SAMUEL BARBER’S Adagio for Strings begins softly, with a single note, a B flat, played by the violins. Two beats later the lower strings enter, creating an uneasy, shifting suspension as the melody ...

Commentator, pianist and composer Rob Kapilow says that the kind of catharsis the piece goes through is actually the kind of catharsis that a funeral is about. "It starts from incredible sadness, ...

The enduring composition, performed at the Castlemaine state festival last weekend, felt like a lament for Covid times Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings is possibly the saddest piece of music ever ...

Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” may be the saddest piece ever written. Voted the “saddest classical” work ever in 2004 by the listeners to the BBC Radio’s Today program, this lament is one of the ...

Ask anyone of a certain generation to hum Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, and they’ll probably imagine something like Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Orchestra version that was played at President Franklin ...

Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings has become one of the most sampled and reimagined classical pieces in modern music, particularly within dance music, hip-hop and trance. And now it’s been used by ...

A fictional radio program unfolding on Note, "Classical and Et Cetera" . In this program, a different musician serves as the personality each time, talking about their favorite songs and the episodes ...

In the second of a five-part series produced by independent producer Ben Manilla and Media Mechanics, Weekend All Things Considered looks at recordings recently selected for the Library of Congress' ...