Postlude

Abstract

Barber was a brilliant internationally recognized American composer, whose early indoctrination in European intellectual and musical tradition was compatible with his lifelong creative motivations. The frequency with which his works were performed during and after his lifetime is testimony to the vitality with which he imbued tonal language and the enduring viability of melody itself. Such elements of modernist language as dissonance, chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, and limited serialism were incorporated into his music after 1940 insofar as they allowed him to continue to pursue lyrical and emotional expression. For more than twenty-five years, Barber’s uncle Sidney Homer was his nephew’s mentor. Homer espoused the value of sincerity, clarity of expression, reverence for the proven masters, and choice of serious, vital subjects with international appeal. Above all, he urged his nephew to listen to the “inner voice that is working with you.” A striking feature of Barber’s compositional process from his earliest years was his collaborative relationship with the artists who would perform his works so that the resulting composition would reflect their strengths and predilections. . A documentary study of Barber’s career also becomes a study of patronage in the United States over fifty years—the shift from the individual philanthropist to broader-based financial sources. Communication to his audience was critical to Barber’s work; he worked slowly and laboriously to perfect his craft. His influence on younger composers continues, perhaps because of the coexistence in his music of post-Straussian chromaticism and a typically American directness and simplicity.