During his troubled later years, Barber continued to write music until he was almost 70 years old. In 1967 he successfully adapted his "Adagio for Strings" (1936) to a choral work, "Agnus Dei", set to the Latin liturgical mass text on the Lamb of God. The work has become widely performed and recorded by choirs internationally. In 1969 Leontyne Price performed the premiere of Barber's song cycle "Despite and Still" which emphasized textual themes of loneliness, isolation, and lost love; all issues present in Menotti's own personal life at the time of this work's creation. This work adopted a more modern dissonant harmonic language with vivid textual imagery characterized by tonal ambiguity and a frequent use of chromaticism, conflicting triads, tritones, and whole-tone segments. In 1971 his cantata "The Lovers" was well received by audiences and critics when it premiered in performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Finnish baritone Tom Krause, and the Temple University Chorus directed by Robert Page. The "Third Essay" for orchestra (1978) was his last major work.