Abstract
Among the notable contributions that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries made to music were the several instrumental and vocal genres that remained in vogue for the next two centuries. Not until the dissolution of neoclassicism did their usefulness to innovative composers wear out. The nineteenth century contributed a few additional genres, mostly of a programmatic nature such as the lied and chanson, the tone poem, and the character piece for piano. By comparison our own century has been the great destroyer. With amazing swiftness its innovators have thrown aside first one and then another convention until finally nothing has remained that is sturdy enough to build the old edifices. Music itself has lived on, of course, and with an exuberance beyond anything we have known before, but nowadays it seems to have few commonly accepted building materials and no commonly accepted architecture. This description of our century has one exception, a limited one, in the concerto for orchestra. Born of neoclassicism it represents both a quintessential nostalgia and a consummate integration of historical elements: the nineteenth-century orchestra, the eighteenth-century symphony, and the seventeenth-century concerto. The idea is so brilliant that over the last fifty years it has attracted composers from Europe, Russia, North America, and Japan. Already, however, it seems to be on the wane. My own work in twentieth-century music, which most recently included the preparation of a Dictionary of Contemporary Music,' has not encompassed a large-scale study of this genre. Yet enough information has turned up to call attention to its existence and to encourage others to use it. The following list contains the concertos I know about,
Published Version
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