It's Tunes For Our Troops!
It's Tunes For Our Troops!
Samuel Barber (1910-81) was one of the greatest American composers. He lived in Mount Kisco (NY) along with Gian Carlo Menotti, composer of “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” an opera about the Magi that was a fixture on NBC-TV during the 1950s at Christmas. Both Barber and Menotti were gay, but not with each other.
Barber’s best known piece is the “Adagio for Strings,” the second movement of his 1936 String Quartet in B Minor, which was arranged for string orchestra by Arturo Toscanini. The “Adagio” is often used in movies and occasions of public solemnity.
What is not generally known about Barber is his composition of art songs, poetry written by others and then set to music by Barber. His Opus 29 “Hermit Songs” are little gems. The best is “The Monk and His Cat,” a song with the piano accompaniment intended to sound like a kitten on the keyboard. I heard it done at a concert in Seattle years ago where the accompanist made it sound like a mountain lion on the keyboard, but this video handles it properly. This is Cora Burggraaf (soprano) and Bart van den Roer (piano) taped in 2009 at Haarlem, Netherlands.
The text is adapted by W. H. Auden from an 8th Century anonymous Irish text.
Pangur, white Pangur,
How happy we are
Alone together, Scholar and cat.
Each has his own work to do daily;
For you it is hunting, for me, study.
Your shining eye watches the wall;
My feeble eye is fixed on a book.
You rejoice when your claws entrap a mouse;
I rejoice when my mind fathoms a problem.
Pleased with his own art
Neither hinders the other;
Thus we live ever
Without tedium and envy.
Pangur, white Pangur,
How happy we are,
Alone together, Scholar and cat.