Adagio apparently is an Italian word for “slow” or “at ease.” If marked on a sheet of music it tells a musician to play at a slow, leisurely, and controlled pace.
Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber is one of my favorite pieces of music. I remember exactly when I first heard it. I was sixteen at home in Lynchburg, Virginia. There weren’t all these streaming services back then. Maybe we were paying for just HBO in addition to the regular cable stations. Think TBS and CBN. It was a Saturday evening. I know that because my dad was home and not working an evening job. This acclaimed theatrical movie was finally making its debut on HBO. The movie was Oliver Stone’s Platoon.
Everybody else, my parents, my brothers, were already in the living room. The lights were low, you know, creating our movie theatre experience. The movie had already started and I was stopped in my tracks, literally, during that opening sequence when the young naive enlistee played by Charlie Sheen is walking past the soldiers who are leaving, those soldiers, probably as young as he, who had survived their tour in Vietnam, with their weathered faces. The music swept me away, and goodness know, that finale with the music sweeping once more. No spoilers if you haven’t seen it.
But today I think back and I wonder what my father was thinking as he watched the movie. He had served in the Korean War, the first war where black and white troops served in the same regiments. It wasn’t pretty. He didn’t tell me details but he told my brothers and they later in life, after he’d passed away, shared some of his stories. And I wonder what Steve was thinking as he watched … I never asked him though I think I had him watch it with me because of that soundtrack … I think at the time I did not know how close he’d come to having his number called to serve in Vietnam.
I now know a young man who served in the Army overseas in recent years and returned whole in body but damaged in impactful ways, but not in ways that keep him from loving and living a meaningful life, with a growing family. I wish him and that family well. And I thank him and all of the others for their service.
