Antonio Canova's Psyche Revived by Love's Kiss

Henry Fuseli, The artist moved to despair at the grandeur of antique fragments, 1778–79

Neoclassicism (from Greek "neos"-νέος, Latin "classicus" and Greek "ismos"-ισμός)^[1] is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome. The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, latterly competing with Romanticism. In architecture the style continued throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and into the 21st.

Overview[link]

Neoclassicism is a revival of the styles and spirit of classic antiquity inspired directly from the classical period,^[2] which coincided and reflected the developments in philosophy and other areas of the Age of Enlightenment, and was initially a reaction against the excesses of the preceding Rococo style.^[3] While the movement is often described as the opposed counterpart of Romanticism, this is a great over-simplification that tends not to be sustainable when specific artists or works are considered, the case of the supposed main champion of late Neoclassicism, Ingres, demonstrating this especially well.^[4] The revival can be traced to the establishment of formal archaeology.^[5][6] The writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann were important in shaping this movement in both architecture and the visual arts. His books, Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture (1750) and Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums ("History of Ancient Art", 1764) were the first to distinguish sharply between Ancient Greek and Roman art, and define periods within Greek art, tracing a trajectory from growth to maturity and then imitation or decadence that continues to have influence to the present day. Winckelmann believed that art should aim at "noble simplicity and calm grandeur",^[7] and praised the idealism of Greek art, in which he said we find: "not only nature at its most beautiful but also something beyond nature, namely certain ideal forms of its beauty, which, as an ancient interpreter of Plato teaches us, come from images created by the mind alone." The theory was very far from new in Western art, but his emphasis on close copying of Greek models was: "The only way for us to become great or, if this be possible, inimitable, is to imitate the ancients".^[8]

With the advent of the Grand Tour, a fad of collecting antiquities began that laid the foundations of many great collections spreading a Neoclassical revival throughout Europe.^[9] "Neoclassicism" in each art implies a particular canon of a "classical" model.

Johann Joachim Winckelmann, often called "the father of archeaology"^[10]

In English, the term "Neoclassicism" is used primarily of the visual arts; the similar movement in English literature, which began considerably earlier, is called Augustan literature, which had been dominant for several decades, and was beginning to decline, by the time Neoclassicism in the visual arts became fashionable. Though terms differ, the situation in French literature was similar. In music, the period saw the rise of classical music, and "neoclassicism" is used of 20th century developments. However the operas of Christoph Willibald Gluck, represented a specifically neo-classical approach, spelt out in his preface to the published score of Alceste (1769), which aimed to reform opera by removing ornamentation, increasing the role of the chorus in line with Greek tragedy, and using simpler unadorned melodic lines.^[11]

The term "Neoclassical" was not invented until the mid-19th century, and at the time the style was described by such terms as "the true style", "reformed" and "revival"; what was regarded as being revived varying considerably. Ancient models were certainly very much involved, but the style could also be regarded as a revival of the Renaissance, and especially in France as a return to the more austere and noble Baroque of the age of Louis XIV, for which a considerable nostalgia had developed as France's dominant military and political position started a serious decline.^[12] Ingres's coronation portrait of Napoleon even borrowed from Late Antique consular diptychs and their Carolingian revival, to the disapproval of critics.

Neoclassicism was strongest in architecture, sculpture and the decorative arts, where classical models in the same medium were relatively numerous and accessible; examples from ancient painting that demonstrated the qualities that Winckelmann's writing found in sculpture were and are lacking. Winckelmann was involved in the dissemination of knowledge of the first large Roman paintings to be discovered, at Pompeii and Herculaneum and, like most contemporaries except for Gavin Hamilton, was unimpressed by them, citing Pliny the Younger's comments on the decline of painting in his period.^[13]

European Neoclassicism in the visual arts began c. 1760 in opposition to the then-dominant Baroque and Rococo styles. Rococo architecture emphasizes grace, ornamentation and asymmetry; Neoclassical architecture is based on the principles of simplicity and symmetry, which were seen as virtues of the arts of Rome and Ancient Greece, and were more immediately drawn from 16th century Renaissance Classicism. Each "neo"- classicism selects some models among the range of possible classics that are available to it, and ignores others. The neoclassical writers and talkers, patrons and collectors, artists and sculptors of 1765–1830 paid homage to an idea of the generation of Pheidias, but the sculpture examples they actually embraced were more likely to be Roman copies of Hellenistic sculptures. They ignored both Archaic Greek art and the works of Late Antiquity. The Rococo art of ancient Palmyra came as a revelation, through engravings in Wood's The Ruins of Palmyra. Even Greece was all-but-unvisited, a rough backwater of the Ottoman Empire, dangerous to explore, so neoclassicists' appreciation of Greek architecture was mediated through drawings and engravings, which subtly smoothed and regularized, "corrected' and "restored" the monuments of Greece, not always consciously. As for painting, Greek painting was utterly lost: neoclassicist painters imaginatively revived it, partly through bas-relief friezes, mosaics, and pottery painting and partly through the examples of painting and decoration of the High Renaissance of Raphael's generation, frescos in Nero's Domus Aurea, Pompeii and Herculaneum and through renewed admiration of Nicholas Poussin. Much "neoclassical" painting is more classicizing in subject matter than in anything else. A fierce, but often very badly informed, dispute raged for decades over the relative merits of Greek and Roman art, with Winckelmann and his fellow Hellenists generally the winning side.^[14]

