Adagio for Strings, Op. 11

Genesis

Barber's Adagio for Strings originated as the second movement in his String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11, composed in 1936. Barber was spending a summer in Europe with his partner Gian Carlo Menotti, an Italian composer who was a fellow student at The Curtis Institute of Music; he composed the Adagio during this time.[1] In the original it follows a violently contrasting first movement, and is succeeded by a brief reprise of this music.
In January 1938 Barber sent the piece to Arturo Toscanini. The conductor returned the score without comment, and Barber was annoyed and avoided the conductor. Subsequently Toscanini sent word through a friend that he was planning to perform the piece and had returned it simply because he had already memorized it. It was reported that Toscanini did not look at the music again until the day before the premiere. The work was given its first performance in a radio broadcast by Arturo Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra on November 5, 1938 in New York.
The composer also transcribed the piece in 1967 for eight-part choir, as a setting of the Agnus Dei ("Lamb of God").

                                Analysis

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The piece uses an arch form, employing and then inverting, expanding, and varying a stepwise ascending melody. It is in the key of B-flat minor and is in 4/2 time, although the meter varies throughout.
The long, flowing melodic line moves freely between the voices in the string choir; for example, the first section of the Adagio begins with the principal melodic cell played by first violins, but ends with its restatement by violas, transposed down a fifth. Violas continue with a variation on the melodic cell in the second section; the basses are silent for this and the next section. The expansive middle section begins with cellos playing the principal melodic cell in mezzo-soprano range; as the section builds, the string choir moves up the scale to their highest registers, culminating in a fortissimo-forte climax followed by sudden silence. A brief series of mournful chords serve as a harmonic transition to return to the tonic, reintroducing the bass section. The last section is a restatement of the original theme, with an inversion of the second piece of the melodic cell, played by first violins and violas in unison; the piece ends with first violins slowly restating the first five notes of the melody in alto register, holding the last note over a brief silence and a fading accompaniment.