Agnus Dei (Barber) Agnus Dei (Barber) Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) is a choral composition in one movement by Samuel Barber, his own arrangement of his "Adagio for Strings" (1936). In 1967, he set the Latin words of the liturgical Agnus Dei, a part of the Mass, for mixed chorus with optional organ or piano accompaniment. The music, in B-flat minor, has a duration of about eight minutes. Barber's "Adagio for Strings" began as the second movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11, composed in 1936. At the request of Arturo Toscanini, he arranged it for string orchestra, and in January 1938 sent
Vitex agnus-castus Vitex agnus-castus Vitex agnus-castus, also called vitex, chaste tree (or chastetree), chasteberry, Abraham's balm, lilac chastetree, or monk's pepper, is a native of the Mediterranean region. It is one of the few temperate-zone species of "Vitex", which is on the whole a genus of tropical and sub-tropical flowering plants. Theophrastus mentioned the shrub several times, as "agnos" (άγνος) in "Enquiry into Plants". It has been long believed to be an anaphrodisiac – leading to its name as "chaste tree" – but its effectiveness for such action remains unproven. Vitex is a cross-pollinating plant, but its self-pollination has been recorded. "Vitex",