Samuel Barber, American composer, was born on this day in 1910.  Barber is best known as the composer of “Adagio for Strings,” perhaps my favorite piece of classical music.  Below you will find videos of “Adagio for Strings” and Barber’s “Agnus Dei,” which is a choral transcription of the same.  Truly beautiful music.

On this day in 1843 the Scottish clergyman Robert Murray McCheyne wrote in a letter: “You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness. Then he is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation, a rock rising above the storm.”