Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Op. 24
Samuel Barber
(b. March 9, 1910 in West Chester, Pennsylvania; d. January 23, 1981 in New York)

Samuel Barber in 1947 was comfortably established as the solid citizen of American composers. His Adagio for Strings had become America's mourning song, yet he did not curry fame. Living quietly with his life partner Gian Carlo Menotti in the house they bought together in 1943—these details all seem necessary if not sufficient to make possible the unique work Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Barber read and loved the 1938 prose poem of the same name by James Agee. When soprano Eleanor Steber commissioned Barber to write a work, Barber was coping with his father's failing health and also the health of his aunt, soprano Louise Homer. The fact that 1915 was both the last full year of Agee's father's life and a year on the doorstep of war and depression, the distant vision of happiness through the lens of anguish that Agee captured in his words must have resonated deeply for Barber.

In listening let the images unfold without a storyline. A boy tells first the sights and sounds of a Knoxville evening, then later, how the family lies on quilts, talking a little and staring up into the sky. A heartfelt prayer comes unbidden, “May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.” The boy is led to bed, but he speaks as a grown man at a far distance from those who love and care for him, “but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.”

(c) 2015, 2025 by Steven Hollingsworth,
Creative Commons Public Attribution 3.0 United States License.
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