<<  -- 7 --  Jennifer Paull    TIMEWARP

The moto perpetuo finale is the fireworks display Barber had promised. This movement and subsequent works from the 1940s show an increasing use of dissonance and syncopated rhythms. It's as if this third movement was the catalyst for Barber to move without hesitation through the revolving door into his modern period even though he was in mid-concerto as the door spun. After all, Barber had been interrupted like a player at Wimbledon for whom rain stops play. Can one ever pick up exactly where one was forced to leave off, and with the same tension? So much interrupted the compositional flow. What had been tennis turned out to have been Badminton in comparison to the Squash that was about to follow, and with which he was to complete the work.

The influence of Stravinsky became increasingly important, elements of modernism, ventures into dissonance, tonal ambiguity and a taste of serialism crept into Barber's writing, although his music is always characterised by the fingerprint markings of a distinguished, melodic sensibility.

'When I am writing music for words, then I immerse myself in those words, and I let the music flow out of them. When I write an abstract piano sonata or a concerto, I write what I feel.'

It was as though the third movement of his Violin Concerto -- the fleeing from Paris back to the United States; war in Europe; lack of appreciation for his first two lyrically, beautiful movements -- had somehow all combined to mark him for ever, or allow him to discover his true, inner self.

Continue >>