Born the son of a doctor and his pianist wife in West Chester, Pennsylvania, young Samuel enjoyed a privileged childhood. One of his aunts was a distinguished Metropolitan Opera singer so it is small wonder that the boy absorbed music through every pore of his body. By the time he entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, at the age of 14, to study piano, voice and composition, he had already been employed for two years as a church organist.

It was at Curtis that Barber met a fellow student, Gian Carlo Menotti, who became his lifelong partner and a distinguished composer of operas in his own right and who is best known as the founder of the Spoleto Festival.

On a tour of Europe in 1933, Barber first met the famous conductor, Arturo Toscanini at the latter's Italian villa. The Essay Number One, so called because he was destined to compose two more musical essays, came about as the result of Toscanini's encouragement. It's an eight-minute single movement work, brilliantly developed throughout from the deceptively simple melody of the four opening bars. If you sense that the pervading tranquility of the music is, at some point, compromised by the arrival of flocks of birds, including the odd coocoo, you're not alone but, fear not, the work ends as peacefully as it began.