Knoxville: Summer of 1915
Encyclopedia
Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is a 1947 work for voice
and orchestra
by Samuel Barber
. The text is taken from a 1938 short prose piece by James Agee
. The work was commissioned by soprano Eleanor Steber
, who premiered it in 1948, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
under Serge Koussevitzky
.
Although the piece is traditionally sung by a soprano, it may also be sung by tenor
; Anthony Rolfe Johnson
's interpretation has become popular in recent years.
. The short story is a simple, dreamlike depiction of an evening in the American South
, narrated by a child who seems, at times, to transform into an adult; both parts are sung by a solo soprano. It is difficult to tell at times the identity of the speaker, enhancing the dreamlike quality of the work. Knoxville is set in one movement, and the composer describes it as "lyric rhapsody" (Heyman) (a rhapsody
describes a one-movement work which freely moves between thematic material of sharply contrasting moods). Barber's choice to compose in a form less constricted in the large-scale parallels Agee's own choice in developing his work; both represent the fruits of a spontaneous improvisation, fueled by a moving nostalgia:
While Knoxville is described as a rhapsody, it can also be seen as almost rondo
-like in form (Kreiling). After a brief orchestral prelude, the beginning paints a picture of gentle rocking on chairs, supported by the narrative as the soprano enters: "It has become that time of the evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently." The harp
and flute
play a steadily rocking line while the soprano introduces the first melody. Interestingly, Barber does not ever repeat this melody exactly; instead, he characteristically alters it subtly in its next few appearances.
The introduction concludes, and the reverie is interrupted abruptly; we are thrown into an allegro agitato, where Barber carries a simple horn-like motive in the woodwind
s and horns. Staccato
and pizzicato
lines add to the chaos. Like the introduction, the imagery is vivid but intangible yet—this passage has all the clearness of a dream but we are unclear what it means. The soprano again clarifies the imagery, "a streetcar raising its iron moan; stopping; belling and starting, stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan." The noisy, metallic texture persists, interrupted by a notably pointed excursion, "like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks." Describing the spark above the trolley car as a spirit following it closely, Barber uses staccato woodwinds and pizzicato strings in walking chromaticism to illustrate this image.
After the streetcar fades, the soprano begins a lyrical passage "now is the night one blue dew." Here the soprano reaches the highest note of the entire work, a B-flat sung piano. After this, we return to a rough interpretation of the first theme; this time the harp carries the "rocking" theme alone. This brief return to familiarity smoothly transitions into a passage where the narrator has changed from describing the summer's eve to contemplating grander things: "On the rough wet grass of the backyard my father and mother have spread quilts..." Here adults and the narrator are lying down on quilts, talking sparsely and idly. In relative silence, the narrator, still a child, contemplates the vastness of the stars and "his people," sitting quietly with "larger bodies than mine." Thematically, the orchestra is closest to the introductory section before the rocking, consisting of a repetitive exchange between the bassoon and the other woodwinds.
The section ends particularly poignantly, with the narrator counting off the people present, ending with "one is my father who is good to me." The orchestra breaks into an agitated section, characterized musically by leaps of ninths and seconds. We see here that the text has struck a chord with Barber, whose father was grievously ill at the time, drawing a parallel between Agee's father (his text is "strictly autobiographical") in 1915 and Samuel Barber's father at the time of writing in 1947.
The child-like recollection of the summer's evening now turns abruptly, seriously "who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth," again hitting the high B-flat. The narrator then asks for the blessing of the aforementioned people, and moves into a final re-entry of the original theme, while the narrator talks about being put to bed. The piece ends with the instruments calmly rising, almost floating, reinforcing the dreamlike aspects of the piece.
Barber chooses only excerpts of Knoxville for his composition.
at the Boston Symphony Orchestra
. The performance was met with mixed reviews (Heyman). While Steber's performance was warmly received, Agee's text was seen as unnatural to set to music, and some opinions of Barber's music deemed it faithful to the text, but somehow "lacking character."
Barber was not present at the premiere (he was committed to work at the American Academy in Rome
at the time, and the performance could not be rescheduled). Koussevitzy wired to him noting that the performance was "an outstanding success and made a deep impression on all." (Heyman) While Koussevitzky never performed the work again, it has remained popular over the years. Knoxville is considered to be Barber's most "American" work, looking both at the supporting text as well as the imagery created by the music.
