Neoclassicism (music)

Neoclassicism in music was a twentieth-century

trend, particularly current in the interwar period, 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 as
opposed to Romantic program music.

In form and thematic technique, neoclassical music Igor Stravinsky, one of the most important
often drew inspiration from music of the 18th century, and influential composers of the 20th
though the inspiring canon belonged as frequently to century
the Baroque 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.
Neoclassicism had two distinct national lines of development, French (proceeding partly from
the influence of Erik Satie and represented by Igor Stravinsky, who was in fact Russian-born)
and German (proceeding from the "New Objectivity" of Ferruccio Busoni, who was actually
Italian, and represented by Paul Hindemith). Neoclassicism was an aesthetic trend rather than
an organized movement; even many composers not usually thought of as "neoclassicists"
absorbed elements of the style.

Contents
People and works
Other neoclassical composers
See also
Sources
Further reading

People and works

Although the term "neoclassicism" refers to a 20th-century movement, there were important
19th-century precursors. In 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), George Enescu's Piano Suite in the Old Style (1897) and Max Reger'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".[1]

Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1 (1917) is sometimes cited as a precursor of neoclassicism.[2]

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".[3] Richard Strauss also
introduced neoclassical elements into his music, most notably in his orchestral suite Le
bourgeois gentilhomme Op. 60, written in an early version in 1911 and its final version in
1917.[4]

Ottorino Respighi was also one of the precursors of neoclassicism with his Ancient Airs and
Dances Suite No. 1, composed in 1917. Instead of looking at musical forms of the 18th century,
Respighi, who, in addition to being a renowned composer and conductor, was also a notable
musicologist, reached back to Italian music of the 16th and 17th century. His fellow
contemporary composer Gian Francesco Malipiero, also a musicologist, compiled a complete
edition of the works of Claudio Monteverdi. Malipiero's relation with ancient Italian music was
not simply aiming at a revival of antique forms within the framework of a "return to order", but
an attempt to revive an approach to composition that would allow the composer to free himself
from the constraints of the sonata form and of the over-exploited mechanisms of thematic
development.[5]

Igor Stravinsky's first foray into the style began in 1919/20 when he composed the ballet
Pulcinella, using themes which he believed to be by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (it later came
out that many of them were not, though they were by contemporaries). American Composer
Edward T. Cone describes the ballet “[Stravinsky] confronts the evoked historical manner at
every point with his own version of contemporary language; the result is a complete
reinterpretation and transformation of the earlier style".[6] Later examples are the Octet for
winds, the "Dumbarton Oaks" Concerto, the Concerto in D, the Symphony of Psalms, Symphony
in C, and Symphony in Three Movements, as well as the opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex and the
ballets Apollo and Orpheus, in which the neoclassicism took on an explicitly "classical Grecian"
aura. Stravinsky's neoclassicism culminated in his opera The Rake's Progress, with a libretto by
W. H. Auden.[7] Stravinskian neoclassicism was a decisive influence on the French composers
Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger and Germaine Tailleferre, as well as on
Bohuslav Martinů, who revived the Baroque concerto grosso form in his works.[8] Pulcinella, as
a subcategory of rearrangement of existing Baroque compositions, spawned a number of similar
works, including Alfredo Casella's Scarlattiana (1927), Poulenc's Suite Française, Ottorino
Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances and Gli uccelli,[9] and Richard Strauss's Dance Suite from
Keyboard Pieces by François Couperin and the related Divertimento after Keyboard Pieces by
Couperin, Op. 86 (1923 and 1943, respectively).[10] Starting around 1926 Béla Bartók's music
shows a marked increase in neoclassical traits, and a year or two later acknowledged
Stravinsky's "revolutionary" accomplishment in creating novel music by reviving old musical
elements while at the same time naming his colleague Zoltán Kodály as another Hungarian
adherent of neoclassicism.[11]
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. Roman Vlad contrasts 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.[12] 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".[13]

Neoclassicism found a welcome audience in Europe and America, as the school of Nadia
Boulanger promulgated ideas about music based on her understanding of Stravinsky's music.
Boulanger taught and influenced many notable composers, including Grażyna Bacewicz,
Lennox Berkeley, Elliott Carter, Francis Chagrin, Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Irving Fine,
Harold Shapero, Jean Françaix, Roy Harris, Igor Markevitch, Darius Milhaud, Astor Piazzolla,
Walter Piston, Ned Rorem, and Virgil Thomson.

