Written between 1931 and 1933, the Overture to The School for Scandal takes its title from Richard Sheridan’s 1777 comedy of the same name. Barber did not compose the work for a specific production or even as incidental music; the play’s deft comedy and sparkling intrigue inform the overture’s general spirit. While it may not have served as the musical opening to a dramatic work, the piece was an overture of sorts to Barber’s high-profile career. Still a student at the Curtis Institute when the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the work’s premiere in 1933, Barber immediately became one of the most compelling compositional voices of his generation.  

Sheridan’s comedy centers on British upper-class characters with names like Lady Sneerwell, Charles Surface, and Sir Peter Teazle, generating uproarious humor from misunderstandings, mistaken identities, gossip, and bad behavior. In his overture, Barber captures Sheridan’s dramatic sleights of hand with an intricate interweaving of themes and fragments of themes. After a frenetic opening, a pastoral theme emerges, played first by solo oboe and then by lushly scored strings. The brief sections of discordant harmony and thorny textures can be heard as subtle allusions to the duplicity and conniving found in the original play. The slyly twisted tonality of the middle section provides subtle allusions to the scheming and duplicity that comprise the play’s tortuous plot. Throughout the work, Barber captures the comedic spirit of the eighteenth-century play while maintaining a wholly modern sound.