Vocal music
Vocal music is a genre of music performed by one or more singers, with or without instrumental accompaniment, in which singing provides the main focus of the piece. Music which employs singing but does not feature it prominently is generally considered instrumental music Vocal music is a genre of...
and orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
by Samuel Barber
Samuel Barber
Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...
. The text is taken from a 1938 short prose piece by James Agee
James Agee
James Rufus Agee was an American author, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, he was one of the most influential film critics in the U.S...
. The work was commissioned by soprano Eleanor Steber
Eleanor Steber
Eleanor Steber was an American operatic soprano. Steber is noted as one of the first major opera stars to have achieved the highest success with training and a career based in the United States.-Biography:...
, who premiered it in 1948, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...
under Serge Koussevitzky
Serge Koussevitzky
Serge Koussevitzky , was a Russian-born Jewish conductor, composer and double-bassist, known for his long tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949.-Early career:...
.
Although the piece is traditionally sung by a soprano, it may also be sung by tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
; Anthony Rolfe Johnson
Anthony Rolfe Johnson
Anthony Rolfe Johnson, CBE was an English operatic tenor.-Life and career:Born in Tackley in Oxfordshire, Rolfe Johnson studied with Ellis Keeler and Vera Rosza at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He first appeared in opera in the chorus and in small roles at the Glyndebourne Festival...
's interpretation has become popular in recent years.
Genesis
The summer of 1915 was a significant year for James Agee: it was not long before his father died in 1916. According to Agee, it was the point around which his life began to evolve (Aiken). When Barber was writing his own Knoxville, his father, Roy Barber, was losing his health and rapidly approaching death. Barber dedicates the work with the inscription "In memory of my Father," suggesting that his father's deteriorating health had something to do with his identification with the piece. Barber was touched by the familiarity of Agee's childhood memories and the fact that both he and Agee were five years old in 1915. After Barber and Agee met, Barber noted that the two had much in common.We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child. It was a little bit mixed sort of block, fairly solidly lower middle class, with one or two juts apiece on either side of that. The houses corresponded: middlesized gracefully fretted wood houses built in the late nineties and early nineteen hundreds, with small front and side and more spacious back yards, and trees in the yards.
(James Agee, Knoxville)
Description
Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is a lush, richly textured work. Setting music to excerpts from James Agee's short story Knoxville, Barber paints an idyllic, nostalgic picture of Agee's native Knoxville, TennesseeKnoxville, Tennessee
Founded in 1786, Knoxville is the third-largest city in the U.S. state of Tennessee, U.S.A., behind Memphis and Nashville, and is the county seat of Knox County. It is the largest city in East Tennessee, and the second-largest city in the Appalachia region...
. The short story is a simple, dreamlike depiction of an evening in the American South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
, narrated by a child who seems, at times, to transform into an adult; both parts are sung by a solo soprano. It is difficult to tell at times the identity of the speaker, enhancing the dreamlike quality of the work. Knoxville is set in one movement, and the composer describes it as "lyric rhapsody" (Heyman) (a rhapsody
Rhapsody (music)
A rhapsody in music is a one-movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour and tonality. An air of spontaneous inspiration and a sense of improvisation make it freer in form than a set of variations...
describes a one-movement work which freely moves between thematic material of sharply contrasting moods). Barber's choice to compose in a form less constricted in the large-scale parallels Agee's own choice in developing his work; both represent the fruits of a spontaneous improvisation, fueled by a moving nostalgia:
I was greatly interested in improvisatory writing, as against carefully composed, multiple-draft writing: i.e., with a kind of parallel to improvisation in jazz, to a certain kind of "genuine" lyric which I thought should be purely improvised... It took possibly an hour and a half; on revision, I stayed about 98 per cent faithful to my rule, for these "improvised" experiments, against any revision whatever.
(James Agee, "Program Notes of the Boston Symphony Orchestra", quoted in (Heyman))
While Knoxville is described as a rhapsody, it can also be seen as almost rondo
Rondo
Rondo, and its French equivalent rondeau, is a word that has been used in music in a number of ways, most often in reference to a musical form, but also to a character-type that is distinct from the form...
