oa Articulation of the Genre Canon in the Piano Concerto by Samuel Barber

This article reviews Samuel Barber's Piano Concerto in three projections: a work of enhanced personal representation, a highly artistic example of the genre, and an "American Piano Concerto”. The affiliation of this work to the culminating phase of the artist's biography, marked by a significant modernization of the individual musical language, is emphasized. The directions of articulation of the basic features of the concert genre are revealed: diversification of forms of dialogue between soloist and orchestra, the balance of technical and artistic in an arrangement of the piano part, achievement of the integrity of a cycle at the expense of intensive motive-thematic work. The place of the Barber concert in the American history of the genre as a point of balance between the canonical and experimental approaches to its embodiment is marked.