Why is Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings so moving?

[freckafree]

I knew the Adagio was played at JFK’s funeral but was astonished to learn that it had also been played at FDR’s and Princess Grace’s.
**
panache45**, if you find that TTBB arrangement, let me know, please.

[choie]

@nemminie

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.

I haven’t heard Alina, but I know Cantus was used to heartbreaking effect in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 during the otherwise silent visuals of the horrifying aftermath when the WTC buildings fell.

I’d never heard the piece before, and my first thought was that it reminded me a great deal of Barber’s Adagio (though I knew it wasn’t Barber’s piece). Both pieces share a similar melodic sensibility … a string section’s slow journey up and down the scale that winds its way around lengthy sustained notes.

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.

For me, it opens the taps and how! I can’t help but associate it with the thick gray clouds of dust and shocked, agonized faces of 9/11.

And yes, the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth is intensely moving as well. Actually I don’t think I’ve heard it used in a film score, just in live performance at the New York Philharmonic. Oh and an amazing recording with Bernstein conducting the NYP.

[FriarTed]

@GorillaMan

You’re right - he made a later version, using the music for a choral setting of the Agnus Dei.

Here’s how removed I am- I’ve only heard the Agnus Dei/Adagio once on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s weekly radio show about a year ago, and did not realize that was a well-known Barber-done arrangement. I thought it might have been just a MTC project! :smack:

A pop piece I’m kinda finding moving- the piano accompaniment to Coldplay’s Trouble, ABC & MTV both utilized it a lot in 9-11 related spots at the time.

[FriarTed]

Oh- to the OP, my first exposure to Adagio that I can recall was that it seemed to be the music of choice for Holocaust documentaries for a long while.

[Yookeroo]

@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.

I popped into this thread to make a smartass comment about its danceability. The Ferry Corsten mix is a classic trance track.