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The American composer Samuel Barber<\/a> came from a musically sympathetic family, and, unlike many other composers, had no difficulties in choosing to follow a career in music. His life was, however, not without difficulty.<\/strong><\/p>\n Much of it was lived in a relationship with the Italian composer Gian Carlo Menotti, as part of what H Paul Moon, director of a recent documentary about Barber, calls \u2018a gay underground of classical musicians and composers whose sexuality could never attach to their public identities\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> The frustrations of sustaining this double life seeped into Barber\u2019s music. Consider the slow movement of the Violin Concerto, and its nervy, unremittingly restless finale. The concerto \u2013 the finale in particular \u2013 was certainly not what the businessman who commissioned it was expecting, and the violinist it was written for never played it in public. By 1941, when it was finally premiered by the violinist Albert Spalding, its Romantic idiom seemed out of touch with the more obviously innovative styles of 20th-century modernism.<\/span><\/p>\n