Painting and printmaking[link]

Print of a drawing by John Flaxman of a scene in Virgil's Iliad, 1795

It is hard to recapture the radical and exciting nature of early neo-classical painting for contemporary audiences; it now strikes even those writers favourably inclined to it as "insipid" and "almost entirely uninteresting to us"—some of Kenneth Clark's comments on Anton Raphael Mengs' ambitious Parnassus at the Villa Albani,^[15] by the artist who his friend Winckelmann described as "the greatest artist of his own, and perhaps of later times".^[16] The drawings, subsequently turned into prints, of John Flaxman used very simple line drawing and figures mostly in profile to depict The Odyssey and other subjects, and once "fired the artistic youth of Europe" but are now "neglected",^[17] while the history paintings of Angelika Kaufmann, mainly a portraitist, are described as having "an unctuous softness and tediousness" by Fritz Novotny.^[18] Rococo frivolity and Baroque movement had been stripped away but many artists struggled to put anything in their place, and in the absence of ancient examples for history painting, other than the Greek vases used by Flaxman, Raphael tended to be used as a substitute model.

Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii, 1784

The work of other artists, who could not easily be described as insipid, combined aspects of Romanticism with a generally Neoclassical style, and form part of the history of both movements. The German-Danish painter Asmus Jacob Carstens finished very few of the large mythological works that he planned, leaving mostly drawings and colour studies which often succeed in approaching Winckelmann's prescription of "noble simplicity and calm grandeur".^[19] Unlike Carstens' unrealized schemes, the etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi were numerous and profitable, and taken back by those making the Grand Tour to all parts of Europe. His main subject matter was the buildings and ruins of Rome, and he was more stimulated by the ancient than the modern. The somewhat disquieting atmosphere of many of his Vedute (views) becomes dominant in his series of 16 prints of Carceri d'Invenzione ("Imaginary Prisons") whose "oppressive cyclopean architecture" conveys "dreams of fear and frustration".^[20] The Swiss-born Johann Heinrich Füssli spent most of his career in England, and while his fundamental style was based on neoclassical principles, his subjects and treatment more often reflected the "Gothic" strain of Romanticism, and sought to evoke drama and excitement.

Neoclassicism in painting gained a new sense of direction with the sensational success of Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii at the Paris Salon of 1785. Despite its evocation of republican virtues, this was a commission by the royal government, which David insisted on painting in Rome. David managed to combine an idealist style with drama and forcefulness. The central perspective is perpendicular to the picture plane, made more emphatic by the dim arcade behind, against which the heroic figures are disposed as in a frieze, with a hint of the artificial lighting and staging of opera, and the classical colouring of Nicholas Poussin. David rapidly became the leader of French art, and after the French Revolution became a politician with control of much government patronage in art. He managed to retain his influence in the Napoleonic period, turning to frankly propagandistic works, but had to leave France for exile in Brussels at the Bourbon Restoration.^[21]

David's many students included Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, who saw himself as a classicist throughout his long career, despite a mature style that has an equivocal relationship with the main current of Neoclassicism, and many later diversions into Orientalism and the Troubadour style that are hard to distinguish from those of his unabashedly Romantic contemporaries, except by the primacy his works always give to drawing. He exhibited at the Salon for over 60 years, from 1802 into the beginnings of Impressionism, but his style, once formed, changed little.^[22]

• 

  Fantasy depiction of the Appian Way; etching by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1756

• 

  Angelica Kauffmann, Venus Induces Helen to Fall in Love with Paris, 1790

• 

  Asmus Jacob Carstens, Night and Her Children, Sleep and Death, 1794, Black chalk on paper, 745 x 985 cm

• 

  Johann Heinrich Füssli, Macbeth and Banquo with the witches, 1793-4

• 

  Ingres' version of Neoclassicism, Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1808

Sculpture[link]

Hebe by Canova (1800–05), in the appropriately neoclassical surroundings of the Hermitage Museum

If Neoclassical painting suffered from a lack of ancient models, Neoclassical sculpture tended to suffer from an excess of them, although examples of actual Greek sculpture of the "classical period" beginning in about 500 BC were then very few; the most highly regarded works were mostly Roman copies.^[23] The leading Neoclassical sculptors enjoyed huge reputations in their own day, but are now less regarded, with the exception of Jean-Antoine Houdon, whose work was mainly portraits, very often as busts, which do not sacrifice a strong impression of the sitter's personality to idealism. His style became more classical as his long career continued, and represents a rather smooth progression from Rococo charm to classical dignity. Unlike some Neoclassical sculptors he did not insist on his sitters wearing Roman dress, or being unclothed. He portrayed most of the great figures of the Enlightenment, and travelled to America to produce a statue of George Washington, as well as busts of Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and other luminaries of the new republic.^{[24] [25]}

Antonio Canova and the Dane Bertel Thorvaldsen were both based in Rome, and as well as portraits produced many ambitious life-size figures and groups; both represented the strongly idealizing tendency in neoclassical sculpture. Canova has a lightness and grace, where Thorvaldsen is more severe; the difference is exemplified in their respective groups of the Three Graces.^[26] All these, and Flaxman, were still active in the 1820s, and Romanticism was slow to impact sculpture, where versions of Neoclassicism remained the dominant style for most of the 19th century.

