Originally composed for oboe and string orchestra, and here presented in a new chamber arrangement by Ensemble 360’s oboist, Adrian Wilson, Samuel Barber’s Canzonetta for Oboe and Strings was meant to be the slow movement of an oboe concerto commissioned by the New York Philharmonic. However, soon after starting work on the piece (in 1978) Barber was diagnosed with cancer. The other two movements of the concerto were never completed, and this was to be the composer’s final work (Barber died in 1981). The piece was orchestrated posthumously by Barber’s longtime friend and former student, Charles Turner, and was premiered on December 17th, 1981, at Avery Fisher Hall in New York, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta. Principle oboist of the New York Philharmonic (and a former classmate of Barber’s at the Curtis Institute of Music), Harold Gomberg played the solo part. 

In many ways, the Canzonetta is typical of Barber’s style, with a tendency towards vocal lyricism and neo-romantic tonality. In this regard, Historian and Barber specialist Barbara Heyman calls the Canzonetta an “appropriate elegy to the conclusion of Barber’s career.” The work, like others in Barber’s oeuvre, combines elements of post-Straussian chromaticism with what we might think of as a typically American lyrical simplicity. A simple, meandering melodic line is at times presented in a strictly diatonic context, and at others with a highly chromatic harmonisation. Throughout, the oboe’s melody floats above the string texture, seemingly weightless with Barber showing the instrument at its best. Indeed, Turner quotes Barber (in the preface to the 1993 edition of the work for oboe and piano) as having said, “I like to give my best themes to the oboe”. 

Dr. Benjamin Tassie