The Last Years, 1967–1981

Abstract

Abstract During the last fifteen years of his life, Barber struggled with depression, alcoholism, and creative blocks. His publisher believed this was due to the reception of Antony and Cleopatra, but Barber’s annual pilgrimages to Europe had begun much earlier, and it was more likely that the forced sale of Capricorn, the home he and Menotti had shared for three decades, contributed to his low morale. The upheaval was equivalent to the dissolution of a marriage. Money from the Metropolitan Opera commission enabled him to build a chalet in Santa Cristina, where he spent most of his time. He did not withdraw from composing but turned to what had been most gratifying: writing vocal music in short forms, choosing biographically pointed texts reflecting a preoccupation with dark and quasi-religious themes. He produced the song cycle Despite and Still, two choral works, and Mutations from Bach for brass. He wrote Chorale for Ascension Day for the Washington National Cathedral and an elaborate work for chorus, vocal solos, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, The Lovers. A commission for the new Alcoa Hall in Pittsburgh resulted in Fadograph of a Yestern Scene, an orchestral piece inspired by a passage in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Barber composed Three Songs, op. 45, and in 1974 wrote a piano piece, Ballade. That commission allowed him to purchase an apartment overlooking Central Park in New York. In the summer of 1978, he began a concerto for oboe and orchestra, but as his health worsened, he realized he would not be able to complete it and titled the single movement Canzonetta for Oboe and String Orchestra. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and in spite of chemotherapy, Barber died on January 23, 1981.