The sonata was composed between June and December 1932 during a trip to Europe as Barber was finishing his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music. The score is dedicated to Barber's composition teacher, Rosario Scalero, and was officially premiered on 5 March 1933 with the composer at the piano and his friend and colleague Orlando Cole as cellist, at a concert of the League of Composers in New York City.[2] Together with the Music for a Scene from Shelley, Op. 7, this sonata won both a Pulitzer travel stipend and the Rome Prize of the American Academy in Rome in 1937.[3][4]
Analysis
The Cello Sonata, Opus 6, is a chamber piece. A romantic piece in a clear C minor, it is a profound and passionate cello sonata reminiscent of the examples of Brahms and Hans Pfitzner.[citation needed]
^Heyman, Barbara B. (1992). Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music. New York City and Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 110–1, 114. ISBN9780195090581.
Friedewald, Russell Edward (1957). A Formal and Stylistic Analysis of the Published Music of Samuel Barber (PhD diss). Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University.
