# Why is Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings so moving? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 21, 2006, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578 "2006-09-21T16:18:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![nemminie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecb155/32.png) [@nemminie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nemminie)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/1 "2006-09-21T16:18:10Z")
I can’t hear it without tearing up. What makes it so moving, so dignified, so very sad? ---
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/2 "2006-09-21T17:27:57Z")
For me, the unforgettable use of this music in the film **Platoon** has shaped my response to it. I had heard “Adagio for Strings” before I saw **Platoon** , and I never had such a powerful emotional reaction to it. While I do think the music itself has great dignity, the sadness is inextricably tied up with my memories of **Platoon**. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/3 "2006-09-21T17:31:01Z")
I think it’s very successful in somehow articulating, musically, an emotional arc that’s very familiar to most people: the crescendo from quiet grief to free-fall lament. It doesn’t attempt to imitate the human voice, but there’s still something very human, viscerally human, about the emotional arc of the piece. Very hard to articulate in words, which I guess is why he did it in music. ---
**Author:** ![nemminie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecb155/32.png) [@nemminie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nemminie)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/4 "2006-09-21T18:55:12Z")
[QUOTE=lissener] I think it’s very successful in somehow articulating, musically, an emotional arc that’s very familiar to most people: the crescendo from quiet grief to free-fall lament. [/QUOTE] We’re coming from the same place, **lissener**. How is the emotion brought to us? What is it about the craft of the piece that makes us feel the quiet grief, the lament? Minor key = can be sad. That’s all I know about minor keys. This music somehow brings to me a massively sad empathy for everyone who has experienced unbearable loss. 9/11 happened during the Proms season in London (an annual season of classical concerts) and the BBC Symphony Orchestra played this music in remembrance. It was absolutely the right and only choice (I already felt this way about it before 2001). A point - it will never be kitsch. Its dignity prevents mockery. It’s about the saddest piece of music in the Western Canon and - what makes it so? ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/5 "2006-09-21T19:04:46Z")
I’m saying it’s magic; it’s the part of music theory that is outside of music theory. It’s the art, not the science. It’s the thing about music that we respond to as humans. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/6 "2006-09-21T19:41:55Z")
[QUOTE=lissener] I think it’s very successful in somehow articulating, musically, an emotional arc that’s very familiar to most people: the crescendo from quiet grief to free-fall lament. [/QUOTE] Definitely something about the overall structure, and pacing. Similar achievements came from Elgar, with Nimrod, and the Adagietto from Mahler 5. Note that the first isn’t by any measure a ‘sad’ piece, and the latter only has acquired any such association from its use in Death in Venice. I don’t really hear Barber’s Adagio as heartbreaking, either, although this doesn’t lessen its emotional impact. I’m going to suggest this is all a legacy of Beethoven. Over and over, he could write slow movements which had a very definite and convincing emotional trajectory across the course of many minutes. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/7 "2006-09-21T19:45:56Z")
I was totally transfixed by this piece way before Platoon. I think **lissener** has it, inasmuch as anyone can possibly express it. (Mind you, IMO the second part of the piece, which few people listen to, actually lets the introduction down.) ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/8 "2006-09-21T19:50:37Z")
It builds and builds and builds until it’s almost unbearable, and then there’s a heartbreakingly sad release. Very powerful music for times of sadness and mourning (as when, after JFK’s assassination in 1963, the BBC played it, IIRC). The _Platoon_ association is very powerful, too, for anyone who’s seen the movie. ---
**Author:** ![nemminie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecb155/32.png) [@nemminie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nemminie)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/9 "2006-09-21T20:08:39Z")
There is another piece that blinds me with tears every time, and a third that is like a lesson in how to nearly get me but miss. Both are by Arvo Pärt. The first is called Alina and the second, Cantus in memory of Benjamin Brittan. I’m mentioning them for anyone who has heard them but especially for anyone who hasn’t. Alina is almost ridiculously simple. A rising piano arpeggio of 3 notes introduces and sets the emotional tone, then a solo violin plays a simple melody on top. That’s it. And it’s devastating. Cantus is much more complex, sad as hell, but too ambitious really to open the taps. It does finish with the chord of the end of the universe, though. ---
**Author:** ![spazurek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b2d939/32.png) [@spazurek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spazurek)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/10 "2006-09-21T20:48:13Z")
[QUOTE=lissener] I think it’s very successful in somehow articulating, musically, an emotional arc that’s very familiar to most people: the crescendo from quiet grief to free-fall lament. It doesn’t attempt to imitate the human voice, but there’s still something very human, viscerally human, about the emotional arc of the piece. Very hard to articulate in words, which I guess is why he did it in music. [/QUOTE] It’s funny, I haven’t heard the piece enough to know the instruments, and I haven’t heard it in a while – and I would have sworn that it had a chorus, simply because as you (so very nicely) expressed, it speaks very directly to our emotions in a way that I think the human voice is normally best at. [QUOTE=lissener] I’m saying it’s magic; it’s the part of music theory that is outside of music theory. It’s the art, not the science. It’s the thing about music that we respond to as humans. [/QUOTE] This is a wonderful point so often overlooked about music. What makes it such a compelling medium is that it communicates directly with the abstract dimension of inner life that is so mysterious and yet powerful and, I think, much more universal than the more concrete aspects of our minds. This is where I think the idea of ‘talent’ comes in; anyone can be taught the mechanics of producing music, but what differentiates the talented is that they are somehow able to tap into that abstract inner life and create a concrete representation of it. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/11 "2006-09-21T20:54:43Z")
