Serenade for Strings, Op. 1

• Barber composed this piece in 1928 when he was 18 years old, and a student at the newly-formed Curtis Institute of Music.¹
• The work was originally written for string quartet.²

“Why ‘Serenade’ as a title for the new work? Are you really serenading and to whom? Scalero [Barber’s composition teacher]? Me? Yourself? The Public? The Girl?”

Barber’s uncle & mentor, Sidney Homer, poking fun at the title of Serenade. After this, Barber usually selected more descriptive titles for his works.³

Serenade for Strings is “the only one [of Barber’s works] … that never bores him—perhaps because it’s so short…”

– Gian Carlo Menotti, Barber’s partner⁴.

• Barber’s Serenade wasn’t performed immediately after he composed it, probably because Barber and Menotti misplaced it when they left for a trip to Europe in 1929 and nobody could find it for two years.⁵

“Gama wrote that no one can find the score of my “Serenade.” I left it for him the day before sailing at the Curtis, they gave it to Gian Carlo by mistake, and as he didn’t have time to return it, told his landlady to do so at once. At any rate it has never been heard of since, and naturally they haven’t been able to study it this summer, as I had hoped. But perhaps they will perform it in Arden without studying! That is doubtless to be its fate—”

Samuel Barber, on misplacing the score to his Serenade⁶

• This version for string orchestra: By adding a bass part, Barber adapted his Serenade for String Quartet for string orchestra, to be published by G. Schirmer. This version was first performed and broadcast 1943.⁷

1. Barbara B. Heyman, “Barber, Samuel,” Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press (2001), accessed July 18, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000001994.
2. Ibid.
3. Barbara B. Heyman, Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 63.
4. Ibid.
5. Barbara B. Heyman, Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 64-65.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 67