b'Death in the Family, for which the author won a Pulitzer Prize. The work struck a major chord with the composer and he immediately decided to set it to music upon receiving the commission.Barber said of Mr. Agees work: I had always admired Mr. Agees writing and this prose-poem particularly struck me because the summer evening he describes in his native southern town reminded me so much of similar evenings when I was a child at home. I found out, after setting this, that Mr. Agee and I are the same age, and the year he described was 1915, when we were both five. You see, it expresses a childs feeling of loneliness, wonder, and lack of identity in that marginal world between twilight and sleep.Barbers musical treatment of Agees text fits perfectly. Throughout the work he uses devices like text painting (a compositional device where the composer writes music to reflect the literal meaning of a songs lyrics) to really clearly convey the feelings and atmosphere in text. Steber said of Barbers work, That was exactly my childhood!Leontyne Price, a distinguished American soprano, native Mississippian, and celebrated interpreter of Barbers music had a similar reaction to the piece, stating: As a southerner, it expresses everything I know about my roots and about my mama and father.my home town. Theres no cataloguing a great artist, its just delving into the beauty of the Agee poem and setting it right to music. You can smell the south in it.Instrumentationflute and piccolo, oboe and English horn, clarinet, bassoon, two horns, trumpet, percussion, harp, strings, and solo voiceDuration15 minutescontinued'