An early neoclassicist in sculpture was the Swede Johan Tobias Sergel,^[27] and John Flaxman was also, or mainly, a sculptor, mostly producing severely classical reliefs that are comparable in style to his prints; he also designed neoclassical ceramics for Thomas Wedgwood. Johann Gottfried Schadow and his son Rudolph, one of the few neoclassical sculptors to die young, were the leading German artists,^[28] with Franz Anton Zauner in Austria. The late Baroque Austrian sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt turned to Neoclassicism in mid-career, shortly before he appears to have suffered some kind of mental crisis, after which he retired to the country and devoted himself to the highly distinctive "character heads" of bald figures pulling extreme facial expressions.^[29] Like Piranesi's Carceri, these enjoyed a great revival of interest during the age of psychoanalysis in the early 20th century.

Since prior to the 1830s the United States did not have a sculpture tradition of it's own, save in the areas of tombstones, weathervanes and ship figureheads, ^[30] the European neoclassical manner was adopted there, and it was to hold sway for decades and is exemplified in the sculptures of William Henry Rinehart (1825–1874), Hiram Powers, and Randolph Rogers.

• 

  Resting Faun, 1770, Johan Tobias Sergel

• 

  Voltaire by Jean-Antoine Houdon, 1778, one of several different versions.

• 

  Monument to Copernicus by Thorwaldsen, Warsaw

• 

  Le triomphe de 1810, Jean-Pierre Cortot, from the Arc de triomphe

• 

  Hercules and the horses of Diomedes, Johann Gottfried Schadow, study for the Brandenberg Gate triumphal arch

• 

  One of the "character heads" of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt

• 

  Nydia, Randolph Rogers, 1859

Architecture and the decorative arts[link]

Adam style, Interior of Home House in London, designed by Robert Adam in 1777

There is an anti-Rococo strain that can be detected in some European architecture of the earlier 18th century, most vividly represented in the Palladian architecture of Georgian Britain and Ireland, but also recognizable in a classicizing vein of architecture in Berlin. It is a robust architecture of self-restraint, academically selective now of "the best" Roman models.

Neoclassicism first gained influence in England and France, through a generation of French art students trained in Rome and influenced by the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, and it was quickly adopted by progressive circles in Sweden. At first, classicizing decor was grafted onto familiar European forms, as in the interiors for Catherine II's lover Count Orlov, designed by an Italian architect with a team of Italian stuccadori: only the isolated oval medallions like cameos and the bas-relief overdoors hint of neoclassicism; the furnishings are fully Italian Rococo.

But a second neoclassic wave, more severe, more studied (through the medium of engravings) and more consciously archaeological, is associated with the height of the Napoleonic Empire. In France, the first phase of neoclassicism is expressed in the "Louis XVI style", the second phase in the styles we call "Directoire" or Empire. Italy clung to Rococo until the Napoleonic regimes brought the new archaeological classicism, which was embraced as a political statement by young, progressive, urban Italians with republican leanings.

In the decorative arts, neoclassicism is exemplified in Empire furniture made in Paris, London, New York, Berlin; in Biedermeier furniture made in Austria; in Karl Friedrich Schinkel's museums in Berlin, Sir John Soane's Bank of England in London and the newly built "capitol" in Washington, DC; and in Wedgwood's bas reliefs and "black basaltes" vases. The Scots architect Charles Cameron created palatial Italianate interiors for the German-born Catherine II the Great in Russian St. Petersburg: the style was international.

Indoors, neoclassicism made a discovery of the genuine classic interior, inspired by the rediscoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum, which had started in the late 1740s, but only achieved a wide audience in the 1760s, with the first luxurious volumes of tightly controlled distribution of Le Antichità di Ercolano. The antiquities of Herculaneum showed that even the most classicizing interiors of the Baroque, or the most "Roman" rooms of William Kent were based on basilica and temple exterior architecture, turned outside in: pedimented window frames turned into gilded mirrors, fireplaces topped with temple fronts, now all looking quite bombastic and absurd. The new interiors sought to recreate an authentically Roman and genuinely interior vocabulary, employing flatter, lighter motifs, sculpted in low frieze-like relief or painted in monotones en camaïeu ("like cameos"), isolated medallions or vases or busts or bucrania or other motifs, suspended on swags of laurel or ribbon, with slender arabesques against backgrounds, perhaps, of "Pompeiian red" or pale tints, or stone colors. The style in France was initially a Parisian style, the Goût grec, not a court style. Only when the plump, young king acceded to the throne in 1774 did his fashion-loving Queen bring the "Louis XVI" style to court.

Château de Malmaison, 1800, room for the Empress Joséphine, on the cusp between Directoire style and Empire style

From about 1800 a fresh influx of Greek architectural examples, seen through the medium of etchings and engravings, gave a new impetus to neoclassicism that is called the Greek Revival. At the same time the Empire style was a more grandiose wave of neoclassicism in architecture and the decorative arts, mainly based on Roman styles, that originated in and took its name from the rule of Napoleon I in the First French Empire, where it was intended to idealize Napoleon's leadership and the French state. The style corresponds to the more bourgeois Biedermeier style in the German-speaking lands, Federal style in the United States, the Regency style in Britain and the Napoleonstil in Sweden. According to Hugh Honour, "so far from being, as is sometimes supposed, the culmination of the Neo-classical movement, the Empire marks its rapid decline and transformation back once more into a mere antique revival, drained of all the high-minded ideas and force of conviction that had inspired its masterpieces".^[31] An earlier phase of the style was called the Adam style in Great Britain and "Louis Seize" or Louis XVI, in France.

