Neoclassicism (music)
Encyclopedia
Neoclassicism in music was a twentieth-century trend, particularly current in the period between the two World Wars, in which composers sought to return to aesthetic precepts associated with the broadly defined concept of "classicism", namely order, balance, clarity, economy, and emotional restraint. As such, neoclassicism was a reaction against the unrestrained emotionalism and perceived formlessness of late romanticism, as well as a "call to order" after the experimental ferment of the first two decades of the twentieth century. The neoclassical impulse found its expression in such features as the use of pared-down performing forces, an emphasis on rhythm and on contrapuntal texture, an updated or expanded tonal harmony, and a concentration on absolute music
Absolute music
Absolute music is a concept in music that describes music as an art form separated from formalisms or other considerations; it is not explicitly about anything; it is non-representational. In contrast to program music, absolute music makes sense without accompanying words, images, drama, or...

 as opposed to Romantic program music
Program music
Program music or programme music is a type of art music that attempts to musically render an extra-musical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music...

. In form and thematic technique, neoclassical music often drew inspiration from music of the 18th century, though the inspiring canon belonged as frequently to the Baroque
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...

 and even earlier periods as to the Classical period—for this reason, music which draws inspiration specifically from the Baroque is sometimes termed Neo-Baroque music
Neo-Baroque music
Neo-Baroque is a term used to describe music which displays important aspects of Baroque style, but is not from the Baroque period proper—i.e., the 17th and 18th centuries...

. Neoclassicism had two distinct national lines of development, French (proceeding from the influence of Erik Satie
Erik Satie
Éric Alfred Leslie Satie was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde...

 and represented by Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

), and German (proceeding from the "New Objectivism" of Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...

 and represented by Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

.) Neoclassicism was an aesthetic trend rather than an organized movement; even many composers not usually thought of as "neoclassicists" absorbed elements of the style.

People and works

Although the term "neoclassicism" refers to a twentieth-century movement, there were important nineteenth-century precursors. In pieces such as Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

's À la Chapelle Sixtine (1862), Edvard Grieg
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...

's Holberg Suite
Holberg Suite
Holberg Suite, Op. 40 more properly "From Holberg's Time", , subtitled "Suite in olden style" , is a suite of five movements based on eighteenth century dance forms, written by Edvard Grieg in 1884 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Danish-Norwegian humanist playwright Ludvig...

(1884), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...

's divertissement from The Queen of Spades
The Queen of Spades (opera)
The Queen of Spades, Op. 68 is an opera in 3 acts by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to a Russian libretto by the composer's brother Modest Tchaikovsky, based on a short story of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. The premiere took place in 1890 in St...

(1890), George Enescu
George Enescu
George Enescu was a Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conductor and teacher.-Biography:Enescu was born in the village of Liveni , Dorohoi County at the time, today Botoşani County. He showed musical talent from early in his childhood. A child prodigy, Enescu created his first musical...

's Piano Suite in the Old Style (1897) and Max Reger
Max Reger
Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher.-Life:...

's Concerto in the Old Style (1912), composers "dressed up their music in old clothes in order to create a smiling or pensive evocation of the past" (Albright 2004, 276).

Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...

's Symphony No. 1
Symphony No. 1 (Prokofiev)
Sergei Prokofiev began work on his Symphony No. 1 in D major in 1916, but wrote most of it in 1917, finishing work on September 10. It is written in loose imitation of the style of Haydn , and is widely known as the Classical Symphony, a name given to it by the composer...

 (1917) is sometimes cited as a precursor of neoclassicism (Whittall, 1980), but Prokofiev himself thought that his composition was a 'passing phase' whereas Stravinsky's neoclassicism was by the 1920s 'becoming the basic line of his music' (Prokofiev 1991, 273).

Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

's first foray into the style began in 1919–20 when he composed the ballet Pulcinella
Pulcinella (ballet)
Pulcinella is a ballet by Igor Stravinsky based on an 18th-century play — Pulcinella is a character originating from Commedia dell'arte. The ballet premiered at the Paris Opera on 15 May 1920 under the baton of Ernest Ansermet. The dancer Léonide Massine created both the libretto and choreography,...

, using themes which he believed to be by Giovanni Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was an Italian composer, violinist and organist.-Biography:Born at Iesi, Pergolesi studied music there under a local musician, Francesco Santini, before going to Naples in 1725, where he studied under Gaetano Greco and Francesco Feo among others...

 (it later came out that many of them were not, though they were by contemporaries). Later examples are the Octet
Octet (Stravinsky)
The Octet for wind instruments is a chamber-music composition by Igor Stravinsky, completed in 1923.Stravinsky’s Octet is scored for an unusual combination of woodwind and brass instruments: flute, clarinet in B and A, two bassoons, trumpet in C, trumpet in A, tenor trombone, and bass trombone...

 for winds, the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, Symphony in C
Symphony in C (Stravinsky)
The Symphony in C is a work by Russian expatriate composer Igor Stravinsky.The Symphony was written between 1938 and 1940 on a commission from American philanthropist Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss. It was a turbulent period of the composer's life, marked by illness and deaths in his immediate family...

