Steve Schwartz:

>Why do you think Barber withdrew it?  [Second Symphony] I think it quite
>fine as well (in Simpson's book on the symphony, Peter Jona Korn calls
>Barber's first a masterpiece and dumps on the second, except for the
>second movement - but Korn has other eccentric judgments as well).

Interestingly, the second movement is the one Barber saved, in the form
of "Night Flight," a slightly revised version of that movement., with a
title taken from Saint-Exupery.  He also recycled themes from the first
movement in Antony and Cleopatra and Fadograph of a Yestern Scene.  What
he said of the symphony as a whole, which he had evidently been proud
of earlier, enough to have revised it about five years after its first
completion, was that "It was composed during the years of the Second
World War.  Such times of cataclysm are rarely conducive to the creation
of good music, especially when the composer tries to say too much.  But
the lyrical voice, expressing the dilemma of the individual, may still
be of relevance." (Quoted by Barbara B.  Heyman in Samuel Barber, The
Composer and His Music, Oxford 1992, p.  230.  Heyman has about 15 pages
on this symphony, and is my source for all of this.) I don't suppose
that the fact that the U.S.  Air Force had been assigned the royalties
for this work had any relevance.

Jim Tobin