Knowra Neoclassicism (music) Neoclassicism (music) A twentieth-century musical movement that adapted forms, genres, and stylistic features associated with earlier music, especially eighteenth-century traditions. It combined historical models with modern harmony, rhythm, and orchestration.
Baroque music : European art music composed roughly between 1600 and 1750, marked by elaborate counterpoint, tonal organization, and expressive contrast. Its counterpoint and concerto forms supplied models for several neoclassical works.
Igor Stravinsky : A Russian-born composer whose works include The Rite of Spring, Pulcinella, and Symphony of Psalms. His works made neoclassicism a major direction in twentieth-century composition.
Pulcinella : Igor Stravinsky’s 1920 ballet, based on music attributed to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi and other eighteenth-century composers. Its recomposition of historical material became a landmark example of neoclassical transformation.
Impressionism (music) : A musical style associated especially with French composers around the turn of the twentieth century, emphasizing color, atmosphere, and flexible tonal language. Its focus on timbre and fluid harmony differs from neoclassicism’s conspicuous formal references.
Les Six : A group of six French composers active after World War I, associated with musical clarity and resistance to late Romantic excess. The group’s music and public identity helped establish a French setting for neoclassical aesthetics.
Classical period (music) : The era of European art music from about 1750 to 1820, associated with balanced forms and tonal clarity. Its sonata forms and stylistic ideals became prominent points of reference.
Sergei Prokofiev : A Russian composer and pianist known for works including the Classical Symphony, Romeo and Juliet, and Peter and the Wolf. His Classical Symphony reimagines eighteenth-century style with modern harmonic and rhythmic twists.
Octet (Stravinsky) : Igor Stravinsky’s 1923 chamber work for wind instruments, written in a sharply articulated, historically referential style. It adapts formal clarity and contrapuntal techniques without imitating an earlier sound wholesale.
Expressionism (music) : A modernist musical movement that intensified expression through dissonance, extreme registers, and, in some works, atonality. Its heightened subjectivity contrasts with neoclassical restraint and historical forms.
Neoclassical architecture : An architectural movement that revived forms and principles associated with ancient Greek and Roman buildings. The shared label invites comparison, but musical neoclassicism drew on a different historical repertoire.
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