James Agee & Music

Among the most beloved American writers of the 20th Century was James Agee. Agee (1909-1955) was a unique author in that he excelled at many forms: novel (A Death in the Family won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1958), film reviews (head critic for a decade at Time), Hollywood screenplays (The African Queen), and journalism (the classic, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men). In his early twenties, Agee was also a poet, winning the Yale Younger Poets Award for Permit Me Voyage. Since the 1940's, generations of nationalist-focused composers have found in both his poetry and prose a native gift for passionate sentimentality and anguished tenderness. Join veteran music lecturer Thomas Larson for a multimedia presentation devoted to several musical settings of Agee's work. Chief of these is Samuel Barber's sublime rendering of Agee's lyric essay, "Knoxville: Summer 1915." Featuring guest artists from the Brooklyn Art Song Society.