-like in form (Kreiling). After a brief orchestral prelude, the beginning paints a picture of gentle rocking on chairs, supported by the narrative as the soprano enters: "It has become that time of the evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently." The harp
Pedal harp
The pedal harp is a large and technically modern harp, designed primarily for classical music and played either solo, as part of chamber ensembles, as soloist with or as a section or member in an orchestra...
and flute
Western concert flute
The Western concert flute is a transverse woodwind instrument made of metal or wood. It is the most common variant of the flute. A musician who plays the flute is called a flautist, flutist, or flute player....
play a steadily rocking line while the soprano introduces the first melody. Interestingly, Barber does not ever repeat this melody exactly; instead, he characteristically alters it subtly in its next few appearances.
Structure
The beginning of the piece, describing a warm summer's evening, is particularly lyrical in comparison to Agee's earlier passages in the same work. Barber capitalizes on the lyricism of this section through his use of word painting, "Talking casually" in measures 23-24, "increasing moan" in measures 65-66, "the faint swinging bell rises again..." in measure 79.The introduction concludes, and the reverie is interrupted abruptly; we are thrown into an allegro agitato, where Barber carries a simple horn-like motive in the woodwind
Woodwind instrument
A woodwind instrument is a musical instrument which produces sound when the player blows air against a sharp edge or through a reed, causing the air within its resonator to vibrate...
s and horns. Staccato
Staccato
Staccato is a form of musical articulation. In modern notation it signifies a note of shortened duration and separated from the note that may follow by silence...
and pizzicato
Pizzicato
Pizzicato is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a string instrument. The exact technique varies somewhat depending on the type of stringed instrument....
lines add to the chaos. Like the introduction, the imagery is vivid but intangible yet—this passage has all the clearness of a dream but we are unclear what it means. The soprano again clarifies the imagery, "a streetcar raising its iron moan; stopping; belling and starting, stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan." The noisy, metallic texture persists, interrupted by a notably pointed excursion, "like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks." Describing the spark above the trolley car as a spirit following it closely, Barber uses staccato woodwinds and pizzicato strings in walking chromaticism to illustrate this image.
After the streetcar fades, the soprano begins a lyrical passage "now is the night one blue dew." Here the soprano reaches the highest note of the entire work, a B-flat sung piano. After this, we return to a rough interpretation of the first theme; this time the harp carries the "rocking" theme alone. This brief return to familiarity smoothly transitions into a passage where the narrator has changed from describing the summer's eve to contemplating grander things: "On the rough wet grass of the backyard my father and mother have spread quilts..." Here adults and the narrator are lying down on quilts, talking sparsely and idly. In relative silence, the narrator, still a child, contemplates the vastness of the stars and "his people," sitting quietly with "larger bodies than mine." Thematically, the orchestra is closest to the introductory section before the rocking, consisting of a repetitive exchange between the bassoon and the other woodwinds.
The section ends particularly poignantly, with the narrator counting off the people present, ending with "one is my father who is good to me." The orchestra breaks into an agitated section, characterized musically by leaps of ninths and seconds. We see here that the text has struck a chord with Barber, whose father was grievously ill at the time, drawing a parallel between Agee's father (his text is "strictly autobiographical") in 1915 and Samuel Barber's father at the time of writing in 1947.
The child-like recollection of the summer's evening now turns abruptly, seriously "who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth," again hitting the high B-flat. The narrator then asks for the blessing of the aforementioned people, and moves into a final re-entry of the original theme, while the narrator talks about being put to bed. The piece ends with the instruments calmly rising, almost floating, reinforcing the dreamlike aspects of the piece.
Barber's text
Barber's Knoxville, in many ways, parallels Agee's text. We see that Agee was touched by the death of his father in his childhood, while Barber was, during the time of composition, enduring his father's deteriorating health. The two men were similarly aged. Most importantly, however, the two men were so compelled by nostalgia and inspiration that they (supposedly) wrote their pieces quickly and without much revision. The spontaneity of both the text and the music illustrate this reverie of the American south with an ease and honesty that sharply contrasts the paradigm of "multiple-draft writing," but with technical mastery nonetheless.Barber chooses only excerpts of Knoxville for his composition.
