Barber's Text
Barber's Knoxville, in many ways, parallels Agee's text. We see that Agee was touched by the death of his father in his childhood, while Barber was, during the time of composition, enduring his father's deteriorating health. The two men were similarly aged. Most importantly, however, the two men were so compelled by nostalgia and inspiration that they (supposedly) wrote their pieces quickly and without much revision. The spontaneity of both the text and the music illustrate this reverie of the American south with an ease and honesty that sharply contrasts the paradigm of "multiple-draft writing," but with technical mastery nonetheless.
Barber chooses only excerpts of Knoxville for his composition.
Read more about this topic: Knoxville: Summer Of 1915
Famous quotes containing the words barber and/or text:
“No barber shaves so close but another finds his work.”
—English proverb, collected in George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs (1640)
“The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)