Jazz Element Embodied In Samuel Barber’s Excursions And The Methods Of Its Expression

Samuel Osborne Barber was known as the most representative American composer during the New Romantic Period in the20th century. Influenced by European Classical Music, most of his works are inseparable from European Romantic Music, both in style and in music ontology. However, his Excursions(op.20), written in the1940s, filled with plenty of American Jazz, made a major breakthrough.This dissertation is divided into three parts. The first part introduces the life of Samuel Osborne Barber and the background of his Excursions. In the second part, the element from and the feature of Jazz embodied in this composition are explored based on a rounded and complete analysis, with melody, harmony, rhythm, and two different styles of the branches of Jazz included. The third part, on the basis of the previous one, designed a detailed study of music expression, in terms of the style of playing and the interpretation of difficulties and doubts. At the end, by comparative analysis, the ideal CD versions have also been recommended by the author, which could be used as reference for players and appreciators in the future.