Samuel Barber’s most famous work is almost certainly what was originally conceived as the second movement of his Op. 11 string quartet (the third movement showed up here quite a while ago). Unfortunately, relatively few people know that this is the origin of what would later be re-orchestrated for chamber orchestra and chorus separately as the famous Adagio for Strings and Agnus Dei, respectively. The sound file above is of the original scoring for only four instruments. This is not what most people are used to hearing when they expect this, the chamber orchestra version. For choristers, this might be the most familiar form. All three are really spectacular versions of the piece (and confuse the issue raised a few posts ago), but somehow the latter two completely overshadow the original. There is something lost in those versions when compared to the poignancy of four players with a controlled vibrato really bringing the work to life. In that arrangement, it is not simply a piece to be played at a funeral, where it so often fittingly finds itself performed, but truly an emotional outcry. The motive or inspiration upon which Barber drew cannot be known, but it must surely have been something personally fraught, given the composer’s quite young age of 26. Nonetheless, the second movement from the String Quartet Op. 11/Adagio for Strings/Agnus Dei remains as a prodigious institution of sentiment in 20th century music.