Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism in music was a 20th century development, particularly popular in the period between the two World Wars, in which composers drew inspiration from music of the 18th century, though some of the inspiring canon was drawn as much from the Baroque period as the Classical period – for this reason, music which draws influence specifically from the Baroque is sometimes termed neo-baroque.

Artistic description

Neoclassicism was born at the same time as the general return to rational models in the arts in response to World War I.^{[citation needed]} Smaller, more spare, more orderly was conceived of as the response to the overwrought emotionalism which many felt had herded people into the trenches.^{[citation needed]} Since economics also favored smaller ensembles, the search for doing "more with less" took on a practical imperative as well.^{[citation needed]}

Neoclassicism can be seen as a reaction against the prevailing trend of 19th century Romanticism to sacrifice internal balance and order in favor of more overtly emotional writing.^{[citation needed]} Neoclassicism makes a return to balanced forms and often emotional restraint, as well as 18th century compositional processes and techniques. However, in the use of modern instrumental resources such as the full orchestra, which had greatly expanded since the 18th century, and advanced harmony, neoclassical works are distinctly 20th century.

It is not that interest in 18th century music wasn't fairly well sustained through the 19th century, with pieces such as Franz Liszt's À la Chapelle Sixtine (1862), Edvard Grieg's Holberg Suite (1884), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's divertissement from The Queen of Spades (1890), and Max Reger's Concerto in the Old Style (1912), "dressed up their music in old clothes in order to create a smiling or pensive evocation of the past" (Albright 2004, p.276). It was that the 20th century had a different view of 18th century norms and forms, instead of being an immediately antique style contrasted against the present, 20th century neoclassicism focused on the 18th century as a period which had virtues which were lacking in their own time.^{[citation needed]}

People and works

Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith and Sergei Prokofiev are usually listed^{[weasel words]} as the most important composers in this mode, but also the prolific Darius Milhaud and his contemporary Francis Poulenc.

Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1 (1917), which remains his most popular work (according to the Prokofiev Page [1]), is generally considered^{[weasel words]} to be the composition that first brought this renewed interest in the classical music era in audible form to a wide public. But he left it to others to follow this style, namely Stravinsky.

Igor Stravinsky claimed that he instigated neoclassicism,^{[cite this quote]}, but his first foray into the style did not begin until 1920. The advent of the style is attributed by others^{[weasel words]} to composers such as Ferruccio Busoni (who wrote "Junge Klassizität" or "New Classicality" in 1920), Sergei Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel, and others.

Igor Stravinsky composed some of the best known neoclassical works^{[weasel words]} — in his ballet Pulcinella, for example, he used themes which he believed to be by Giovanni Pergolesi (it later transpired that many of them were not, though they were by contemporaries). Paul Hindemith was another neoclassicist (and New Objectivist), as was Bohuslav Martinů, who revived the Baroque concerto grosso form in his works.

Stravinsky's Mavra (1921–22) is regarded as the start of his neo-classicism (Walsh 2001, §5). Later examples are his Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, Symphony in C, and Symphony in Three Movements, as well as the ballets Orpheus and Apollo. Stravinsky's neoclassicism culminated with his opera The Rake's Progress, with a libretto by the modernist poet W. H. Auden (Walsh 2001, §8).

Stravinsky's rival for a time in neoclassicism was the German Paul Hindemith, who mixed spiky dissonance, polyphony and free ranging chromaticism into a style which was "useful," a style that became known as Gebrauchsmusik.^{[citation needed]} He produced both chamber works and orchestral works in this style, perhaps most famously "Mathis der Maler". His chamber output includes his Sonata for Horn, an expressionistic work filled with dark detail and internal connections.

Busoni wrote in a letter to Paul Bekker, "By 'Young Classicalism' I mean the mastery, the sifting and the turning to account of all the gains of previous experiments and their inclusion in strong and beautiful forms" (Busoni 1957, 20). Roman Vlad has contrasted the "classicism" of Stravinsky, external forms and patterns used in works, with the "classicality" of Busoni, internal disposition and attitude of the artist towards works (Samson 1977, p.28).

Neoclassicism found a welcome audience in America, the school of Nadia Boulanger promulgated ideas about music based on her understanding of Stravinsky's music. Boulanger's students include neoclassicists Elliott Carter (in his early years), Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Darius Milhaud, Ástor Piazzolla and Virgil Thomson.

Arnold Schoenberg's works after 1920 have been described as neoclassical (Rosen 1975,^{[page needed]}), because of his clear return to classical forms following his free-atonal period, beginning with the Serenade, op. 24, and the Suite for piano, op. 25.

In Spain virtuosic harpsichordist Wanda Landowska began a revival of baroque music playing a modernized version of the harpsichord in Bach's St. Matthew Passion.^{[citation needed]} Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, being influenced by Stravinsky also began to turn "back to Bach". The first movement of his Harpsichord Concerto is more of an anti-concerto that redefines the baroque ideas of soli/tutti use.^{[citation needed]} It also quotes a sixteenth-century song by Juan Vázquez and uses thematic material from it throughout the concerto.^{[citation needed]}

List of Neoclassical Composers

• Yasushi Akutagawa
• Béla Bartók
• Leonard Bernstein
• Nadia Boulanger
• Benjamin Britten
• Ferruccio Busoni
• Aaron Copland
• David Diamond
• George Enescu
• Manuel de Falla
• Irving Fine
• Camargo Guarnieri
• Paul Hindemith
• Arthur Honegger
• Dmitri Kabalevsky
• Ernst Krenek
• George Lloyd
• Bohuslav Martinů
• Darius Milhaud
• Carl Nielsen
• Francis Poulenc
• Sergei Prokofiev
• Maurice Ravel
• Ottorino Respighi
• Erik Satie
• Ahmed Adnan Saygun
• Dmitri Shostakovich
• Igor Stravinsky
• Heitor Villa-Lobos

See also

• Neobaroque
• Neoromanticism
• Neoclassical (New Age)
• Neo-classical metal

Sources

• Albright, Daniel (2004). Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-01267-0.
• Busoni, Ferruccio (1957). The Essence of Music, and Other Papers, translated by Rosamond Ley. London: Rockliff.
• Rosen, Charles (1975). Arnold Schoenberg. Modern Masters. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0670133167 (cloth) ISBN 0670019860 (pbk). UK edition, titled simply Schoenberg. London: Boyars; Glasgow: W. Collins ISBN 0714525669
• Samson, Jim (1977). Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900-1920. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-02193-9.
• Stravinsky, Igor (1970). Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons (from the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures delivered in 1939-1940). Harvard College, 1942. English translation by Arthur Knodell and Ingolf Dahl, preface by George Seferis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-67855-9.
• Walsh, Stephen (2001). "Stravinsky, Igor", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. New York: Grove's Dictionaries.