Music for a Scene from Shelley

It was inspired in part by the view of Lake Lugano and the Swiss Alps from Cadegliano, where Barber was staying with Gian Carlo Menotti at his family's villa.

Further performances quickly followed, in Europe as well as the United States, though it has never achieved the popularity of some of Barber’s other early orchestral works.

The Rome Prize, announced on NBC Radio on May 9 as part of a broadcast concert of his music including both works, enabled him to return to Italy where he would compose his First Symphony.

The opening motif of four descending notes, heard against a backdrop of an undulating murmur, is subjected to little true development.

[8] More than forty years later, in 1977, Barber would return to this same four-note descending motif in the Ballade for solo piano where, just as in the Music for a Scene from Shelley, it is simply reiterated, rather than being developed.