, and Symphony in Three Movements
Symphony in Three Movements (Stravinsky)
The Symphony in Three Movements is a work by Russian expatriate composer Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky wrote the symphony from 1942–45 on commission by the Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York...

, as well as the ballets Apollo
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

and Orpheus
Orpheus (ballet)
Orpheus is a ballet made by George Balanchine on Ballet Society, which he founded together with Lincoln Kirstein and of which he was ballet master, to eponymous music from 1947 by Igor Stravinsky, his frequent collaborator, with sets and costumes by Isamu Noguchi.The premiere took place on April...

, in which the neoclassicism took on an explicitly "classical Grecian" aura. Stravinsky's neoclassicism culminated in his opera The Rake's Progress
The Rake's Progress
The Rake's Progress is an opera in three acts and an epilogue by Igor Stravinsky. The libretto, written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is based loosely on the eight paintings and engravings A Rake's Progress of William Hogarth, which Stravinsky had seen on May 2, 1947, in a Chicago...

, with a libretto by W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

 (Walsh 2001, §8). Stravinskian neoclassicism was later taken up by Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...

 and his contemporary Francis Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...

, and Bohuslav Martinů
Bohuslav Martinu
Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...

, who revived the Baroque concerto grosso
Concerto grosso
The concerto grosso is a form of baroque music in which the musical material is passed between a small group of soloists and full orchestra...

 form in his works.

A German strain of neoclassicism was developed by Paul Hindemith, who produced chamber music, orchestral works, and operas in a heavily contrapuntal, chromatically inflected style, best exemplified by Mathis der Maler
Mathis der Maler (opera)
Mathis der Maler is an opera by Paul Hindemith. The libretto is also by the composer.The opera's genesis lay in Hindemith's interest in the Protestant Reformation...

. Roman Vlad
Roman Vlad
Roman Vlad is an Italian composer, pianist, and musicologist of Romanian birth. He studied with Titus Tarnawski and Liviu Russu in Romania earning a piano diploma. He moved to Rome in 1938 to study at the University of Rome and later the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia...

 has contrasted the "classicism" of Stravinsky, which consists in the external forms and patterns of his works, with the "classicality" of Busoni, which represents an internal disposition and attitude of the artist towards works (Samson 1977, 28). Busoni wrote in a letter to Paul Bekker
Paul Bekker
Paul Bekker was one of the most articulate and influential German music critics of the 20th century....

, "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).

Neoclassicism found a welcome audience in America, as the school of Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...

 promulgated ideas about music based on her understanding of Stravinsky's music. Boulanger's American students include Elliott Carter
Elliott Carter
Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music...

, Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...

, Roy Harris
Roy Harris
Roy Ellsworth Harris , was an American composer. He wrote much music on American subjects, becoming best known for his Symphony No...

, Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...

, Ástor Piazzolla
Ástor Piazzolla
Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla was an Argentine tango composer and bandoneón player. His oeuvre revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music...

 and Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...

.

Even the atonal school, represented by Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

, showed the influence of neoclassical ideas. The forms of Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

's works after 1920, beginning with opp. 23, 24, and 25 (all composed at the same time), have been described as "openly neoclassical", and represent an effort to integrate the advances of 1908–1913 with the inheritance of the 18th and 19th centuries (Rosen 1975, 70–73). Schoenberg attempted in those works to offer listeners structural points of reference with which they could identify, beginning with the Serenade, op. 24, and the Suite for piano, op. 25 (Keillor 2009). Schoenberg's pupil Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

 actually came to neoclassicism before his teacher, in his Three Pieces for Orchestra
Three Pieces for Orchestra (Berg)
Alban Berg composed his Three Pieces for Orchestra , Op. 6 between 1913 and 1915. It is dedicated "to my teacher and friend Arnold Schoenberg in immeasurable gratitude and love"...

, op. 6 (1913–14), and the opera Wozzeck
Wozzeck
Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...

(Rosen 1975, 87), which uses closed forms such as suite, passacaglia, and rondo as organizing principles within each scene. Anton Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...

 also achieved a sort of neoclassical style through an intense concentration on the motif
Motif (music)
In music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....

 (Rosen 1975, 102).

Other neoclassical composers

  • David Diamond
    David Diamond (composer)
    David Leo Diamond was an American composer of classical music.-Life and career:He was born in Rochester, New York and studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Eastman School of Music under Bernard Rogers, also receiving lessons from Roger Sessions in New York City and Nadia Boulanger in...

  • Cecil Effinger
    Cecil Effinger
    Cecil Effinger was an American composer, oboist, and inventor.-Life:Effinger was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and resided in that state for most of his life...