[QUOTE=spazurek] It’s funny, I haven’t heard the piece enough to know the instruments, and I haven’t heard it in a while – and I would have sworn that it had a chorus [/QUOTE] You’re right - he made a later version, using the music for a choral setting of the Agnus Dei. ---
**Author:** ![stpauler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@stpauler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stpauler)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/12 "2006-09-21T21:02:08Z")
There’s a cadence in the song, a pacing that reminds me immediately of weeping. There’s that pause where one catches their breath before the release of the wail. The song mimics this perfectly. Oddly, this [wasn’t Barber’s exact intent](http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/works/barber/adagio.html): > [@](#): > > Barber found initial inspiration in a passage from Vergil’s Georgics describing how a rivulet gradually becomes a large river. Although the idea doesn’t limit the Adagio’s emotional meaning, you can see how it influences the overall shape of the work–a long arch beginning quietly, gradually building to an overwhelming climax, and winding down to a quiet end. For an interesting twist, check out William Orbit’s _Pieces in a Modern Style_’s bonus disc which includes two dance remixes of this song. These bounce and hop around playfully until those moments of string-laden crescendos. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Cid\_Viscoso](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/41988e/32.png) [@El\_Cid\_Viscoso](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Cid_Viscoso)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/13 "2006-09-21T21:03:19Z")
For my generation? William Dafoe’s “run through the jungle.” For me in particular? In Officer Candidate School they played it before our graduation when we were at the brink of the Gulf War. So I would say it’s all about marketing. ---
**Author:** ![Jodi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7feea3/32.png) [@Jodi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jodi)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/14 "2006-09-21T21:07:41Z")
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso] So I would say it’s all about marketing. [/QUOTE] I have to disagree. I’ve never seen _Platoon_ and I have the same sort of emotional reaction to it. Not actually teary, but more that ache in your heart that makes you pause and really listen to a piece of music. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/15 "2006-09-21T21:07:50Z")
[QUOTE=stpauler] For an interesting twist, check out William Orbit’s _Pieces in a Modern Style_’s bonus disc which includes two dance remixes of this song. These bounce and hop around playfully until those moments of string-laden crescendos. [/QUOTE] Glad you mentioned this. I was excited when I heard it was coming out - I really like William Orbit - but was deeply disappointed when I first heard it. Until the end of the piece, when I realised that he must have decided that he _couldn’t_ fuck with it. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/16 "2006-09-21T21:17:27Z")
[QUOTE=GorillaMan] You’re right - he made a later version, using the music for a choral setting of the Agnus Dei. [/QUOTE] First time I actually heard the song (outside of commercials advertising Platoon on TNT, a network with a fair amount of skill at choosing soundtrack pieces for commercials, witness their promos for Babylon 5 Season 5 and “In the Beginning”) was in the computer game Homeworld. This tune (With the Agnus Dei arrangement, I think) was the tune played while you watch the black box recording of the alien fleet overwhelming your home planet’s defenses and wiping out all life on the planet, mere hours before you returned to warn them of incoming danger. On a related note, does anybody notice how Agnus Dei seems to be well-suited to musical arrangements? I just finished a video game called Ace Combat 04, and the final mission (“Megalith”) features a rock/choir arrangement that just gives me goosebumps, ESPECIALLY with the openign cinematic for the mission, and the ensuing furball with dozens of jet fighters duking it out. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/17 "2006-09-21T21:19:12Z")
[QUOTE=Jodi] I have to disagree. I’ve never seen _Platoon_ and I have the same sort of emotional reaction to it. Not actually teary, but more that ache in your heart that makes you pause and really listen to a piece of music. [/QUOTE] There’s a techno remix of Vivaldi’s “Winter” from the Four Seasons that really gets me at one point, just sorta forces me to close my eyes and follow the music. On a related note, I no longer listen to vivaldi while driving. ---
**Author:** ![Ignatz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3be4f8/32.png) [@Ignatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignatz)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/18 "2006-09-21T23:06:30Z")
Santo and Johnny’s _Sleepwalk_, played in \*La Bamba \* after Richie Valens’ death in the plane crash also does it for me. Pardon the digression. ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/19 "2006-09-22T00:38:49Z")
I had never heard it (at least that I recalled) until I sang _Agnus Dei_ with the semi-professional chorus I used to belong to. It ripped my heart out, and still does. It’s _not_ just marketing. For me, the choral version is far more moving than any version using instruments. There’s an ethereal quality to the human voices (particularly the sopranos) that especially works. The odd thing is, I’m not generally enormously moved by music. But this piece - it just does it. I’ve never heard anything like it, although portions of Frank Martin’s _Requiem_ and Faure’s _Requiem_ approach it. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578/20 "2006-09-22T01:01:49Z")
[QUOTE=spazurek] It’s funny, I haven’t heard the piece enough to know the instruments, and I haven’t heard it in a while – and I would have sworn that it had a chorus, simply because as you (so very nicely) expressed, it speaks very directly to our emotions in a way that I think the human voice is normally best at. [/QUOTE] Originally a movement in a string quartet, this piece has been arranged for just about every instrument or voice or combination thereof. Many of them were arranged by Barber himself, then others made their own arrangements. BTW, if anyone has ever heard of an a capella TTBB arrangement, please let me know. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-samuel-barbers-adagio-for-strings-so-moving/373578.md?page=2)