Neoclassicism

Stravinsky
Definition
• In searching for a definition of Neoclassicism in music, one is struck by
the lack of consistency in terms of its set of defining features, the
choice of Neoclassical repertoire and composers offered by writers of
historical surveys of Western Music.
• Apart from Stravinsky who had explicitly associated himself with this
term and identified himself as one of the movement's advocates,
nearly every composer who was writing during the interwar period
has shared the same fate of being portrayed in one history textbook
as Neoclassicist while excluded in another.
Definition
• The term Neoclassicism is broadly defined as “A movement of
style in the works of certain 20th-century composers, who,
particularly during the period between the two world wars,
revived the balanced forms and clearly perceptible thematic
processes of earlier styles to replace what were, to them, the
increasingly exaggerated gestures and formlessness of late
Romanticism.”
Arnold Whittall, "Neo-classicism," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music Online, ed. L. Macy, <http://grovemusic.com>.
Introduction
• The carnage of World War I reverberated in the arts: hope, glory,
beauty, love, etc. seemed out of reach, naive, and unattainable.
• Irony was one response.
Neoclassicism
• After shocking the world with the scandalous Rite of Spring (and a
few other works), Stravinsky went in an entirely different direction in
1923 with his Octet for woodwind (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyqLnP0hOnI). This work
marks the beginning of a new style: neoclassicism.
• This style was marked by “objectivity,” which composers conveyed by
bringing back eighteenth-century gestures, although it could include
aspects of Baroque, popular music of the 1920s, and even
Tchaikovsky.
• These pieces toyed with aspects of earlier styles, imitating them
without copying them.
Stravinsky’s Neoclassical Path
• At the end of World War I (1918), Stravinsky composed Histoire du
soldat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZrPO-1WCgQ).
• The ensemble was small, but when compared to the Rite, and featured
instruments associated with jazz.
• Soon thereafter, Diaghilev and his recent choreographer Massine
teamed up with Stravinsky to do a work based on eighteenth-century
music: Pulcinella (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVEcJnlHUMM).
• The music sounds like Pergolesi, which is what Diaghilev thought he had
gathered, but it is not by the composer.
Stravinsky’s Neoclassical Path
• These two works (Histoire du soldat and Pulcinella) were stage works,
but Stravinsky soon looked to instrumental pieces for this developing
new style.
• His Symphonies d’instruments à vent was described in 1923 as neoclassical—
the first work to receive this title.
• Lack of psychology in this work. It is not associated with aspects of
Romanticism.
Stravinsky’s Neoclassical Path
• The raw aspect of Rite was noted early on. This aspect connects it
with the lack of Romanticism (“renunciation of ‘sauce’”) noted in the
later works.
• In the 1920s, irony triumphed over sincerity as an artistic aim.
• One critic, Asafyev, saw in Stravinsky’s music an expression of
contemporary reality, not so much a restoration of the past.
• Such writings influenced Stravinsky, who sought such praise and wished it to
continue.
The Music of Stravinsky’s Octet
• The Octet is in three movements: Sinfonia, Tema con variazioni,
Finale.
• Stravinsky once described the Octet as a revival of “constructive
principles” as found in Classicism, but this is only partly accurate, for
elements of his earlier style remain as well, including ostinatos, stable
dissonances, and abrupt disjuncture.
The Music of Stravinsky’s Octet
• For example, the opening trills announce a kinship with the eighteenth
century, but everything around those trills marks them as not possibly
eighteenth century.
• The figuration sounds like Bach, but the harmony isn’t.
• The title suggests pre-sonata form opera (but from whence the form derives),
and it is in sonata form.
• The classically regular eight-bar theme is octatonic.
• The Finale plays on harmonic/tonal expectations, weaving rhythmic features
that mark the movement unmistakably Stravinsky.
Some Ideas about the Octet
• Stravinsky sought to control how the public received the Octet by
printing his thoughts on the work.
• He originally intended the essay as irony, but eventually came to
believe in its ideas.
• He describes the Octet as a “musical object.”
• Among the points he makes is the observation that the Octet is not
“emotive,” but rather a composition based on objective elements.
• The dynamics are limited to f and p, and, combined with tempos, they drive
the composition.
Some Ideas about the Octet
• In his piano works from the 1920s, Stravinsky attempted to make
non-flamboyance a virtue. This somewhat sterile style was “chic” and
accepted by audiences.
• He continued to work as a conductor and pianist because of
economic difficulties caused by the revolution in Russia.
Some Ideas about the Octet
• Other pieces belonging to this style include the Symphony of Psalms
(1930), Symphony in C (1938–40), and Symphony in Three
Movements (1945).
• The culminating work in this period is his opera The Rake’s Progress
(1951) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NSs3KdJO04).
• The work adopts aspects of earlier opera including recitatives accompanied
by harpsichord, da capo arias, and a moralizing quintet (as in Mozart’s Don
Giovanni).