Soprano in prelude from Samuel Barber periodically clutching fine bust (5-5)
I believe the answer is:
stony-broke
'bust' is the definition.
(I know that bust can be written as stony-broke)
'soprano in prelude from samuel barber periodically clutching fine' is the wordplay.
'soprano in prelude from samuel' becomes 'stony' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'periodically' means one should take alternating letters (letters must be selected 'every so often').
'clutching' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'fine' becomes 'ok' (synonyms).
The alternate letters of 'barber' are 'bre'.
'bre' placed around 'ok' is 'broke'.
'stony'+'broke'='STONY-BROKE'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for stony-broke that I've seen before include "Utterly skint" , "Penniless" .)