It is Arnolds brooding contemplation/lament on the state of the world(read Europe) and society that has come up post-enlightenment and in the early/middle period of the industrial revolution. So now I will give my two cents on it.Matthew Arnold composed this while at the beach of the same name and while the opening lines describe the beach, the poem itself is about something else entirely. Than a few months ago I happened upon Samuel Barbers setting of the poem to music which put the poem firmly back in my mind to dwell from then on. I first heard of this poem in class over a year ago and I thought to myself well that was in interesting piece before putting it out of my mind and moving on to either The Death of Ivan Ilyich or The Metamorphosis. Dover Beach is a different poem for me because I think it is one of the most beautiful written in the english language and I disagree and/or am troubled with some, if not all, of what it is saying. On the same admission I do not usually like things I do not like-this will be an exception. I guess I will confess I do not willingly read things that I sharply disagree with or know I wont like.
Pure chamber music was never Barber's strong point. The Serenade has never been one of Barber's most popular pieces, but this arrangement has proved far more popular than the original quartet version, performances of which are exceedingly rare.
Schirmer, Barber's sole publisher, originally published it in 1942 they brought the work out again in 1944, at which time the composer included some minimal notations that would permit a string orchestra performance with double bass. And yet there is something mysterious, even tragic in this little work, a unique expressive seed out of which Barber's later, more developed music would come: perhaps that is what caused Uncle Sidney to question the use of the blithe moniker 'Serenade.' (The orchestral works Music for a Scene from Shelley and the first Essay for Orchestra are the earliest examples.) G. I say 'brink' deliberately, since in some ways the work is extremely conservative, not least in its well-worn title (at the urging of his uncle Sidney Homer, Barber would sharpen and modernize his titles very soon), its firm roots in late-Romantic European composition, and its strict classical forms. Written at the tender age of eighteen, Samuel Barber's Serenade for String Quartet (or String Orchestra) is the work of a talented student on the brink of individual mastery.
0 kommentar(er)