Neoclassicism continued to be a major force in academic art through the 19th century and beyond—a constant antithesis to Romanticism or Gothic revivals— although from the late 19th century on it had often been considered anti-modern, or even reactionary, in influential critical circles. By the mid-19th century, several European cities—notably St Petersburg and Munich—were transformed into veritable museums of Neoclassical architecture.

Gothic revival architecture (often linked with the Romantic cultural movement), a style originating in the 18th century which grew in popularity throughout the 19th century, contrasted Neoclassicism. Whilst Neoclassicism was characterized by Greek and Roman-influenced styles, geometric lines and order, Gothic revival architecture placed an emphasis on medieval-looking buildings, often made to have a rustic, "romantic", appearance.

• 

  Gold egg-cup, Paris 1762-63, in the gout Grec (Greek style)

• 

  Empire style table

• 

  Wedgwood vase in Greek red figure painting style, c. 1815

Later "Neoclassicisms"[link]

In American architecture, neoclassicism was one expression of the American Renaissance movement, ca 1890–1917; its last manifestation was in Beaux-Arts architecture, and its very last, large public projects were the Lincoln Memorial (highly criticized at the time), The National Gallery in Washington, DC (also heavily criticized by the architectural community as being backward thinking and old fashioned in its design), and the American Museum of Natural History's Roosevelt Memorial. These were white elephants when they were built. In the British Raj, Sir Edwin Lutyens' monumental city planning for New Delhi marks the glorious sunset of neoclassicism. World War II was to shatter most longing for – and imitation of – mythical, heroic times.

Conservative modernist architects such as Charles Perret in France kept the rhythms and spacing of columnar architecture even in factory buildings. Where a colonnade would have been decried as "reactionary," a building's pilaster-like fluted panels under a repeating frieze looked "progressive." Pablo Picasso experimented with classicizing motifs in the years immediately following World War I, and the Art Deco style that came to the fore following the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, often drew on neoclassical motifs without expressing them overtly: severe, blocky commodes by E. J. Ruhlmann or Sue et Mare; crisp, extremely low-relief friezes of damsels and gazelles in every medium; fashionable dresses that were draped or cut on the bias to recreate Grecian lines; the art dance of Isadora Duncan; the Streamline Moderne styling of US post offices and county court buildings built as late as 1950; and the Roosevelt dime.

There was an entire 20th century movement in the Arts which was also called Neo-classicism. It encompassed at least music, philosophy, and literature. It was between the end of World War I and the end of World War II. For information on the musical aspects, see 20th century classical music and Neoclassicism (music). For information on the philosophical aspects, see Great Books.

This literary neo-classical movement rejected the extreme romanticism of (for example) dada, in favour of restraint, religion (specifically Christianity) and a reactionary political program. Although the foundations for this movement in English literature were laid by T. E. Hulme, the most famous neoclassicists were T. S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis. In Russia, the movement crystallized as early as 1910 under the name of Acmeism, with Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelshtam as the leading representatives.

In music[link]

Neoclassicism in music is a 20th century movement; in this case it is the classical music of the late 18th and early 19th century that is being revived, not the music of the ancient world. It was ultimately a response to German Modernism in the first part of the 20th century. It was an anti-progress, anti-industrial and anti-innovative musical style. This was inspired by composers claiming that mankind is inherently "diatonic" and "tonal" ; the opposite of ultra-modernist musical influences and compositions at the time. Composers started to look back to historical musical influences. Although the practice of borrowing musical styles from the past has not been uncommon throughout musical history, art musics have gone through periods where musicians used modern techniques coupled with older forms or harmonies to create new kinds of works. Notable compositional characteristics are, the return to tonality, return to conventional forms (dance suites, concerti grossi, evident sonata forms, etc.), return to the idea of absolute music, the use of light musical textures, and the composers conciseness of musical expression. In classical music, this was most notably practiced between the 1920s and the 1950s. Igor Stravinsky is the most well known composer using this style; he effectively began the musical revolution with his Bach-like Octet for Wind Instruments (1923). A particular individual work that represents this style well is Prokofiev's Classical Symphony No. 1 in D, which is reminiscent of the symphonic style of Haydn or Mozart.

Architecture in Russia and the Soviet Union[link]

Ostankino Palace, designed by Francesco Camporesi and completed in 1798, in Moscow, Russia

In 1905–1914 Russian architecture passed through a brief but influential period of neoclassical revival; the trend began with recreation of Empire style of alexandrine period and quickly expanded into a variety of neo-Renaissance, palladian and modernized, yet recognizably classical schools. They were led by architects born in 1870s, who reached creative peak before World War I like Ivan Fomin, Vladimir Shchuko, Ivan Zholtovsky. When economy recovered in 1920s, these architects and their followers continued working in primarily modernist environment; some (Zholtovsky) strictly followed the classical canon, others (Fomin, Schuko, Ilya Golosov) developed their own modernized styles.^[32]

With the crackdown on architects' independence and official denial of modernism (1932), demonstrated by the international contest for the Palace of Soviets, neoclassicism was instantly promoted as one of the choices in stalinist architecture, although not the only one. It coexisted with moderately modernist architecture of Boris Iofan, bordering with contemporary Art Deco (Schuko); again, the purest examples of the style were produced by Zholtovsky school that remained an isolated phenomena. The political intervention was a disaster for constructivist leaders yet was sincerely welcomed by architects of the classical schools.

