Calling all tortoises, snails and sloths! This week, we quizzed on musical slowpokes. Pump the brakes, and enjoy nine of our favorite examples. 

Samuel Barber (1910-1981) Adagio for Strings, Op. 11 Barber’s famous Adagio For Strings, dubbed by many as “the saddest piece of music ever,” is one of those rare, well-known pieces that had its world premiere not in a concert hall, but rather on the radio. The year was 1938, and composer Samuel Barber had sent the score of his new piece, a single movement for string orchestra, to famed conductor Arturo Toscanini of the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Toscanini had apparently returned the score to Barber soon after, not because he didn’t like it, but rather because he had already memorized it. The premiere took place on November 8, 1938 in front of a small audience at Rockefeller Center’s Studio 8H (the studio that now houses Saturday Night Live), and broadcast out to millions of Americans. The work has been on the air many more times since, but mostly to accompany state funerals and other national tragedies.

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) Symphony No. 7 in C, Op. 105 For Jean Sibelius, the act of composition was a mystical thing, not able to be “captured by rational analysis.”  Due to this viewpoint, Sibelius rejected virtually all of the published discussions of his works, and repeatedly said that the academics misunderstood his music. Perhaps related to his view of composition, the later symphonies were great struggles for Sibelius, each one going through substantial revisions and re-conceptions. His seventh symphony was intended to be a three movement work in D, but when it was completed in 1924, it became one movement, defying conventional symphonic form. The piece still has three distinct sections, however, and is framed by a melancholic adagio theme. It is also in the key of C, which at that point was considered to be over-used and passé, but critics acknowledged that Sibelius managed to revitalize it in his final symphony.

Henry Purcell (1659-1695) Dido and Aeneas: 'Thy Hand, Belinda' and 'When I Am Laid In Earth' Though Henry Purcell was one of Britain’s most influential early Baroque composers. He only composed one opera, Dido and Aeneas, about the life and death of Dido, the Queen of Carthage. Her last aria When I am Laid in Earth is identified by most music historians as an almost perfect use of the Ground bass, a technique where a bass line is repeated as the foundation of a piece. The bass line of Dido’s aria is more specifically called the “Lament Bass.” Its four notes, descending slowly by half-steps evoke deep sadness and musically depict the act of Dido being laid in her tomb. The subterranean also appears in Purcell’s opera with the introduction of the villain, the Enchantress. She first appears in an underground cave with her fellow minions and evil demons, who, while laughing maniacally, plot the destruction of Carthage. 

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) Symphony No. 6 in b, Op. 74 'Pathétique' Tchaikovsky began working on a sixth symphony a few years after completing his fifth, but these initial drafts were eventually abandoned. Then in 1893, in a flurry of inspiration, Tchaikovsky penned his sixth symphony, known by the Beethovenian title Pathetique. In a letter to his brother Modest, Tchaikovsky wrote that he believed this new work was “the best of his works.” He had achieved a good bit of fame at this point, as was able to conduct the premiere performance of this work in St. Petersburg only a few months after its completion. It was warmly received and was given a second performance only three weeks later. Unfortunately, this second performance was a memorial performance, because Tchaikovsky died only nine days after premiering the Pathetique symphony. The work is distinctive for several reasons. It starts very slowly and quietly, which was unusual for a symphony at the time. It also contains one of the quietest moments in the symphonic repertoire. Towards the end of this movement, the bassoon is required to play pianiss-iss-iss-iss-issimo. That’s six Ps in the dynamic marking. 

John Cage (1912-1992) String Quartet: Slowly Rocking Cage’s String Quartet in 4 Parts is all about simplicity and distillation of form, however the way he composed the piece was anything but. In his typical fashion, Cage created a new method of composition to write it. Every pitch, chord, and combination of tones which appears in this quartet was organized on a grid. By making selections from the grid , Cage was in a sense “playing” the quartet as an instrument in itself. Cage is also being featured on tonight’s show for writing the slowest piece of music ever composed. Titled As Slow As Possible, the performance began on an organ in Halberstadt, Germany in 2001, and is expected to finish in 2640 after 639 years. Sandbags are used to depress the pedals of the organ to supply constant air flow to its bellows, and the performers follow a schedule outlining on what day and in what year it is time to release a pedal and press a new note. The next note change is scheduled for February 5th of this year.

Caroline Shaw (b.1984) Partita for Eight Voices: Sarabande The vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth made waves in 2013 when Caroline Shaw, a member of the group, became the youngest person ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music for her work Partita for 8 Voices. This piece was written for the ensemble and their first self-titled album, which was successfully funded through Kickstarter. The composition is unusual and experimental, however the overall form is the traditional Partita, with age-old dance types like the Courante, Passacaglia, and the Sarabande. The sarabande first appeared as a sung dance piece in 16th century Spain with fast and slow versions, but was always accompanied by guitar and percussion. During the Baroque era the sarabande was standardized into an instrumental dance form, usually slow and serious and played in a triple meter.

Joseph Canteloube (1879-1957) Chants d'Auvergne: 'La Delaïssádo' [The Forsaken Shepherdess] In 1901, Joseph Canteloube, having, at the age of 22, already earned his degree, left home, taken a job at a bank, left that job upon his father’s death, and become the sole inheritor of his late father’s estate, decided to begin composition studies. Reluctant to leave the family home, he initially began his studies with Vincent D’indy via correspondence, but ultimately, with d’Indy’s encouragement, he left home in 1907 in order to take up studies at the Schola Cantorum in Paris. “'La Delaïssádo” comes from his most famous work, the collection of songs titled Chants d’Auvergne, a tribute to his lush, beautiful homeland. The collection took him more than thirty years to complete; he began work on it in 1924 and didn’t finish until 1955. In addition to his work as a composer, Canteloube was a respected musicologist, with a strong interest in French folk songs, many of which appear in the Chants d’Auvergne. 

Joseph Waters (b.1930) Quiet Music - Early Morning The contemporary composer Joseph Waters was born in 1952. He studied composition at the University of Minnesota as an undergraduate, followed by graduate studies at Yale and the University of Oregon, where he earned his PhD in 2002. He currently serves as Professor of Music at the University of San Diego, where he teaches composition and computer music. His primary teachers include Jacob Druckman, Bernard Rands, Roger Reynolds, Dominick Argento, and Martin Bresnick. He is best known for his electronic music festivals, in which he attempts to bridge the gap between contemporary popular genres and the avant-garde Western classical tradition. According to the composer, “Quiet Music” was written in memory of his father, James Merlin Waters. “The music,” the composer writes, “speaks of the complicated and conflicted relationship of son with father: of feelings of deep loss and fond memory - of things never spoken, that needed to be spoken but never could.”

The Hollies (1970) Slow Down Graham Nash and Allen Clarke formed the British pop-rock group The Hollies in 1962, and although neither of those guys are still with the group, the Hollies are still performing today. They had some big hits in the 1960s and 70s, including “Bus Stop,” “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” and “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress.”  “Slow Down” was featured on the Hollies’ twelfth studio album Romany, which was the first album to not feature their original lead singer, who had left for a solo career. When Swedish singer Mikael Rickfors was brought in to replace Allen Clarke, this marked the beginning of the Hollies transition to a new vocal style.