A Study On Late Period Compositional Style Of Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber was one of the most important composers of 20th century's American music academy. His compositions moved numerous listeners with their lush romantic flavour, strong emotional expression and tremendous dramatic conflicts. Besides George Gershwin and Aaron Copland, Barber was the third American composer whose works were frequently played, and was regarded as a distinguished figure of those traditional romantic composers in America. In fact, these regular taxonomy on twentieth century composers lost its validity on Barber's works. Compared with his fellow so-called "romantic composers" like Virgil Thomson and Howard Hanson, Barber's compositional technique was bold and progressive. While sticking to traditional formal and tonal principles, Barber used a great many mainstream twentieth century techniques except those of avant-garde's, and fused it with his proficient lyric expression perfectly. Barber's unique compositional style embedded his works with lasting unique charm.Through out his life, Samuel Barber had composed three operas, one piano concerto, a large number of instrumental works, songs and choruses. His composition career began at middle thirties and ended when Barber died at 1981.The dissertation mainly deals with Barber's third period works (from 1950 to his death) ,making stylistic analysis on recurring "Barberlism" compositional peculiarity from a technical point of view., thus revealing Barber's compositional features of his mature style.This dissertation consists of five chapters. Following the forward is the first chapter which mainly introduces the life of Samuel Barber and the formation and development of his compositional style. The second and following three chapters are the key parts of this dissertation, which expounded the compositional features embodied in Barber's late period works from the view of melody, harmony and counterpoint by analyzing examples. At last, this author will sum up the compositional style of Barber's late periods and draw on his own conclusions.