Barber: Adagio for Strings (synthesized)

YouTube Uploaded by ScrollingMusic on Feb 13, 2012

"Samuel Barber (1910-1981): Adagio for Strings

This is Barber's 1936 arrangement of the second movement of his own String Quartet, Op. 11. Barber transcribed this work once again in 1967 as an eight-part choral setting of the Agnus Dei. This piece is one of the most recognizable in classical music, having been featured in many TV shows and films. In 2004, listeners of the BBC's Today program voted this piece the "saddest classical" work ever.

This piece is made up of 10 basic phrases, with the climax residing in the fifth phrase, around 5:30 into the piece. Each phrase begins with a single pitch held by a string section (except the phrase immediately after the climax), followed by a resounding chord by the full string orchestra. In the aftermath of the long fifth statement and climax, the orchestra breaks off into short, almost incomplete thoughts. The overall tonality of the piece suggests is B-flat minor; the piece ends on a beautiful lingering unresolved V chord (F major). The melodic line is surprisingly simple and diatonically stepwise.

The awesome new sound featured in this video, developed by Drew Weymouth, is derived from filtering out a fundamental and several harmonics for each note from pure white noise (as opposed to additive synthesis of periodic waveforms). This process is computationally intensive, requiring very steep, narrow bandpass filters with passband widths of a few hertz or less to achieve a pitched sound. An FIR (finite impulse response) implementation requires several thousand filter coefficients for an appropriate rejection of undesired frequencies. Because the waveform generation is intrinsically random, the resulting output has a full, lifelike, and ethereal sound that dynamically changes even as a single pitch is sustained. The result is a powerful commanding sound reminiscent of church organ pipes mixed with low brass, strings, and light vocals."