String Quartet (Barber)
composition by Samuel Barber
The String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11, was composed in 1935–36 by Samuel Barber. He arranged the middle movement for string orchestra as his well-known Adagio for Strings in 1936. Barber continued to revise the piece, particularly the finale, until 1943.
Begun while living in Austria with his partner Gian Carlo Menotti after Barber's Rome Prize, the composer intended that the quartet be premiered by the Curtis String Quartet, but did not finish the piece in time for their concert tour. On September 19, 1936, Barber wrote their cellist Orlando Cole: "I have just finished the slow movement of my quartet today—it is a knockout! Now for a Finale." Having completed a finale, the string quartet was premiered in its provisional form by the Pro Arte Quartet on December 14, 1936, at the Villa Aurelia in Rome. Afterwards, Barber withdrew the finale so as to rewrite it, which he did by April 1937. He rewrote it again before it was published. The final form was premiered by the Budapest Quartet on May 28, 1943, at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Barber accepted a commission for a second string quartet in 1947, but never got past a few pages of sketches.
“String Quartet (Barber)” enters the record as composition by Samuel Barber. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what String, Quartet and Barber can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7623908. The Library of Congress control number is no97075357. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935, 1936, 1943 and 1937.
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