biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1910–81)
|
| biography:
| Composer, born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, USA. From a musical family, he decided on his career in childhood and attended the Curtis Institute of Music (1924–34). There he wrote the orchestral works The School for Scandal and Music for a Scene from Shelley, which gained him attention in America and Europe. His Adagio for Strings, premiered by Toscanini in 1938, was an immediate hit and remains his best-known score. In the late 1930s he joined the Curtis faculty, then left teaching and served in the military (1942). After the war he shared a house in Mt Kisco, NY with composer Gian-Carlo Menotti, who wrote the libretto to Barber's opera Vanessa (1958). His music, long popular with listeners, is marked by a classical clarity often joined to a late-Romantic wistfulness; later work, such as the Piano Concerto (1963, Pulitzer), uses more modernistic techniques without giving up his basic expressiveness. Antony and Cleopatra, written for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera (1966), was a celebrated failure, although later productions of a revised version fared better. |
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