Samuel Barber's Breathtaking Adagio for Strings

The music of Samuel Barber is monumental—especially the Adagio for Strings—a little later translated into an Agnus Dei.  We’re talking about a piece for strings and choir that takes your soul to the lowest of low places and revs it up to a new height. It has to indirectly relate to the Lord and his mercy as the people fall and fail daily. The harmonies and the structure of the whole piece seems to be on the up and up, always ascending to some place, arriving there, and then staying there for all of five seconds before going onto another upward harmonic structure.

Another great and interesting facet of the piece is the fact that the harmonic structures keep going up and up as though you are ascending  to heaven on a cloud. It’s like picking up speed and that speed accelerates faster and faster with each beat. Also the harmonic exploration is dazzlingly rampant in this piece. He will go to one key after leaving another and explore all the melodic possibilities within this key. That’s a good thing!  The soundscape is so breathtaking that it makes you stop and take in the sound and let yourself be taken into a different dimension. The piece sounds like the piece one would listen to when they are at the end of their rope and ready to jump off the edge of a cliff on a foggy, cloudy day. You’re about ready to make the jump, but something’s holding you back. You’re suddenly overcome by the beauty of the life you’re throwing away. The depths of seriousness and the depths of pain and sadness just blow people away—at least people who enjoy classical music. Maybe it’s a piece that is on the radio as one is dying, hopefully giving rise to the eternal life. The range of the instruments that go up climax at a brilliant high point, almost screeching like the brightest stars and then the harmonies go right back down to the F-centered tonality. Talk about being your soul being shifted up to the highest point and then brought back down to the lowest place. It is a kind of roller-coaster but one of beauty. It’s like you’re in an airplane that reaches high above the clouds of the heavens and places you at the foot of Jesus, then zaps you back down to the utmost corner—like heaven was just a tease or a joke. It reminds you of the pain you’ve felt in life and keeps you there until it senses you’ve had enough. As if the enormous highs and lows in the strings are enough, the piece ends with a half-finished version of the first theme, ending on an F major chord. Talk about a cliff hanger! The end is unresolved. It’s sort of a spoiler. Maybe this is the way it’s meant to be. Maybe there is meant to be left a moment of suspense. The chord supposedly is a standing tower that is enough to justify the end. All in all, the piece is just beautiful and breathtaking and I would love to hear this live in concert!