Barber "Nocturne" (Op.33) Playing Analysis

Samuel Barber succeeded and enhanced the late nineteenth century European Romanticism music style. He integrated his own emotional experience into his works, and created a large number of music pieces with graceful melodies and strong emotions. This paper selects his piano piece "Nocturne- dedicated to John ? Field"(Op.33) as the object of overall study and analysis. Through the analysis of the characteristic of the era, cultural backgrounds and musical elements of this work, this paper will explore the features of Barber’s "New Romantic Modern Nocturne", and analyze the performance characteristics of it. This paper is divided into three chapters. The first part will introduce Barber’s life and stages of his compositions, and briefly outline the background of the work "Nocturne". The second part will be discussing the composition techniques of “Nocturne” with a more detailed analysis of this music piece. Five aspects of this work, including the musical structure, the unconstrained and characteristic use of twelve-tone serial, the smart flexible chromatic motive, the alternate use of 12 / 8-4 / 8-9 / 8 beat and the musical language are researched and refined in depth in the second part of the paper. In the third chapter, discussion will be carried out from the perspective of a piano player and probe into the fashion of interpretation by setting the style of performance as: 1. Modern abstract music style with abundant variety of beats; 2. New Semi-toned Romanticism style; 3. Pedal Depression style originated from double music styles.