In Spain, Manuel de Falla's neoclassical Concerto for Harpsichord, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Violin,
and Cello of 1926 was perceived as an expression of "universalism" (universalismo), broadly
linked to an international, modernist aesthetic.[14] In the first movement of the concerto, Falla
quotes fragments of the 15th-century villancico "De los álamos, vengo madre". He had similarly
incorporated quotations from 17th-century music when he first embraced neoclassicism in the
puppet-theatre piece El retablo de maese Pedro (1919–23), an adaptation from Cervantes's Don
Quixote. Later neoclassical compositions by Falla include the 1924 chamber cantata Psyché and
incidental music for Pedro Calderón de la Barca's, El gran teatro del mundo, written in 1927.[15]
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Roberto Gerhard composed in the neoclassical style,
including his Concertino for Strings, the Wind Quintet, the cantata L'alta naixença del rei en
Jaume, and the ballet Ariel.[16] Other important Spanish neoclassical composers are found
amongst the members of the Generación de la República (also known as the Generación del 27),
including Julián Bautista, Fernando Remacha, Salvador Bacarisse, and Jesús Bal y
Gay.[17][18][19][20]

A neoclassical aesthetic was promoted in Italy by Alfredo Casella, who had been educated in
Paris and continued to live there until 1915, when he returned to Italy to teach and organize
concerts, introducing modernist composers such as Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg to the
provincially minded Italian public. His neoclassical compositions were perhaps less important
than his organizing activities, but especially representative examples include Scarlattiana of
1926, using motifs from Domenico Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas, and the Concerto romano of
the same year.[21] Casella's colleague Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote neoclassically-inflected
works which hark back to early Italian music and classical models: the themes of his Concerto
italiano in G minor of 1924 for violin and orchestra echo Vivaldi as well as 16th- and 17th-
century Italian folksongs, while his highly successful Guitar Concerto No. 1 in D of 1939
consciously follows Mozart's concerto style.[22]

Portuguese representatives of neoclassicism include two members of the "Grupo de Quatro",

Armando José Fernandes and Jorge Croner de Vasconcellos, both of whom studied with Nadia
Boulanger.[23]

In South America, neoclassicism was of particular importance in Argentina, where it differed

from its European model in that it did not seek to redress recent stylistic upheavals which had
simply not occurred in Latin America. Argentine composers associated with neoclassicism
include Jacobo Ficher, José María Castro, Luis Gianneo, and Juan José Castro.[24] The most
important 20th-century Argentine composer, Alberto Ginastera, turned from nationalistic to
neoclassical forms in the 1950s (e.g., Piano Sonata No. 1 and the Variaciones concertantes)
before moving on to a style dominated by atonal and serial techniques. Roberto Caamaño,
professor of Gregorian chant at the Institute of Sacred Music in Buenos Aires, employed a
dissonant neoclassical style in some works and a serialist style in others.[25]

Although the well-known Bachianas Brasileiras of Heitor Villa-Lobos (composed between 1930
and 1947) are cast in the form of Baroque suites, usually beginning with a prelude and ending
with a fugal or toccata-like movement and employing neoclassical devices such as ostinato
figures and long pedal notes, they were not intended so much as stylized recollections of the
style of Bach as a free adaptation of Baroque harmonic and contrapuntal procedures to music in
a Brazilian style.[26][27] Brazilian composers of the generation after Villa-Lobos more
particularly associated with neoclassicism include Radamés Gnattali (in his later works), Edino
Krieger, and the prolific Camargo Guarnieri, who had contact with but did not study under
Nadia Boulanger when he visited Paris in the 1920s. Neoclassical traits figure in Guarnieri's
music starting with the second movement of the Piano Sonatina of 1928, and are particularly
notable in his five piano concertos.[26][28][29]

The Chilean composer Domingo Santa Cruz Wilson was so strongly influenced by the German
variety of neoclassicism that he became known as the "Chilean Hindemith".[30]

In Cuba, José Ardévol initiated a neoclassical school, though he himself moved on to a

modernistic national style later in his career.[31][32][30]

Even the atonal school, represented for example by Arnold Schoenberg, showed the influence of
neoclassical ideas. After his early style of 'Late Romanticism' (exemplified by his string sextet
Verklärte Nacht) had been supplanted by his Atonal period, and immediately before he
embraced twelve-tone serialism, the forms of Schoenberg'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 to 1913 with the
inheritance of the 18th and 19th centuries.[33] 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.[34] Schoenberg's pupil Alban Berg actually
came to neoclassicism before his teacher, in his Three Pieces for Orchestra, op. 6 (1913–14), and
the opera Wozzeck,[35] which uses closed forms such as suite, passacaglia, and rondo as
organizing principles within each scene. Anton Webern also achieved a sort of neoclassical style
through an intense concentration on the motif.[36] However, his 1935 orchestration of the six-
part ricercar from Bach's Musical Offering is not regarded as neoclassical because of its
concentration on the fragmentation of instrumental colours.[9]

Other neoclassical composers

Some composers below may have only written music in a neoclassical style during a portion of
their careers.