Neoclassicism was an easy choice for the USSR since it did not rely on modern construction technologies (steel frame or reinforced concrete) and could be reproduced in traditional masonry. Thus the designs of Zholtovsky, Fomin and other old masters were easily replicated in remote towns under strict material rationing. Improvement of construction technology after World War II permitted Stalinist architects to venture into skyscraper construction, although stylistically these skyscrapers (including "exported" architecture of Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw and the Shanghai International Convention Centre) share little with the classical models. Neoclassicism and neo-Renaissance persisted in less demanding residential and office projects until 1955, when Nikita Khrushchev put an end to expensive Stalinist architecture.

Architecture in the 21st century[link]

Schermerhorn Symphony Center

After a lull during the period of modern architectural dominance (roughly post-WWII until the mid 1980s), neoclassicism has seen somewhat of a resurgence. In the United States some public buildings are built in the neoclassical style as of at least 2006, with the completion of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center.

In Britain a number of architects are active in the neoclassical style. Examples of their work include two university Libraries: Quinlan Terry's Maitland Robinson Library at Downing College and Robert Adam Architects' Sackler Library. The majority of new neoclassical buildings in Britain are private houses.^{[citation needed]}

As of the first decade of the 21st century, neoclassical architecture is usually classed under the umbrella term of "traditional architecture". Also, a number of pieces of postmodern architecture draw inspiration from and include explicit references to neoclassicism,^{[citation needed]} the National Theatre of Catalonia in Barcelona among them. Postmodern architectural taste includes, in fact, historical elements, like column, capital or tympanum. Two of the most "classical" Postmodernism outgrowth are neo-eclectic architecture and neo-historicist architecture.

See also[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Clark, Kenneth, The Romantic Rebellion: Romantic versus Classic Art, 1976, Omega. ISBN 0-86007-718-7.
• Honour, Hugh, Neo-classicism. Style and Civilisation 1968 (reprinted 1977).
• Fritz Novotny, Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1780–1880, 2nd edition (reprinted 1980).

Further reading[link]

See also the References at Neoclassical architecture.

• Walter Friedlaender, 1952. David to Delacroix, (Originally published in German; reprinted 1980)
• Robert Rosenblum, 1967. Transformations in Late Eighteenth Century Art
• David Irwin, 1966. English Neoclassical Art: Studies in Inspiration and Taste
• Svend Eriksen, Early Neoclassicism in France (1974)
• Art in Theory 1648–1815: An Anthology of Changing Ideas - Editd by Charles Harrison, Paul Wood and Jason Gaiger (2000; repr. 2003)
• Gromort Georges (Author), Richard Sammons (Introductory Essay). The Elements of Classical Architecture (Classical America Series in Art and Architecture), 2001

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Neoclassicism

• Neoclassicism in the "History of Art"
• "Neoclassicism Style Guide". British Galleries. Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/british_galleries/bg_styles/Style05a/index.html. Retrieved 2007-07-17. 
• Neo-classical drawings in the Flemish Art Collection
• 19th Century Sculpture Derived From Greek Hellenistic Influence: Jacob Ungerer
• The Neoclassicising of Pompeii

Elliott Cook Carter Jr.

Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (born December 11, 1908) is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music. His compositions, which have been performed all over the world, include orchestral and chamber music as well as solo instrumental and vocal works.

He has been extremely productive in his later years, publishing more than 40 works between the ages of 90 and 100,^[1] and over 14 more since he turned 100 in 2008.^[2]

Biography[link]

Carter's father, Elliott Carter Sr., was a businessman and his mother was the former Florence Chambers. The family was well-to-do. As a teenager, he developed an interest in music and was encouraged in this regard by the composer Charles Ives (who sold insurance to his family). In 1924, a galvanized 15-year-old Carter was in the audience when Pierre Monteux conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the New York première of The Rite of Spring, according to a 2008 report. Carter was again in attendance (see below) at Carnegie Hall, on the occasion of his 100th birthday in 2008, when the orchestra, now under the baton of James Levine, again performed the Stravinsky piece as part of its tribute to Carter.^[3] Although Carter majored in English at Harvard College, he also studied music there and at the nearby Longy School of Music. His professors included Walter Piston and Gustav Holst. He sang with the Harvard Glee Club. He did graduate work in music at Harvard, from which he received a Master's degree in music in 1932. He then went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger (as did many other American composers). Carter worked with Mlle Boulanger from 1932–35 and in 1935 he received a doctorate in music (D Mus) from the Ecole Normale in Paris. Later in 1935, he returned to the US where he wrote music for the Ballet Caravan.

From 1940 to 1944, Carter taught in the program, including music, at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. On July 6, 1939, Carter married Helen Frost-Jones. They had one child, a son, David Chambers Carter. During World War II, Carter worked for the Office of War Information. He later held teaching posts at the Peabody Conservatory (1946–1948), Columbia University, Queens College, New York (1955–56), Yale University (1960–62), Cornell University (from 1967) and the Juilliard School (from 1972). In 1967, he was appointed a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1981, he was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, in 1985 the National Medal of Arts. Carter has lived in Greenwich Village since 1945.^[1]

On December 11, 2008, Carter celebrated his 100th birthday at Carnegie Hall in New York, where the Boston Symphony Orchestra and pianist Daniel Barenboim played his Interventions for Piano and Orchestra from 2008. Between the ages of 90 and 100, Carter published more than 40 works, and after his 100th birthday he has composed at least 14 more.^[1]

On February 7, 2009, Carter was given the Trustees Award (a lifetime achievement award given to non-performers) by the Grammy Awards.^[4]

Carter is on the faculty of the Tanglewood Music Center where he gives annual composition master classes.