  • George Enescu
    George Enescu
    George Enescu was a Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conductor and teacher.-Biography:Enescu was born in the village of Liveni , Dorohoi County at the time, today Botoşani County. He showed musical talent from early in his childhood. A child prodigy, Enescu created his first musical...

  • Irving Fine
    Irving Fine
    Irving Gifford Fine was an American composer. Fine's work assimilated neo-classical, romantic and, later, serial elements...

  • Jean Françaix
    Jean Françaix
    Jean René Désiré Françaix was a French neoclassical composer, pianist, and orchestrator, known for his prolific output and vibrant style.-Life:...

  • Pierre Gabaye
    Pierre Gabaye
    Pierre Gabaye was a French composer.His musical tuition began at age seven on the piano, and which led him to pursue a career as a pianist and composer in both the classical and jazz spheres. He studied the piano with Simone Plé-Caussade at the Conservatoire de Paris. He won the 1956 Prix de Rome,...

  • Camargo Guarnieri
    Camargo Guarnieri
    Mozart Camargo Guarnieri was a Brazilian composer.-Name:He was registered at birth as Mozart Guarnieri, but when he began a musical career, he decided his first name was too pretentious and subject to puns. Thus he adopted his mother's maiden name Camargo as a middle name, and thenceforth signed...

  • Arthur Honegger
    Arthur Honegger
    Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which is interpreted as imitating the sound of a steam locomotive.-Biography:Born...

  • Dmitri Kabalevsky
    Dmitri Kabalevsky
    Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky was a Russian composer.He helped to set up the Union of Soviet Composers in Moscow and remained one of its leading figures. He was a prolific composer of piano music and chamber music; many of his piano works have been performed by Vladimir Horowitz. He is probably...

  • Stefan Kisielewski
    Stefan Kisielewski
    Stefan Kisielewski , nicknames Kisiel, Julia Hołyńska, Teodor Klon, Tomasz Staliński, was a Polish writer, publicist, composer and politician, and one of the members of Znak, one of the founders of the UPR, the polish libertarian and conservative political party.Kisielewski was born to a Polish...

  • Ernst Krenek
    Ernst Krenek
    Ernst Krenek was an Austrian of Czech origin and, from 1945, American composer. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now , a study of Johannes Ockeghem , and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music...

  • George Lloyd
    George Lloyd (composer)
    George Walter Selwyn Lloyd was a British composer.-Early life:Of Cornish ancestry, Lloyd grew up in a family with great enthusiasm for music. He was mainly home-schooled because of rheumatic fever. He later studied violin with Albert Sammons and composition with Harry Farjeon. He was a student at...

  • Maurice Ravel
    Maurice Ravel
    Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...

  • Albert Roussel
    Albert Roussel
    Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel was a French composer. He spent seven years as a midshipman, turned to music as an adult, and became one of the most prominent French composers of the interwar period...

  • Ahmed Adnan Saygun
  • Heitor Villa-Lobos
    Heitor Villa-Lobos
    Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer to date. He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works...


See also

  • Neobaroque
    Neo-baroque
    The Baroque Revival or Neo-baroque was an architectural style of the late 19th century. The term is used to describe architecture which displays important aspects of Baroque style, but is not of the Baroque period proper—i.e., the 17th and 18th centuries.Some examples of Neo-baroque architecture:*...

  • Neoromanticism
    Neoromanticism (music)
    Neoromanticism in music is a return to the emotional expression associated with nineteenth-century Romanticism. Since the mid-1970s the term has come to be identified with neoconservative postmodernism, especially in Germany, Austria, and the United States, with composers such as Wolfgang Rihm and...

  • Neoclassical (New Age)
    Neoclassical (New Age)
    Within the broad movement of New Age music, neoclassical New Age music is influenced by and sometimes also based upon early, baroque or classical music, especially in terms of melody and composition. The artist may offer a modern arrangement of a work by an established composer or combine elements...

  • Neoclassical (Dark Wave)
    Neoclassical (Dark Wave)
    Neoclassical Dark Wave refers to a music genre within the Dark Wave movement. It is characterized by the use of ethereal atmosphere and angelic female voices but also adds strong influences from classical music. Neoclassical Dark Wave is distinct from the academic art music form known as...

  • Neoclassical metal

Sources

  • Albright, Daniel (2004). Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources. Chicago: 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.
  • Keillor, John (2009). "[ Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31]". Allmusic.com website. (Accessed 4 April 2010).
  • Prokofiev, Sergey (1991). Short Autobiography, translated by Rose Prokofieva, revised and corrected by David Mather: published in Soviet Diary 1927 and Other Writings. London: Faber. ISBN 0-571-16158-8
  • 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 Paperback edition, under the original title, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. ISBN 0-691-02706-4.
  • 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
    Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
    The Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard University was established in 1925 as an annual lectureship in "poetry in the broadest sense" and named for the university's former professor of fine arts. Distinguished creative figures and scholars in the arts, including painting,...

    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.
  • Whittall, Arnold (1980). "Neo-classical", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan.
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