Arthur Berger (1912–2003)

Carlos Chávez (1899–1978)[37]
Salvador Contreras (1910–1982)
Pierre Gabaye (1930-2019)
Harald Genzmer (1909–2007)
 Harald Genzmer (1909–2007)
Giorgio Federico Ghedini (1892–1965)
Vagn Holmboe (1909–1996)
Stefan Kisielewski (1911–1991)
Iša Krejčí (1904–1968)
Ernst Krenek (1900–1991)
Marcel Mihalovici (1898–1985)
Giorgio Pacchioni (b. 1947)
Goffredo Petrassi (1904–2003)
Gabriel Pierné (1863–1937)[38][39][40]
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Knudåge Riisager (1897–1974)
Albert Roussel (1869–1937)
Alexandre Tansman (1897–1986)
Michael Tippett (1905–1998)
Dag Wirén (1905–1986)

See also
Neoromanticism
Neotonality

Sources
Bónis, Ferenc (1983). "Zoltán Kodály, a Hungarian Master of Neoclassicism". Studia
Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. 25 (1–4): 73–91.
Cone, Edward T. (July 1962). "The Uses of Convention: Stravinsky and His Models". The
Musical Quarterly. XLVIII (3): 287–299. doi:10.1093/mq/XLVIII.3.287 (https://doi.org/10.1093
%2Fmq%2FXLVIII.3.287).
Cowell, Henry (March–April 1933). "Towards Neo-Primitivism". Modern Music. 10 (3): 149–
53. Reprinted in Essential Cowell: Selected Writings on Music by Henry Cowell 1921–1964,
edited by Richard Carter Higgins and Bruce McPherson, preface by Kyle Gann, pp. 299–
303. Kingston, New York City: Documentext, 2002. ISBN 978-0-929701-63-9.
Hess, Carol A. (Spring 2013). "Copland in Argentina: Pan Americanist Politics, Folklore, and
the Crisis in Modern Music". Journal of the American Musicological Society. 66 (1): 191–
250. doi:10.1525/jams.2013.66.1.191 (https://doi.org/10.1525%2Fjams.2013.66.1.191).
Malipiero, Gian Francesco. 1952. [Essay?]. In L'opera di Gian Francesco Malipiero: Saggi di
scrittori italiani e stranieri con una introduzione di Guido M. Gatti, seguiti dal catalogo delle
opere con annotazioni dell'autore e da ricordi e pensieri dello stesso, edited by Guido
Maggiorino Gatti, Treviso: Edizioni di Treviso.
Moody, Ivan (1996). "'Mensagens': Portuguese Music in the 20th Century". Tempo, new
series, no. 198 (October): 2–10.
Rosen, Charles (1975). Arnold Schoenberg. Modern Masters. New York: Viking Press.
ISBN 0-670-13316-7 (cloth) ISBN 0-670-01986-0 (pbk). UK edition, titled simply
Schoenberg. London: Boyars; Glasgow: W. Collins ISBN 0-7145-2566-9 Paperback reprint,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. ISBN 0-691-02706-4.
Ross, Alex (2010). "Strauss's Place in the Twentieth Century". In Charles Youmans (ed.).
The Cambridge Companion to Richard Strauss. Cambridge Companions to Music Series.
 Cambridge and New York City: Cambridge University Press. pp. 195–212.
ISBN 9780521728157.
Sadie, Stanley; Tyrrell, John, eds. (2001). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan. ISBN 9780195170672.
Sorce Keller, Marcello (1978). "A Bent for Aphorisms: Some Remarks about Music and
about His Own Music by Gian Francesco Malipiero". The Music Review. 39 (3–4): 231–239.