Style and works[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2011)

Carter's earlier works are influenced by Stravinsky, Harris, Copland, and Hindemith, and are mainly neoclassical in aesthetic. He had a strict and thorough training in counterpoint, from medieval polyphony through Stravinsky, and this shows in his earliest music, such as the ballet Pocahontas (1938–39). Some of his music during the Second World War is frankly diatonic, and includes a melodic lyricism reminiscent of Samuel Barber.

His music after 1950 is typically atonal and rhythmically complex, indicated by the invention of the term metric modulation to describe the frequent, precise tempo changes found in his work. While Carter's chromaticism and tonal vocabulary parallels serial composers of the period, Carter does not employ serial techniques in his music. Rather he independently developed and cataloged all possible collections of pitches (i.e., all possible three-note chords, five-note chords, etc.). Musical theorists like Allen Forte later systematized these data into musical set theory. A series of works in the 1960s and 1970s generates its tonal material by using all possible chords of a particular number of pitches.

The Piano Concerto (1964–65) uses the collection of three-note chords for its pitch material; the Third String Quartet (1971) uses all four-note chords; the Concerto for Orchestra (1969) all five-note chords; and the Symphony of Three Orchestras uses the collection of six-note chords. Carter also makes frequent use of "tonic" 12-note chords. Of particular interest are "all-interval" 12-tone chords where every interval is represented within adjacent notes of the chord. His 1980 solo piano work Night Fantasies uses the entire collection of the 88 symmetrical-inverted all-interval 12 note chords. Typically, the pitch material is segmented between instruments, with a unique set of chords or sets assigned to each instrument or orchestral section. This stratification of material, with individual voices assigned not only their own unique pitch material, but texture and rhythm as well, is a key component of Carter's musical style. Carter's music after Night Fantasies has been termed his late period and his tonal language has become less systematized and more intuitive, but retains the basic characteristics of his earlier works.

Carter's use of rhythm can best be understood within the concept of stratification. Each instrumental voice is typically assigned its own set of tempos. A structural polyrhythm, where a very slow polyrhythm is used as a formal device, is present in many of Carter's works. Night Fantasies, for example, uses a 216:175 tempo relation that coincides at only two points in the entire 20+ minute composition. This use of rhythm is part of his goal to expand the notion of counterpoint to encompass simultaneous different characters, even entire movements, rather than just individual lines.

Carter developed his technique to further his artistic goals. His use of rhythm allows his music a structured fluidity and sense of time perhaps unique in classical music. The music also is overtly expressive and dramatic. He has said that "I regard my scores as scenarios, auditory scenarios, for performers to act out with their instruments, dramatizing the players as individuals and participants in the ensemble."^{[cite this quote]} He has also talked about his desire to portray a "different form of motion," in which players are not locked in step with the downbeat of every measure.

He has said that such steady pulses remind him of soldiers marching or horses trotting, sounds that are not heard anymore in the late 20th century, and he wants his music to capture the sort of continuous acceleration or deceleration experienced in an automobile or an airplane. While Carter's atonal music shows little trace of American popular music or jazz, his vocal music has demonstrated strong ties to contemporary American poetry. He has set works of Elizabeth Bishop, John Ashbery, Robert Lowell, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and Marianne Moore. Several of his large instrumental works such as the Concerto for Orchestra or Symphony of Three Orchestras are inspired by twentieth-century poets as well.

Among his better known works are the Variations for Orchestra (1954–5); the Double Concerto for harpsichord, piano and two chamber orchestras (1959–61); the Piano Concerto (1964–65), written as an 85th birthday present for Igor Stravinsky; the Concerto for Orchestra (1969), loosely based on a poem by Saint-John Perse; and the Symphony of Three Orchestras (1976). He has also written five string quartets,^[5] of which the second and third won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1960 and 1973 respectively. Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei (1993–1996) is his largest orchestral work, complex in structure and featuring contrasting layers of instrumental textures, from delicate wind solos to crashing brass and percussion outbursts.

In spite of a usually rigorous derivation of all pitch content of a piece from a source chord, or series of chords, Carter never abandons lyricism, and ensures that a text is sung intelligibly, sometimes even simply. In A Mirror on Which to Dwell (1975) (based on poems by Elizabeth Bishop) Carter writes colorful, subtle, transparently clear music; yet almost every pitch in the piece is derived from the content of a single sonority. Most of Carter's music is published by either G. Schirmer/Associated Music Publishers (works up to 1981) or Boosey & Hawkes (works since 1981).

Carter continues composing. Interventions for Piano and Orchestra received its premiere on December 5, 2008, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine featuring pianist Daniel Barenboim at Symphony Hall in Boston. The pianist reprised the work again with the BSO at Carnegie Hall in New York in the presence of the composer on his 100th birthday.^[1] Carter was also present at the 2009 Aldeburgh Festival to hear the world premiere of his song-cycle On Conversing with Paradise, based on Ezra Pound's Canto 95 (from the section Rock-Drill) and one of Pound's 'Notes' intended for later Cantos, and usually published at the end of the Cantos. ^[6] The premiere was given on June 20, 2009 by baritone Leigh Melrose and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group conducted by Oliver Knussen.^[7]

Figment V for marimba with Simon Boyar was premiered in New York on 2 May 2009 and Poems of Louis Zukofsky for soprano and clarinet had its first performance by Lucy Shelton and Stanley Drucker at the Tanglewood Festival on August 9, 2009. The US premiere of the Flute Concerto took place on February 4, 2010, with soloist Elizabeth Rowe and the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine.

