This is typical of neo-Romantic composers such as Barber. As Susan Carter explains in her dissertation, "The Piano Music of Samuel Barber", that “neo-Romantic composers returned to a style characterized by broad lyricism and dramatic expression.” She also states that the traditional structures of form from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were conserved while drawing upon a “contemporary technical vocabulary.” From a boogie-woogie style of a five-part rondo to a theme and variations of a well known cowboy ballad, and even to a barn-yard dance with a fiddler, Barber uses each style effectively and accurately, according to the neo-Romantic ideas.

Date of composition 1944
Premiered December 1948
Catalogue Op. 20
Instruments Piano
Autotranslations beta Samuel Barber: Excursions, Op. 20
Samuel Barber: Excursions, Op. 20
Samuel Barber: Excursions, Op. 20