The Simpsons episode "Strong Arms of the Ma", South Park episode "Up the Down Steroid", and in the BBC's Fast Show and automotive program Top Gear. The piece seemed appropriate for a memorial concert following the September 11, 2001 attacks, which a portion of the piece was also heard in the HBO Memorial Day special, In Memoriam — New York City 9/11/01.
Adagio for Strings was used as a part of the 2000 Santa Clara Vanguard Drum and Bugle Corps production entitled The Age of Reverence, as well as the Reading Buccaneers Drum and Bugle Corps' 2005 championship show entitled Variations in B.
- [William Orbit "Adagio for Strings (Ferry Corsten Remix)" (2000)] ([file info])
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- * Problems listening to the file? See [Media helpmedia help].
It is also referred to in a key scene in Alice Sebold's bestselling 2002 novel The Lovely Bones.
Heard in varitation in the video game Homeworld.
Remixed by DJ Tiësto on the album Parade Of Athletes (2004)
Trivia
- Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Commander of UN forces in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, called the piece "the purest expression in music of the suffering, mutilation, rape and murder of 800,000 Rwandans."
- The piece was played at the funerals of US Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, as well as at those of Princess Grace and Rainier III, Prince of Monaco.
- In 2004, Barber's masterpiece was voted the "saddest classical" work ever by listeners of the BBC's Today programme, ahead of Dido's Lament from Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell, and the "Adagietto" movement from Gustav Mahler's 5th symphony.
- The version of the piece performed by London Symphony Orchestra is the biggest selling classical piece on iTunes.
- An arrangement of the piece is used by the Santa Clara Vanguard for on-field warm-ups.
Audio
References
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