Commentaries

Barber's Adagio brought back memories
 September 05, 2006

 I work night shift in a local plant emergency operations center (EOC). Usually when I arrive home I turn my radio on while I feed/play with my parrot Charlie (a Blue Fronted Amazon) and prepare for the next night's work. I also listen at night, thought it must be background in an EOC. Moreover, you played something that brought back memories, good and bad, of the first time - the very first - that I heard Barber's Adagio, which I believe was originally the second movement of his String Quartet. Truly, it is a lyrical, elegiac Adagio, and for us, haunting. I will tell you why.

The first time several of us heard it was aboard our medivac chopper, a bell HU-1, "Huey" filled with wounded. To tell the truth we usually played rock for all these guys. We were all around nineteen even the pilot was only twenty-one. Yet, there was a lot of interference this night, perhaps VC, weather, or both. Moreover, the only music we could get was a BBC station playing "Classical music". Well, we kids decided that any music was better that nothing, so we listened. And, Barber's Adagio came across our head sets and speakers (we had set up for wounded, rigged by us). We all set mesmerized by these haunting strings while the night sky showed lightning mixed with distant other flashes of some combat in progress. With the exception of the pilot's communications between us and base, nothing was said during the entire length of the piece. From that night until I began to study at college some years later, We all referred to it as our "Nam Song".

You can imagine that some years later when Oliver Stone used Barber's piece how it caused us to react...I couldn't see the movie again and sit through it, for ten years after that. Moreover, after that traumatic first time, I looked up the name in the credits. My electives for the next two years were music appreciation classes!

When the professor asked me of my, I suppose, obsessive interest in Barber, I told him. He asked me to write a paper about the adagio and these related experiences. He said it would help. It did.

To this day, knowing that Oliver Stone was a 'Nam veteran, I do wonder if maybe he had such an experience regarding this adagio. Moreover, did someone else relate their experience? I guess I shall never know that.

Since you have played this adagio on various classical programs, I just wanted to tell you about it. Now, at 60, it reminds me of our trials in those days...but in a longing way. Moreover, it reminds us of several absent friends and, of course, our days of youth.

It is mostly for them, but truly, as well as for myself that I relate this to you now. I hope that you will think of this when you play Barber's Adagio again. You were right about how, "It touches the soul." If you had been in country with us on that night you would truly know how deep it goes...

Respectfully,

Thom Dillon
Harrisonburg, VA
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