Premiere
Knoxville: Summer of 1915 premiered on April 9, 1948, conducted by Serge KoussevitzkySerge Koussevitzky
Serge Koussevitzky , was a Russian-born Jewish conductor, composer and double-bassist, known for his long tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949.-Early career:...
at the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...
. The performance was met with mixed reviews (Heyman). While Steber's performance was warmly received, Agee's text was seen as unnatural to set to music, and some opinions of Barber's music deemed it faithful to the text, but somehow "lacking character."
Barber was not present at the premiere (he was committed to work at the American Academy in Rome
American Academy in Rome
The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo in Rome.- History :In 1893, a group of American architects, painters and sculptors met regularly while planning the fine arts section of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition...
at the time, and the performance could not be rescheduled). Koussevitzy wired to him noting that the performance was "an outstanding success and made a deep impression on all." (Heyman) While Koussevitzky never performed the work again, it has remained popular over the years. Knoxville is considered to be Barber's most "American" work, looking both at the supporting text as well as the imagery created by the music.
Discography
- Eleanor SteberEleanor SteberEleanor Steber was an American operatic soprano. Steber is noted as one of the first major opera stars to have achieved the highest success with training and a career based in the United States.-Biography:...
, album "Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915" Sony Classical, 1950. - Eleanor SteberEleanor SteberEleanor Steber was an American operatic soprano. Steber is noted as one of the first major opera stars to have achieved the highest success with training and a career based in the United States.-Biography:...
, album "Eleanor Steber in Concert (1956-1958)" VAI Audio, 1958. - Evelyn LearEvelyn LearEvelyn Lear is an American soprano and opera singer.During her career between 1959 and 1992, Evelyn Lear appeared in more than forty operatic roles, appeared with every major opera company in the US and won a Grammy Award in 1966...
, album "A Celebration of Twentieth-Century Song" VAI Audio, 1960. - Leontyne PriceLeontyne PriceMary Violet Leontyne Price is an American soprano. Born and raised in the Deep South, she rose to international acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s, and was one of the first African Americans to become a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera.One critic characterized Price's voice as "vibrant",...
, album "Leontyne Price sings Barber," RCA, 1968. - Dawn UpshawDawn UpshawDawn Upshaw is an American soprano described as "one of the most consequential performers of our time" by the Los Angeles Times. The recipient of several Grammy Awards and Edison Prize-winning discs, Upshaw is at home both in opera and art song, and in repertoire from Baroque to contemporary...
, album "Knoxville Summer of 1915" NONESUCH, 1989. - Sylvia McNairSylvia McNairSylvia McNair is an American opera singer and classical recitalist who has also achieved notable success in the Broadway and cabaret genres. McNair, a soprano, has made several critically acclaimed recordings and has won two Grammy Awards....
, album "The Best of Barber" TELARC, 1993. - Kathleen BattleKathleen BattleKathleen Battle , is an African-American operatic soprano known for her agile and light voice and her silvery, pure tone. Battle initially became known for her work within the concert repertoire through performances with major orchestras during the early and mid 1970s. She made her opera debut in...
, album "Honey & Rue" DG, 1995. - Roberta Alexander, album "Barber: Scenes & Arias," ETCETERA, 1992.
- Barbara HendricksBarbara HendricksBarbara Hendricks is an African American operatic soprano and concert singer. Hendricks has lived in Europe since 1977, and in Switzerland on Lake Geneva since 1985, She is a citizen of Sweden.-Early life and education:...
, album "Copland, Barber," EMI, 1994. - Measha BrueggergosmanMeasha BrueggergosmanMeasha Brueggergosman is a Canadian soprano who performs both as an opera singer and concert artist. She has performed internationally and won numerous awards...
, album "So much to tell," CBC Records, 2004.
See also
- Masterworks Portrait, Samuel Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915; Dover Beach; Hermit Songs; Andromache's Farewell. Various artists.
External links
- http://web.archive.org/web/20051223063458/http://www.proarte.org/notes/barber.htm
- http://www.jhu.edu/jhso/about/prgrmnotes/pn_102304.html