IT TOOK AMATEURS TO BRING IT OFF
                Finally, an Apt Centennial Tribute to Samuel Barber
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of June 2-9, 2010
                                                                  Vol. 12, No. 107
          Samuel Barber may yet get his due in this, his centenary year.
            He maintained a romantic-era style and harmonies which in his day were dismissed as ante-deluvean. He was often looked on as a one-hit composer (Adagio for Strings), pigeonholed alongside the one-hit likes of Tartini, Pachelbel, Bruch, Orff, Holst and Satie. Some critics regarded his two (!) Pulitzer Prizes in Music as a sign of Pulitzer’s retrospective view of musical evolution. His shyness and his distaste for publicity did not help, either; when he finally made a visit to Carmel Valley in Northern California for a staging of his comic one-acter “A Hand of Bridge” in the 1970s, he did it with reserve, devoid of media bulletins or press conferences, even though he ranked among the most prominent of living American composers. But he left a wealth of notable works: the bitter-sweet opera “Vanessa,” concertos for both piano and violin, “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” and a throbbing dramatic dance piece on mythology that Martha Graham retitled “Cave of the Heart”---my personal favorite.
            Sometimes it takes the amateurs to show the way to the professional musicians. It took an unfamiliar community chorus out of Walnut Creek to get the ball rolling to celebrate Barber (1910-81), performing most of his published non-orchestral choral works---a challenging array of mostly unaccompanied pieces---in one evening. These reflected various sides of Barber over four decades, performed by Voices of Musica Sacra (VMS). These selections proved  stimulating in their amplitude.
            There was his rousing Easter Chorale, with divisi chorus; the serene, Brahms-like “Virgin Martyrs” for women’s voices; the overlapping dual-choral “To Be Sung on the Water” with its haunting delicacy; and the shimmering beauty of “Sure on This Shining Night.” Inevitably we got the choral version of the Adagio for Strings, reworked as “Agnus Dei”---inevitably the hit of the concert.
            But I’m not certain he gets his due credit for the bolder harmonies in his Christmas chorus “Twelfth Night.” Nor his stark battle-field evocation for men and timpani, perfect for Memorial Day, “A Stopwatch and an Ordnance Map.” Again and again, themes of death found Barber at his most eloquent: “God’s Grandeur,” a mighty polyphonic piece for interwoven double chorus, where voices are like birds circling, rising in the sky; the tender consolation of “Let Down the Bars, O Death,” after Emily Dickinson; and the funereal march marking the finale of his largest-scale opera, “On the Death of Cleopatra.”
            Throughout, Barber emerges as a master, not just in selecting eloquent verses, but in wedding and welding his music  to the texts.
            The program was conceived by the resourceful and sensitive John Kendall Bailey, the young music director of this 40-voice group, which showed most of the strengths and weaknesses characteristic of community vocal ensembles. The singers outnumbered the audience two to one in the June 1 concert at the First Unitarian Universalist Church San Francisco, giving the concert-goers a rare treat comparable to semi-private command performances before royalty centuries ago. But ultimately, the essence was not the attendance count but rather the substance of the offering, presented with spirit and credibility.
            Still, there was one lingering regret: For lack of an orchestra, the VMS had to omit Barber’s final choral work, much praised but rarely heard: “The Lovers” (1979), after poems of Pablo Neruda. But with seven months still left in the centennial year, it might with luck yet  be performed.
            Voices of Musica Sacra repeat the all-Barber program June 4, 6, 8 in Walnut Creek, Berkeley, Lafayette. For info: Go online.

        ©Paul Hertelendy 2010
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           Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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