Partial list of works[link]

Ballet[link]

• Pocahontas (1938–39)
• The Minotaur (1947)

Chamber[link]

• Canonic Suite for saxophone quartet (AAAA) (1939)
• Elegy for viola and piano (1943)
• Piano Sonata (1945–46)
• Cello Sonata (1948)
• Woodwind Quintet (1948)
• Eight Etudes and a Fantasy for wind quartet (1949) [2]
• String Quartet No. 1 (1951)
• Sonata for flute, oboe, cello, and harpsichord (1952)
• String Quartet No. 2 (1959)
• Canon for 3 (1971)
• String Quartet No. 3 (1971)
• Brass Quintet (1974)
• Duo for violin and piano (1974)
• Birthday Fanfare for three trumpets, vibraphone, and glockenspiel (1978)
• Triple Duo (1983)
• Esprit rude/esprit doux for flute and clarinet (1984)
• Canon for 4 (1984)
• String Quartet No. 4 (1986)
• Enchanted Prelude for flute and cello (1988)
• Con leggerezza pensosa for clarinet, violin, and cello (1990)
• Quintet for piano and winds (1991)
• Trilogy for oboe and harp (1992)

1. Bariolage for harp
2. Inner Song for oboe
3. Immer Neu for oboe and harp

• Esprit rude/esprit doux II for flute, clarinet, and marimba (1994)
• Fragment I for string quartet (1994)
• String Quartet No.5 (1995)
• Luimen for ensemble (1997)
• Quintet for piano and string quartet (1997)
• Fragment II for string quartet (1999)
• Oboe Quartet, for oboe, violin, viola, and cello (2001)
• Hiyoku for two clarinets (2001)
• Au Quai for bassoon and viola (2002)
• Call for two trumpets and horn (2003)
• Clarinet Quintet (2007)
• Tintinnabulation for percussion sextet (2008)
• Tre Duetti for violin and cello (2008, 2009)

1. Duettone
2. Adagio
3. Duettino

• Trije glasbeniki for flute, bass clarinet, and harp (2011)
• String Trio (2011)
• Double Trio for trumpet, trombone, percussion, piano, violin and cello (2011)

Choral[link]

• Tarantella for men's chorus and two pianos (1937)
• Let's Be Gay for women's chorus and two pianos (1937)
• Harvest Home for a capella choir (1937)
• To Music for a capella choir (1937)
• Heart Not So Heavy for a capella choir (1939)
• The Defense of Corinth for speaker, men's chorus and piano four hands (1941)
• The Harmony of Morning for women's chorus and chamber orchestra (1944)
• Musicians Wrestle Everywhere for a capella choir (1945)
• Emblems for men's chorus and piano (1947)

Concertante[link]

• Double Concerto for piano, harpsichord and 2 chamber orchestras (1959–61)
• Piano Concerto (1964)
• Concerto for Orchestra (1969)
• Oboe Concerto (1986–1987)
• Violin Concerto (1989)
• Clarinet Concerto (1996)
• Cello Concerto (2001)
• Boston Concerto (2002)
• Dialogues for piano and chamber orchestra (2003)
• Mosaic for harp and ensemble (2004)
• Horn Concerto (2007)
• Flute Concerto (2008)
• Concertino for bass clarinet and chamber orchestra (2009)
• Conversations for piano, percussion, and chamber/full orchestra (2010)
• Two Controversies and a Conversation for piano, percussion, and chamber/full orchestra (2011)

Large ensemble[link]

• Penthode for ensemble (1985)
• ASKO Concerto for sixteen players (2000)
• Réflexions for ensemble (2004)
• Wind Rose for wind ensemble (2008)

Opera[link]

• What Next? (opera in one act) (1997)

Orchestra[link]

• Symphony No. 1 (1942, revised 1954)
• Holiday Overture (1944, revised 1961)
• Variations for orchestra (1954–1955)
• A Symphony of Three Orchestras (1976)
• Three Occasions for orchestra (1986–89)

1. A Celebration of Some 150x100 Notes
2. Remembrance
3. Anniversary

• Symphonia: Sum fluxae pretium spei (1993–96)

1. Partita
2. Adagio Tenebroso
3. Allegro Scorrevole

• Three Illusions for orchestra (2002–04)

1. Micomicón
2. Fons Juventatis
3. More's Utopia

• Soundings for piano and orchestra (2005)
• Interventions for piano and orchestra (2007)
• Sound Fields for string orchestra (2007)

Solo instrumental[link]

• Piano Sonata (1945–46)
• Eight Pieces for Four Timpani (1949/66)
• Night Fantasies for piano (1980)
• Changes for guitar (1983)
• Scrivo in Vento for flute (1991)
• Gra for clarinet (1994)
• 90+ for piano (1994)
• Figment for cello (1994)
• A 6-letter Letter for English horn (1996)
• Shard for guitar (1997)
• Two Diversions for piano (1999)
• Four Lauds for solo violin (1999, 1984, 2000, 1999)

