20th Century: Minimalism

What is Minimalism?
 Minimalism is a style of music which was originated in the West Coast in
America in the 1960s
 Famous composers include:
o Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Phillip Glass
Features:
 Layers of ostinati (rhythmic patterns that are repeated)
 Constantly repeated patterns that have gradual changes
 Layered textures
 Interlocking repeated phrases and rhythms
 Diatonic harmony (using the notes that belong in the key rather than the
chromatic notes outside the key)
 Complex of contrapuntal music (general movement between two melodic
lines with respect to each other)
 Broken chords (Notes in a chord played individually instead of together)
 Slow harmonic changes
 Note addition (notes are added into a repeated phrase)
 Melodic and rhythmic transformation (where the melody/rhythm
gradually changes)
 Gradual changes in texture and dynamics
 Cross rhythms (one or two conflicting rhythms that are heard together)
Neoclassical Music
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Neoclassicism in music was a twentieth century development, particularly popular

in the period between the two World Wars, in which composers drew inspiration
from music of the eighteenth century. Some of the inspiring canon was drawn as
much from the Baroqueperiod as the Classical period – for this reason, music which
draws influence specifically from the Baroque is sometimes termed neo-baroque.
Two significant composers led the development of neoclassical music:
in France, Igor Stravinsky proceeding from the influence of Erik Satie,
and Germany Paul Hindemith proceeding from the "New Objectivism" of Ferruccio
Busoni.
Neoclassicism is a trend 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. Although in many ways neoclassical
music returned to the forms and emotional restraint of eighteenth century music,
works by these composers are nonetheless distinctly twentieth century.

Contents
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 1 Artistic description
 2 People and works
 3 People often Referred to as Neoclassical
Composers
 4 Notes
 5 References
 6 Credits

Artistic description
Did you know?
Neoclassical music emerged as a reaction to romanticism with a return to the
order and emotional restraint of classical music following the ferment of the First
World War
Neoclassical music was born at the same time as the general return to rational
models in the arts in response to World War I. Smaller, more spare, more orderly
was conceived of as the response to the overwrought emotionalism which many felt
had herded people into the trenches. Since economics also favored smaller
ensembles, the search for doing "more with less" took on a practical imperative as
well.
Neoclassicism can be seen as a reaction against the prevailing trend of nineteenth
century Romanticism to sacrifice internal balance and order in favor of more overtly
emotional writing. Neoclassicism makes a return to balanced forms and often
emotional restraint, as well as eighteenth century compositional processes and
techniques. However, in the use of modern instrumental resources such as the
full orchestra, which had greatly expanded since the eighteenth century, and
advanced harmony, neoclassical works are distinctly twentieth century.
It is not that interest in eighteenth century music was not fairly well sustained
through the nineteenth, 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."[1] It was that the twentieth century had a different
view of eighteenth century norms and forms, instead of being an immediately
antique style contrasted against the present, twentieth century neoclassicism
focused on the eighteenth century as a period which had virtues which were lacking
in their own time.

People and works

Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev, and Béla Bartók are usually listed
as the most important composers in this mode, but also the prolific Darius
Milhaud and his contemporary Francis Poulenc.
Neoclassicism was instigated by Igor Stravinsky, according to himself, but
attributed by others to composers including Ferruccio Busoni (who wrote "Junge
Klassizität" or "New Classicality" in 1920), Sergei Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel, and
others.
Stravinsky composed some of the best known neoclassical works — 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 L'Histoire du Soldat is thought of as a seminal "neo-classical piece," as
are his Dumbarton Oaks Concerto and his "Symphonies of Wind Instruments," as
well as his Symphony in C. Stravinsky's neo-classicism culminated with his
opera Rake's Progress, with the book done by the well-known modernist poet, W. H.
Auden.
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. He produced
both chamber works and orchestral works in this style, perhaps most famously
"Mathis der Maler." His chamber output includes his Sonata for French Horn, an
expressionistic work filled with dark detail and internal connections.
Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1 (1917), which remains his most popular work,[2] is
generally considered to be the composition that first brought this renewed interest
in the classical music era in audible form to a wide public.
In an essay entitled "Young Classicism," Busoni wrote, "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."[3] 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.[4]
Neo-classicism found a welcome audience in America, the school of Nadia
Boulanger promulgated ideas about music based on their understanding of
Stravinsky's music. Students of theirs include neo-classicists Elliott Carter (in his
early years), Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Darius Milhaud, Ástor Piazzolla, and Virgil
Thomson.
In Spain, virtuosic harpsichordist Wanda Landowska began a revival of baroque
music playing a modernized version of the baroque harpsichord in Bach's St.
Matthew Passion. Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, being influenced by
Stravinsky also began to turn "back to Bach." His harpsichord concerto, Mov. 1 is
more of an anti-concerto that redefines the baroque ideas of soli/tutti use. It also
quotes a sixteenth century song by Jan Vazquez and uses thematic material from it
throughout the concerto.
Even the atonal school, represented Arnold Schoenberg has been associated
alongside Neoclassicism. In Schoenberg's case this is not due to his harmonic pallete
but rather his clear return to classical forms and his adherence to them throughout
his life, such as the Sonata-Allegro form of the first movement of his Piano
Concerto. 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 1908–1913 with
the inheritance of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries[5] 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,which uses closed
forms such as suite, passacaglia, and rondo as organizing principles within each
scene.[6]

People often Referred to as Neoclassical Composers

 Béla Bartók
 Leonard Bernstein
 Nadia Boulanger
 Benjamin Britten
 Ferruccio Busoni
 Aaron Copland
 David Diamond
 Irving Fine
 Paul Hindemith
 Arthur Honegger
 Darius Milhaud
 Carl Orff
 Francis Poulenc
 Sergei Prokofiev
 Maurice Ravel
 Erik Satie
 Arnold Schoenberg
 Dmitri Shostakovich
 Igor Stravinsky
 Virgil Thomson
 Manuel de Falla