Footnotes

1. Albright, Daniel (2004). Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources. University of

Chicago Press. p. 276. ISBN 0-226-01267-0.
2. Whittall, Arnold (1980). "Neo-classicism". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan Publishers.
3. Prokofiev, Sergey (1991). "Short Autobiography", translated by Rose Prokofieva, revised
and corrected by David Mather. In Soviet Diary 1927 and Other Writings. London: Faber
and Faber. p. 273. ISBN 0-571-16158-8.
4. Ross 2010, p. 207.
5. Malipiero 1952, p. 340, cited from Sorce Keller 1978.
6. Cone 1962, p. 291.
7. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Stravinsky, Igor" (§8) by Stephen Walsh.
8. Large, Brian (1976). Martinu. Teaneck NJ: Holmes & Meier. p. 100. ISBN 978-0841902565.
9. Simms, Bryan R. 1986. "Twentieth-Century Composers Return to the Small Ensemble". In
The Orchestra: A Collection of 23 Essays on Its Origins and Transformations, edited by
Joan Peyser, 453–74. New York City: Charles Scribners Sons p. 462. Reprinted in
paperback, Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2006. ISBN 978-1-4234-1026-3.
10. Heisler, Wayne (2009). The Ballet Collaborations of Richard Strauss. Rochester: University
of Rochester Press. p. 112. ISBN 978-1-58046-321-8.
11. Bónis 1983, pp. 73–4.
12. Samson, Jim (1977). Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900–
1920. New York City: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 28. ISBN 0-393-02193-9.
13. Busoni, Ferruccio (1957). The Essence of Music, and Other Papers. Translated by
Rosamond Ley. London: Rockliff. p. 20.
14. Hess, Carol A. (2001). Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, 1898–1936. University of
Chicago Press. pp. 3–8. ISBN 9780226330389.
15. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Falla (y Matheu), Manuel de" by Carol A. Hess.
16. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Gerhard, Roberto [Gerhard Ottenwaelder, Robert]" by Malcom
MacDonald.
17. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Spain" (§I: Art Music 6: 20th Century) by Belén Pérez Castillo.
18. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Bacarisse (Chinoria), Salvador" by Christiane Heine.
19. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Remacha (Villar), Fernando" by Christiane Heine.
20. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Bautista, Julián" by Susana Salgado.
21. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Casella, Alfredo" by John C. G. Waterhouse and Virgilio
Bernardoni.
22. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Mario" by James Westby.
23. Moody 1996, p. 4.
24. Hess 2013, pp. 205–6.
25. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Argentina" (i) by Gerard Béhague and Irma Ruiz.
26. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Brazil" by Gerard Béhague.
27. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Villa-Lobos, Heitor" by Gerard Béhague.
28. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Guarnieri, (Mozart) Camargo" by Gerard Béhague.
29. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Krieger, Edino" by Gerard Béhague.
30. Hess 2013, p. 205.
31. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Cuba, Republic of" by Gerard Béhague and Robin Moore.
32. New Grove Dict. 2001, "Ardévol (Gimbernat), José" by Victoria Eli Rodríguez.
33. Cowell 1933, p. 150; Rosen 1975, pp. 70–3.
34. Keillor, John (2009). "Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31 (https://www.allmusic.com/work/c5390
0)". Allmusic.com website. (Accessed 4 April 2010).
35. Rosen 1975, p. 87.
36. Rosen 1975, p. 102.
37. Oja, Carol J. 2000. Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s. Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press. pp. 275–9. ISBN 978-0-19-516257-8.
38. Hurwitz, David (n.d.). "Pierne Timpani TEN C (http://www.classicstoday.com/review/review-6
166/)". ClassicsToday.com (accessed 1 July 2015).
39. Lewis, Uncle Dave (n.d.). “Christian Ivaldi / Solistes de l'orchestre Philharmonique du
Luxembourg: Gabriel Pierné: La Musique de Chambre, Vol. 2 (http://www.allmusic.com/albu
m/gabriel-pierné-la-musique-de-chambre-vol-2-mw0001841434)” AllMusic Review
(accessed 1 July 2015).
40. Sharpe, Roderick L. (2009). "Gabriel Pierné (b. Metz, Loraine, 16 August 1863 – d.
Ploujean, Finistère, 17 July 1937): Voyage au Pays du Tendre (d'après la Carte du Tendre)".
Konrad von Abel & Phenomenology of Music: Repertoire & Opera Explorer: Vorworte—
Prefaces. Munich: Musikproduktion Jürgen Höflich.

Further reading
Lanza, Andrea (2008). "An Outline of Italian Instrumental Music in the 20th Century". Sonus:
A Journal of Investigations into Global Musical Possibilities 29, no. 1:1–21. ISSN 0739-229X
(https://www.worldcat.org/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:0739-229X)
Messing, Scott (1988). Neoclassicism in Music: From the Genesis of the Concept Through
the Schoenberg/Stravinsky Polemic. Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press.
ISBN 978-1-878822-73-4.
Salgado, Susana (2001b). "Caamaño, Roberto". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan
Publishers.
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.
New Grove Dict. 2001, "Neo-classicism" by Arnold Whittall.

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