Chester County Notables: Samuel Barber, Bayard T. Rustin, and N. C. Wyeth - A random glance at historysteemCreated with Sketch.

in #history • 5 years ago (edited)

This post looks at some notable figures from history that I've had the opportunity to learn about in recent years, all of whom had connections to Chester County, Pennsylvania. Samuel Barber was a renowned American composer in the 20th century, Bayard T. Rustin was a civil rights leader who collaborated with Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists of the time, and N. C. Wyeth was a widely known American artist.

Introduction

image.png

Roman Totenberg (violin) and Samuel Barber (piano), public domain photo from the US Library of Congress

Here in the introduction, I'll tell you how I happened to learn about these three noteworthy people, and in the following sections, I'll tell you some of what I've learned about their lives, and why they're noteworthy outside of our community.

The reason that I first heard of Samuel Barber is that he was a West Chester native, and, at the age of 12, he was the organist in the church that my family now attends. The first time I remember hearing his name is when it was announced at a 100 year anniversary ceremony for the church organ, and one of the pieces that was played had been composed by him, and donated to the church.

After that, when @cmp2020 went into the high school marching band, we learned that - at the age of 15 - Barber also composed the Alma Mater that is in use by all three of the high schools in the West Chester Area School District. @cmp2020 did an analysis of it last year, on Steem. It's here - Analysis of Rustin High School's Alma Mater (Composed by Our Very Own Samuel Barber), and when we visited West Chester University of PA's school of music, there was a huge mural on the wall with Barber's picture.

Moving on to Bayard T. Rustin. When we moved into this area, there were only 2 high schools in the school district. Some time around 2001 or 2002, I started hearing about plans to build a third, colloquially known as "the New School", because at the time, no one knew what it would be called. This would be the school that @cmp2020 would attend when he reached high school. Eventually, however, I learned that the school opened in 2006, having been named after Bayard T. Rustin, but I still had no idea who he was. I never thought much about it until some years later, when I read the article, The Civil Rights Movement's Unsung Hero, and I thought, "Wait. Can this be the same guy?" So then, my curiosity was piqued. It turns out that like Barber, Rustin was also a West Chester native.

Finally, we come to N. C. Wyeth. Unlike the other two, Wyeth was not born locally, but he moved to Wilmington, DE, for art school, and wound up living in the nearby Chadd's Ford area. The reason I learned about Wyeth, as you may have seen, is that @cmp2020 wrote a composition for a Young Composer's Workshop at the Brandywine River Museum of Art that was inspired by Wyeth's illustrations on display in the museum and from the book, The Boy's King Arthur. If you haven't listened to the composition, you really should (and I'm not saying that just 'cause I'm his dad):

So that's how I heard of these folks. Now, let's move on to what I've learned about them...

Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber was born in West Chester in 1910, began studying piano at the age of six, and began composing at the age of 7. A note that he wrote to his mother around the age of 8 or 9 is just priceless:

To begin with, I was not meant to be an athlete, I was meant to be a composer ...and will be, I'm sure ....Don't ask me to try to forget this ...and go and play football ...please ....Sometimes I've been worrying about this so much that it makes me mad! (not very). (source)

By the age of 14, he was growing withdrawn in West Chester, and was encouraged by the director of Baltimore's Peabody Institute to study music full time. Thus, he was accepted as a charter student at Philadelphia's newly established Curtis Institute. It's around this time that he was also the organist at our family's church, but he was promptly fired because he refused to play fermatas that were frequently added by the choir's vocalists, but were not indicated in the music. By the age of 18, Barber was highly regarded as a composer, pianist, and vocalist, and he began winning awards as well as launching a lifelong habit of travel throughout Europe.

In the decade that followed, Barber mostly continued his travels, meeting other composers such as George Antheil and Ralph Vaughan Williams, both of whom encouraged him in his work. His father had lost a great deal of money, so Barber financed his work by winning a variety of contests with his compositions. In 1939, Barber returned to the Curtis Institute as an orchestration teacher, and he stayed there until 1942, at which point he was inducted into the Army, then transferred to the Air Force, where he was encouraged to continue his composing, and his Commando March was used as war propaganda. After leaving the military, he resumed his travels, including a jaunt to Ireland, where he wrote the Hermit Songs, which were settings of anonymous Irish texts from the eighth through thirteenth centuries.

Those seem to be the major milestones of his life, with more travel and composition until his death in 1981. In Samuel Barber: An Improvisatory Portrait, Paul Wittke wrote,

In any pantheon of American musicians, Samuel Barber commands a prominent niche. Along with the works of Aaron Copland and George Gershwin, his are the most often played. He has become almost popular — a word that would make him cringe. Barber would be amused and amazed by all this, for he often called himself "a living dead" American composer.

Wittke also suggests that Barber wrote in the Romantic and Classical styles, but with a 20th century flare.

In the classical music community, Barber is apparently best known for his beautiful songs, but in popular culture, his most recognizable compositions are almost certainly his Adagio for Strings (which was used in the movie, Platoon), and the choral arrangement of the same melody for Agnus Dei..

(if you have trouble viewing the table, try viewing through SteemPeak)

- Adagio for Strings - ------ Agnus Dei -----

References

#art #classical-music #music #chescopa #palnet
5 years ago in #history by
$13.14
  • Promotion Cost $2.00
  • Past Payouts $13.14, 0.00 TRX
  • - Author $4.38, 0.00 TRX
  • - Curators $8.76, 0.00 TRX
69 votes
Reply 5
Sort:  
  • Trending
    • [-]
     5 years ago 

    Resteemed, your post will appear in the next curation with a SBD share for you!

    Your post has been supported and upvoted from the Classical Music community on Steemit as it appears to be of interest to our community. We also support jazz and folk music posts!

    If you enjoy our support of the #classical-music community, please consider a small upvote to help grow the support account!

    You can find details about us below.


    The classical music community at #classical-music and Discord. Follow our community accounts @classical-music and @classical-radio or follow our curation trail (classical-radio) at SteemAuto!

    Delegation links: 10SP, 25SP, 50SP, 75SP, 100SP, 150SP, 200SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP

    $0.08
    • Past Payouts $0.08, 0.00 TRX
    • - Author $0.04, 0.00 TRX
    • - Curators $0.04, 0.00 TRX
    3 votes
    Reply