For some years I had been hoping that Samuel Barber would be able to visit Keele University, where I started the Music Department and its Centre for American Music in 1974. Copland and Carter had already been, but Barber proved more elusive. Finally I learnt that he was too ill to travel and we had to be content to honour him at Keele with a fine performance of the Violin Concerto by Dennis Simons, with the University Orchestra conducted by Philip Jones, and at least two performances of the Piano Sonata – by Peter Lawson, and the Fulbright-Hays Visiting Professor Dwight Peltzer.

Barber has always been low in profile compared with Copland, but his music is just as regularly played throughout the world, if not more so. I was curious about the success of a composer who hardly seemed American at all, had very little obvious originality in his work, and could clearly be thought of as old-fashioned. So when the BBC asked me to put together a Radio 3 documentary I looked forward to going on the trail of Samuel Barber to find out more.

To start with, Barber was fortunate throughout his life. His father was a respected doctor in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and his aunt, Louise Homer, was an internationally known opera singer. Her husband, Sidney Homer, was an accomplished composer of songs, which are still worth performing, and his conservative views kept his nephew on a traditional path.3 Barber happened to live near enough to Philadelphia for him to become, at fourteen, one of the first students at the new Curtis Institute, founded and liberally endowed by Mary Louise Curtis Bok in 1924.

Barber had decided from the age of eight that he wanted to become a composer. At Curtis, though, he was a triple major – in composition, piano and voice. He was always a good pianist, when in practice, took part in recitals and broadcasts, and a rare recording is of his Hermit Songs with the singer Leontyne Price.