The Saddest Music Ever Written
The Story of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings
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Narrated by:
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Gregory St. John
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By:
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Thomas Larson
About this listen
An exploration of the cultural impact of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, the Piet of music, and its enigmatic composer. In the first book ever to explore Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, music and literary critic Thomas Larson tells the story of the prodigal composer, his seminal masterpiece and its fascinating history as America's secular hymn for grieving our dead.
The Adagio's sonorous intensity also speaks of the turbulent inner life of its composer, a melancholic who, in later years, descended into alcoholism and severe depression. Part biography, part cultural history, part memoir, The Saddest Music Ever Written captures the deep emotion Barber's great elegy has stirred throughout the world during its seventy-five-year history, becoming an icon of our national soul.
©2010 Thomas Larson (P)2013 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Editorial reviews
Even if you don’t think you know Samuel Barber’s iconic "Adagio for Strings" by name, chances are extremely high you’ll recognize it when you hear it.
This most mournful song, often played at funerals and similarly somber occasions, is explored in depth in The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Narrated with kind enthusiasm by Gregory St. John, it is both a critical analysis of the famous piece and a biography on the complicated life of its American born composer, Samuel Barber.
A very intriguing and enlightening listen recommended for anyone appreciative of classical music history.
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Based on 10 years of research and a vast cache of primary sources located in archives in Warsaw, Paris, London, New York, and Washington, D.C., Alan Walker's monumental Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times is the most comprehensive biography of the great Polish composer to appear in English in more than a century. Walker's work is a corrective biography, intended to dispel the many myths and legends that continue to surround Chopin.
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This book is a masterpiece
- By Carpe Diem on 02-09-19
By: Dr. Alan Walker
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The Voice is All
- The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
- By: Joyce Johnson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Voice Is All, Joyce Johnson - coauthor of the classic memoir Door Wide Open, about her relationship with Jack Kerouac - brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities. Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac's French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider's vision of America, she tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of On the Road.
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Kerouac's Voice
- By Robert L. Stofel on 09-26-12
By: Joyce Johnson
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The Great Work of Your Life
- A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling
- By: Stephen Cope
- Narrated by: Kevin M. Connolly
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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To know your true calling - your dharma, as the yogis say - is perhaps the greatest desire within each of us. And yet, few can say we know our purpose with absolute certainty. Fortunately, there is a time-tested guide - an ancient map - for discovering and fulfilling your unique calling. In The Great Work of Your Life, Stephen Cope walks you through each step of the journey.
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Jungian Zen Psychoanalytical Retired Meditation Teacher
- By Glenn Guillory, SFO on 06-13-20
By: Stephen Cope
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An Outlaw and a Lady
- A Memoir of Music, Life with Waylon, and the Faith That Brought Me Home
- By: Jessi Colter
- Narrated by: Devon O'day
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
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The daughter of a Pentecostal evangelist and a race-car driver, Jessi Colter played piano and sang in church before leaving Arizona to tour with rock n' roll pioneer Duane Eddy, whom she married. Colter became a successful recording artist, appearing on American Bandstand and befriending stars such as the the Everly Brothers and Chet Atkins while her songs were recorded by Nancy Sinatra, Dottie West, and others. Her marriage to Eddy didn't last, however, and in 1969 she married the electrifying Waylon Jennings.
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Thank you Jessi
- By Jene't on 06-28-19
By: Jessi Colter
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Something Wonderful
- Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution
- By: Todd S. Purdum
- Narrated by: Todd S. Purdum
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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They stand at the apex of the great age of songwriting, the creators of the classic Broadway musicals Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music, whose songs have never lost their popularity or emotional power. Even before they joined forces, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had written dozens of Broadway shows, but together they pioneered a new art form: the serious musical play.
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Fabulous book about Rodgers & Hammerstein!!!
- By BigWally on 06-27-18
By: Todd S. Purdum
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On Elizabeth Bishop
- By: Colm Tóibín
- Narrated by: John Keating
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In this book novelist Colm Tóibín offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences - the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Ranging across her poetry, prose, letters, and biography, Tóibín creates a vivid picture of Bishop while also revealing how her work has helped shape his sensibility as a novelist and how her experiences of loss and exile resonate with his own.
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ELIZABETH BISHOP
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 05-19-16
By: Colm Tóibín
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The Fellowship
- The Literary LIves of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
- By: Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 26 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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C. S. Lewis is the 20th century's most widely read Christian writer and J. R. R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met weekly in Lewis' Oxford rooms and a nearby pub. They read aloud from works in progress, argued about anything that caught their fancy, and gave one another invaluable companionship, inspiration, and criticism.
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If You Love Literature...
- By Ray M on 07-14-16
By: Philip Zaleski, and others
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Living the Braveheart Life
- Finding the Courage to Follow Your Heart
- By: Randall Wallace
- Narrated by: Matt Baugher
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Part autobiography, part master class, Living the Braveheart Life invites us to explore five major archetypes in Braveheart that resonate not only in Randall's life but in the modern-day lives of both men and women: the father, teacher, warrior, sage, and outlaw. Join blockbuster film director Randall Wallace on the journey of his creative and personal life.
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Braveheart has a valable message!
- By Mrs.Bushy on 04-28-21
By: Randall Wallace
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The Noise of Time
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Daniel Philpott
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In May 1937, a man in his early 30s waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now, and few who are taken to the Big House ever return.
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Art belongs to everybody and nobody.
- By Darwin8u on 06-13-16
By: Julian Barnes
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Empire of Self
- A Life of Gore Vidal
- By: Jay Parini
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The product of 30 years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini's Empire of Self probes behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal's colorful life to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truth underlying his celebrity-strewn life. But there is plenty of glittering surface as well - a virtual who's who of the American Century, from Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart through the Kennedys, Princess Margaret, and the creme de la creme of Hollywood.
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Well done!
- By Christopher on 03-22-16
By: Jay Parini
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Naked at the Albert Hall
- The Inside Story of Singing
- By: Tracey Thorn
- Narrated by: Tracey Thorn
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In her bestselling autobiography, Bedsit Disco Queen, Tracey Thorn recalled the highs and lows of a 30-year career in pop music. But with the touring, recording and extraordinary anecdotes, there wasn't time for an in-depth look at what she actually did for all those years: sing. She sang with warmth and emotional honesty, sometimes while battling acute stage fright.
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Fascinating
- By Jane Sheedy on 01-11-17
By: Tracey Thorn
What listeners say about The Saddest Music Ever Written
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- dfamiano
- 11-11-21
Rife with mispronunciations
This performance will drive you crazy if you are sensitive to mispronunciations of musical terms and names of composers.
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- Michael J Gore
- 08-09-21
Curious and moving
A strange and frequently wonderful reflection on Barber’s Adagio. Intertwined are passages reflecting on the author’s family story that are often sad and lovely.
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