ABSTRACT
The relationship between the boy and Nature in Louisiana Story is instinctive, not mystical; and it may be that Virgil Thomson was able so completely to reconcile his American innocence with his Parisian sophistication because the people of the part of Louisiana arc in part French in culture and language. Thomson achieved an American equivalent to the music of the Parisian Erik Satie, who deflated Europe's post-Wagnerian pretence and egomania. Thomson realized that the musical-visual technique had cinematic potentialities. His film music derives, indeed, from the prophetic Entr'acte cinematographique in Erik Satie's Relache. The true Samuel Barber of Dover Beach is present in the exquisite Adagio for strings, with which Toscanini scored so remarkable a success both in America and in Europe. Whether in a simple piece like the Adagio or a relatively complex piece like the Piano Sonata, Barber's instrumental music depends on the continuity of its lyrical flow.
