Neoclassicism in music was a twentieth-century trend, particularly current in theinterwar 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 lateRomanticism, 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 oncontrapuntal texture, an updated or expanded tonal harmony, and a concentration onabsolute music as opposed to Romanticprogram music.
In form and thematic technique, neoclassical music often drew inspiration from music of the eighteenth century, though the inspiring canon belonged as frequently to theBaroque (and even earlier periods) as to theClassical period—for this reason, music which draws inspiration specifically from the Baroque is sometimes termedneo-Baroque music. Neoclassicism had two distinct national lines of development, French (proceeding partly from the influence ofErik Satie and represented byIgor Stravinsky, who was in fact Russian-born) and German (proceeding from the "New Objectivity" ofFerruccio Busoni, who was actually Italian, and represented byPaul 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.
Although the term "neoclassicism" refers to a twentieth-century movement, there were important nineteenth-century precursors. In pieces such asFranz Liszt'sÀ la Chapelle Sixtine (1862),Edvard Grieg'sHolberg Suite (1884),Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's divertissement fromThe Queen of Spades (1890),George Enescu'sPiano Suite in the Old Style (1897) andMax Reger'sConcerto 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'sSymphony 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 suiteLe 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 hisAncient Airs and Dances Suite No. 1, composed in 1917. Instead of looking at musical forms of the eighteenth century, Respighi, who, in addition to being a renowned composer and conductor, was also a notable musicologist, reached back to Italian music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His fellow contemporary composerGian Francesco Malipiero, also a musicologist, compiled a complete edition of the works ofClaudio 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 balletPulcinella, using themes which he believed to be byGiovanni Battista Pergolesi (it later came out that many of them were not, though they were by contemporaries). American ComposerEdward 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 theOctet for winds, the"Dumbarton Oaks" Concerto, theConcerto in D, theSymphony of Psalms,Symphony in C, andSymphony in Three Movements, as well as the opera-oratorioOedipus Rex and the balletsApollo andOrpheus, in which the neoclassicism took on an explicitly "classical Grecian" aura. Stravinsky's neoclassicism culminated in his operaThe Rake's Progress, with a libretto byW. H. Auden.[7] Stravinskian neoclassicism was a decisive influence on the French composersDarius Milhaud,Francis Poulenc,Arthur Honegger andGermaine Tailleferre, as well as onBohuslav Martinů, who revived the Baroqueconcerto grosso form in his works.[8]Pulcinella, as a subcategory of rearrangement of existing Baroque compositions, spawned a number of similar works, includingAlfredo Casella'sScarlattiana (1927), Poulenc'sSuite Française, Ottorino Respighi'sAncient Airs and Dances andGli uccelli,[9] and Richard Strauss'sDance Suite from Keyboard Pieces by François Couperin and the relatedDivertimento after Keyboard Pieces by Couperin, Op. 86 (1923 and 1943, respectively).[10] Starting around 1926Béla 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 colleagueZoltán 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 byMathis 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 toPaul 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 ofNadia Boulanger promulgated ideas about music based on her understanding of Stravinsky's music. Boulanger taught and influenced over 600 musicians,[14] including many notable composers, includingGrażyna 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, andVirgil Thomson.
In Spain,Manuel de Falla's neoclassicalConcerto 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.[15] In the first movement of the concerto, Falla quotes fragments of the fifteenth-centuryvillancico "De los álamos, vengo madre". He had similarly incorporated quotations from seventeenth-century music when he first embraced neoclassicism in the puppet-theatre pieceEl retablo de maese Pedro (1919–23), an adaptation fromCervantes'sDon Quixote. Later neoclassical compositions by Falla include the 1924 chamber cantataPsyché and incidental music forPedro Calderón de la Barca's,El gran teatro del mundo, written in 1927.[16] In the late 1920s and early 1930s,Roberto Gerhard composed in the neoclassical style, including his Concertino for Strings, the Wind Quintet, the cantataL'alta naixença del rei en Jaume, and the balletAriel.[17] Other important Spanish neoclassical composers are found amongst the members of the Generación de la República (also known as theGeneración del 27), includingJulián Bautista,Fernando Remacha,Salvador Bacarisse, andJesús Bal y Gay.[18][19][20][21]
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 andArnold Schoenberg to the provincially minded Italian public. His neoclassical compositions were perhaps less important than his organizing activities, but especially representative examples includeScarlattiana of 1926, using motifs fromDomenico Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas, and theConcerto romano of the same year.[22] Casella's colleagueMario Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote neoclassically inflected works which hark back to early Italian music and classical models: the themes of hisConcerto italiano in G minor of 1924 for violin and orchestra echoVivaldi as well as sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian folksongs, while his highly successful Guitar Concerto No. 1 in D of 1939 consciously followsMozart's concerto style.[23]
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.[24]
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 includeJacobo Ficher,José María Castro [es],Luis Gianneo, andJuan José Castro.[25] The most important twentieth-century Argentine composer,Alberto Ginastera, turned from nationalistic to neoclassical forms in the 1950s (e.g., Piano Sonata No. 1 and theVariaciones 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.[26]
Although the well-knownBachianas Brasileiras ofHeitor 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 ofBach as a free adaptation of Baroque harmonic and contrapuntal procedures to music in a Brazilian style.[27][28] Brazilian composers of the generation after Villa-Lobos more particularly associated with neoclassicism includeRadamés Gnattali (in his later works),Edino Krieger, and the prolificCamargo 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.[27][29][30]
The Chilean composerDomingo Santa Cruz Wilson was so strongly influenced by the German variety of neoclassicism that he became known as the "Chilean Hindemith".[31]
In Cuba,José Ardévol initiated a neoclassical school, though he himself moved on to a modernistic national style later in his career.[32][33][31]
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 sextetVerklärte Nacht) had been supplanted by hisAtonal period, and immediately before he embracedtwelve-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 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[34] 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.[35] Schoenberg's pupilAlban Berg actually came to neoclassicism before his teacher, in hisThree Pieces for Orchestra, op. 6 (1913–14), and the operaWozzeck,[36] 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 themotif.[37] However, his 1935 orchestration of the six-partricercar from Bach'sMusical Offering is not regarded as neoclassical because of its concentration on the fragmentation of instrumental colours.[9]
Some composers below may have only written music in a neoclassical style during a portion of their careers.
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