Marine Barracks Annex, Washington DC -- “Adagio for Strings.”
This iconic work by American composer Samuel Barber is considered one of the most powerful and recognizable Classical pieces of the 20th century, drawing so much emotion with its arching lament and climactic, sustained chords. The Marine Chamber Orchestra will perform this masterpiece as part of its first concert of the season this Sunday. In celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, the concert will feature a lineup of works by influential American composers.
The concert will take place at 2 p.m., Sunday, March 22 at Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center on the campus of Northern Virginia Community College Alexandria. The performance is free and open to the public; no tickets are required.
Program
The program will begin with Suite in E for String Orchestra, Opus 63, by Arthur Foote, the first person to receive a Master of Arts degree in music from an American university and a leading member of the “Boston Six”— a group of composers who moved away from European music styles and characteristics.
Following Foote, the orchestra will perform the world première of Kenji Bunch’s new composition, E pluribus, commissioned by “The President’s Own” Marine Chamber Orchestra in celebration of America 250. Bunch wrote the following about the new piece:
To celebrate this milestone, I searched for folk songs that would have existed in America contemporaneously with the Declaration. The wealth and breadth of this material impressed upon me the vast diversity that was already evident at this formative moment, and indeed the motto of this great experiment since that time was E pluribus unum: “out of many, one.”
The songs Bunch set for the work include Mihqelsuwakonutomon (She reminisces), recorded in 1890 on a wax cylinder during field research with the Peskotomuhkati tribe in eastern Maine; Gullah Geechee Folk Song, a song which had been passed down for generations from a teenager enslaved by white colonists in the 1760s; La Bamba (Son Jarocho), a song familiar to many due to the popular rock’n’roll version, but actually an ancient song from the region of Mexico that is now part of Texas; and Soldier’s Joy, a lively Scottish fiddle tune likely imported by the British army during the Revolutionary War.
The program will continue with Andante moderato from String Quartet in G by Florence Price, the first African American woman to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra. According to violinist Master Sgt. Christopher Franke, “we are finally able to take into account Florence Price’s full body of work, and it’s quite impressive given all she must have dealt with. You can close your eyes and just listen to her music while also delving deep into how the composition was created.”
After delving deep into the Andante, the concert will conclude with Barber’s String Quartet in B minor, Opus 11, one of the most recognizable quartets in the American orchestral repertoire, with “Adagio for Strings” embedded as the second movement. Barber composed the Adagio at the age of 26 while living in Austria. He was so proud of it that he wrote to a friend: “I have just finished the slow movement of my quartet today—it is a knockout!”
Although they are from different eras, these composers all wrote “knockouts,” and the Marine Chamber Orchestra is pleased to perform these American masterpieces to celebrate the United States Semiquincentennial.