CELEBRATING SAMUEL BARBER: Westminster Choir College’s 2020 Lindsey Christiansen Art Song Festival will honor the vocal music of Samuel Barber with performances on Friday, February 28 and Saturday, February 29 at 7:30 p.m. The composer is pictured here on the steps of Westminster’s Williamson Hall.

The 2020 Lindsey Christiansen Art Song Festival will celebrate the vocal music of Samuel Barber, one of America’s most beloved composers, Friday, February 28 and Saturday, February 29 in Bristol Chapel on the Westminster Choir College of Rider University campus in Princeton at 7:30 p.m.

Students will present research papers about Barber at 6:45 p.m. on Friday, February 28. The Festival concerts will feature Westminster students performing a program of published and unpublished works by Barber, accompanied by guest artist and collaborative pianist JJ Penna.

The program includes two of Barber’s best-known works for voice, written during different periods of his life: Dover Beach and Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Barber composed Dover Beach while he was studying piano, voice, and composition at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. It is a setting of a Victorian poem by Matthew Arnold, and Barber himself sang the world premiere and recorded it in 1935. Often performed by Barber and regarded as his first “masterpiece,” Dover Beach remains one of his most enduring and popular works.

Knoxville: Summer of 1915 was commissioned by soprano Eleanor Steber. It has become one of Barber’s most performed works. A setting of excerpts from James Agee’s prose poem with the same title, it recalls impressions of a long, idyllic summer evening as a child growing up in Tennessee. It is considered Barber’s most “American” piece and recalls a simpler, more innocent time.

Westminster has a strong connection with Barber and his music. In 1938 he set his eight-part God’s Grandeur for the Westminster Choir. Written for the Westminster Choir School’s Festival of Contemporary American music, it was performed during the Choir’s annual winter tour throughout seven states and 20 cities. The College’s relationship with Barber lasted throughout his life until his death in 1981. The Westminster Choir was invited to sing at the composer’s funeral service, led by Joseph Flummerfelt.

The Lindsey Christiansen Art Song Festival is named for former Professor of Voice Lindsey Christiansen, who died in 2017. A member of Westminster’s faculty for 40 years and chair of the Voice Department for 18 years, Christiansen re-established and managed the festival, which is an important part of Westminster’s performance season and academic program. She specialized in German lieder and was a lifelong student and lover of the music of Franz Schubert. She was an exceptional voice teacher and a demanding professor of song literature classes, where she instilled in countless students a love for song.

Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students and seniors; available online at rider.edu/arts.