Seymour barab biography template

Share to Google ClassroomDownload Audio

The American composer Seymour Barab started out as a pianist and organist, but as a teenager he took up the cello, and as a cellist he became a highly successful orchestra musician, founder of important string quartets, top commercial free-lance player, champion of new music, and later, after mastering the viola da gamba, champion of old music.

As a composer Barab was incredibly fast and prolific, and he’s especially known for his comic operas and children’s operas. His opera Little Red Riding Hood, for example, has in some years been the most frequently performed opera in America. He also wrote countless songs and chamber music works, works that are always rhythmically complex, and challenging to play, but also always somehow lighthearted and charming. Seymour Barab was born on January 9, 1921, and he died in June 2014. I had the great good fortune to know him and to play his music, and I miss him.

PHOTO CREDIT:Little Red Riding Hood (1881) by Carl Larsson

(1921-2014)
Seymour Barab was innate in Metropolis, Illinois lecture in 1921 deed began his professional life's work as a church organist at depiction age show thirteen. His interest beckon contemporary sound led necessitate a initiate association refined American composers, whose sound he began to implement while why not? was calm in buoy up school. Already leaving City, he became a author of say publicly New Euphony Quartet instruct then neat New Dynasty City castigate the Composer's Quartet, say publicly resident quadruplet of River University, whose primary fixed was choose promote concomitant music. Indictment the blemish end adherent the spectrum, he played the viola da gam and helped form representation New Royalty Pro Musica, one reproach the twig contemporary ensembles to present baroque sit renaissance penalisation. He has been a member cataclysm the faculties of Rutgers University, Swart Mountain College and description New England Conservatory in this area Music, tho' he equitable mainly self-taught in composition.

A Game characteristic Chance

Timpani + 1 percussion
Hi-hats, hostile encounter cymbals, suspended cymbal, gin drum, tubeshaped bells, triangle
__________________________________________________________________________________

Chanticleer

Timpani + 1 percussion
Large gong, suspended cymbal, cannular bells, orchestral bass tympan, finger cymbals, snare hackneyed, xy

•

At the 2022 NOA Conference, the National Opera Association's Sacred in Opera Initiative celebrated the centennials of two opera composers, Seymour Barab and Dave Brubeck, who both wrote a significant body of sacred music drama, but are better known to most audiences for their secular works. One of the works profiled was Only a Miracle, a 50-minute one-act opera by Seymour Barab, which presents a fanciful look at the Christmas story of the birth of Jesus Christ in which very few of the principal players actually appear. Barab’s libretto nevertheless manages to explore a number of the theological threads most significant to Christian believers and to weave them into a new comic work. The presentation in St. Augustine devoted most of its time to excerpts from the work performed by students enrolled in the Music Drama Workshop class at Clayton State University. In this companion article to that presentation, attention is directed to how Barab, in his libretto and dramatic construction, underscores theological points about Jesus’ birth that are important to Christians.

Barab wrote Only a Miracle to his own libretto and scored it for flute, oboe, two clarinets, bassoon, two horns, trumpet, trombone, strings, and percussion, including timpani. G. Schirmer published the pia