Samuel Barber, 1910-1981. Knoxville, Summer of 1915, Op. 24 (Chamber version). Completed April 4, 1947, revised 1949, first performance April 1, 1950, in Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. Scored for flute (doubling piccolo), oboe (doubling English horn), clarinet, bassoon, two horns, trumpet, optional triangle, harp, solo soprano, and strings.
In 1935, the writer James Agee, having become interested in the process of jazz improvisation, decided to experiment with a similar approach to writing, in which multiple drafts and careful revisions would be abandoned in favor of a more fluid approach. ``Sketching vaguely'' on a possible novel, he produced a nostalgic remembrance of his early childhood, taking only 90 minutes to complete a brief text that he later revised only slightly. ``There is little if anything consciously invented in it, it is strictly autobiographical,'' commented the writer in 1948. The rhythmic and descriptive piece was published in The Partisan Reader in 1938.
Almost a decade later, Barber encountered Knoxville in an anthology, and began work on an orchestral setting. At about the same time, the singer Eleanor Steber commissioned him to write a piece for voice and orchestra, and Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony, expressed interest in a large piece for voice and orchestra. All of these factors came together to produce a highly successful premiere in Boston in 1948.
About a year after the premiere, Barber decided that a smaller orchestration would be useful, and reduced the score by removing extra woodwinds, dropping the tympani, and compensating by adding a second horn. However, nearly all of the music previously assigned to the omitted instruments was reassigned to the remaining players, so that the difference between the two versions is one of texture, not content.
Barber chose to set only the final third of Agee's text, beginning in the middle of a sentence. At the top of the score, following a dedication to Barber's father, appear the words:
We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.
Barber's music is peaceful, poetic, and evocative. With superb economy, it recalls the feeling of being five years old, lying on a lawn in the Southern summer heat and drifting off to sleep as the stars and crickets begin to come out, the adults share stories in quiet voices, and the neighborhood settles down at the end of a long languid day.
© 1997, Geoff Kuenning
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