American Composer Samuel Barber Piano Works Of Creative Techniques And Research

American composer in the 20th century, Samuel Barber, published his five piano solo works including Excursions OP.20 (1944) , Piano Sonata OP.26 (1949) ,Souvenirs OP.28 (1952) , Nocturne-Homage to John Field OP.33 (1957) andBallade OP.46 (1977) . All of these belong to his works after his middle age. And among them, Excursions and Souvenirs made use of suite form, Piano Sonataemployed Sonata Divertimento form; while Nocturne-Homage to John Field andBallade are mono-movement ones. Such works were written from 1944 to 1977, and represented Barber's style and technique character in his mature period of his creative works.This paper consists of four chapters. Chapter One introduces Barber's compositional life and his representative works of different periods, and indicates his important position in modem music development as well as the particular function and research value of his piano pieces.Chapter Two analyzes and studies the five works from the perspective of composition techniques in detail.Form the angle of Theme, one of the basic representative techniques of music, Harmony, one of the basic presentational method and development of music, Counterpoint technique, one of the important skills for the further development of music; Form, the logical manner of the structure of musical works, and Modulation Structure, the special technique for the expressive structure of musical language, Chapter Three makes a thorough summary on the essential factors of composition: Theme, Harmony, Counterpoint, Mode and Key, Texture and Form Structure.On the basis of the above chapters, the last chapter puts Barber's style into the background of the development of the 20th century's world musical style. And after comparing and contrasting them, the writer makes a conclusive evaluation towards Barber's creation techniques and style.