Neoclassic and Anachronistic Impulses in Twentieth-Century Music

Abstract

Any attempt to work out a theory of neoclassicism in music, or even to give coherent content to the term, confronts a long history of careless or tendentious usage. Alone among the other arts-architecture, painting, literature-music has been unable to distinguish between genuine neoclassical works and those that wear a ruffle here or perform a dance step there as witty gestures or momentary satires in an allusive pantomime. This article works toward a theory of neoclassicism inductively, through four extended analyses meant to illustrate four distinct impulses or strategies by which early twentieth-century composers have created modern works that engage or reconstruct the past without sacrificing their own integrity in the history of styles. Because my aims are broadly synthetic, I have chosen pieces that have been much analyzed by others, and I draw on several published analyses to demonstrate how representative analyses can be organized into a broader and less technical understanding of neoclassicism.