1. I. Statement – Remembering Aaron
2. II. Riconoscenza per Goffredo Petrassi
3. III. Rhapsodic Musings
4. IV. Fantasy – Remembering Roger

• Retrouvailles for piano (2000)
• Figment II for cello (2001)
• Steep Steps for bass clarinet (2001)
• Retracing for bassoon (2002)
• Intermittences for piano (2005)
• Caténaires for piano (2006)
• HBHH for oboe (2007)
• Figment III for contrabass (2007)
• Figment IV for viola (2007)
• Tri-Tribute for piano (2007, 2008)

1. "Matribute"
2. "Fratribute"
3. "Sistribute"

• Figment V for marimba (2009)
• Retracing II for horn (2009)
• Retracing III for trumpet (2009)

Voice[link]

• My Love Is in a Light Attire for voice and piano (1928)
• Tell Me Where Is Fancy Bred for voice and guitar (1938)
• A Mirror on Which to Dwell for soprano and ensemble (1975)
• Syringa for mezzo-soprano, bass-baritone, guitar, and ensemble (1978)
• Three Poems of Robert Frost for baritone and ensemble (1942, orchestrated 1980)
• In Sleep, in Thunder for tenor and ensemble (1981)
• Of Challenge and of Love for soprano and piano (1994)
• Tempo e Tempi for soprano, oboe, clarinet, violin, and cello (1998–99)
• Of Rewaking for mezzo-soprano and orchestra (2002)
• In the Distances of Sleep for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra (2006)
• Mad Regales for six solo voices (2007)
• La Musique for solo voice (2007)
• Poems of Louis Zukofsky (2008) for mezzo-soprano and clarinet
• On Conversing with Paradise (2008) for baritone and chamber orchestra
• What Are Years (2009) for soprano and chamber orchestra
• A Sunbeam's Architecture (2010) for tenor and chamber orchestra
• Three Explorations (2011) for bass-baritone, winds, and brass

Partial discography[link]

• Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord; Sonata for Cello and Piano; Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano With Two Chamber Orchestras. Paul Jacobs, hpschd; Joel Krosnick, cello; Gilbert Kalish, piano; The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Arthur Weisberg, cond. Elektra/Nonesuch 9 79183-2.
• String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2. The Composers Quartet. Elektra/Nonesuch 9 71249-2
• Piano Concerto; Variations for Orchestra. Ursula Oppens, piano; Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Michael Gielen, cond. New World Records, NW 347–2.
• Triple Duo; Clarinet Concerto; short pieces. Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Lorraine Vaillancourt, cond. ATMA Classique, ACD2 2280.
• Complete Music for Piano. Charles Rosen, Piano. Bridge 9090.
• Vocal Works (1975–81): A Mirror on Which to Dwell; In Sleep, In Thunder; Syringa; Three Poems of Robert Frost. Speculum Musicae with Katherine Ciesinki, mezzo; Jon Garrison, tenor; Jan Opalach, bass; Christine Schadeberg, soprano. Bridge, BCD 9014.
• Dialogues; Boston Concerto; Cello Concerto; ASKO Concerto. Nicolas Hodges, piano; Fred Sherry, cello; London Sinfonietta, BBC Symphony Orchestra, ASKO Ensemble, Oliver Knussen, cond. Bridge 9184.

Notable students[link]

• Ronald Caltabiano
• Joel Chadabe
• Alvin Curran
• Joel Hoffman
• Tod Machover
• Jeffrey Mumford
• Tobias Picker
• David Schiff
• William Schimmel
• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

References[link]

Doering, William T. Elliott Carter: A Bio-Bibliography. Greenwood Press, 1993.

Interviews[link]

• Elliott Carter interview by Bruce Duffie, June 1986
• American Gothic: An Interview with Elliott Carter, by Andy Carvin, 1992
• A January 1994 interview with Elliott Carter by Phil Lesh
• NewMusicBox: Elliott Carter in conversation with Frank J. Oteri, 2000
• MusicMavericks.PublicRadio.org: An interview with Elliot Carter by Alan Baker, Minnesota Public Radio, July 2002
• Radical Connections on Counterstream Radio: Elliott Carter and Phil Lesh in Conversation, December 2007]
• Elliott Carter Centenary Podcast, an interview with Frank J. Oteri, November 27, 2007
• TV Interview (with Daniel Barenboim and James Levine) by Charlie Rose, December 10, 2008

Listening[link]

• Elliott Carter: A Life In Music, a documentary (1983)
• Art of the States: Elliott Carter four works by the composer
• Elliott Carter interview from American Mavericks site
• Excerpts from sound archives of Carter's works

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Elliott Carter

• Yale University Library: Research Guide to Elliott Carter's Life and Music
• Elliott Carter by photographer Philippe Gontier
• Elliott Carter: A Centennial Portrait in Letters and Documents by Felix Meyer & Anne C. Shreffler published by the Boydell Press in association with the Paul Sacher Foundation.
• Elliott Carter at G. Schirmer/AMP
• Elliott Carter at Boosey and Hawkes
• The String Quartets of Elliott Carter Booklet note for recording by the Arditti Quartet of Quartets 1–4 and Elegy (1988 ETCETERA KTC 1065/1066), by David Harvey
• CompositionToday – Elliot Carter article and review of works
• http://web.archive.org/web/20080201015213/http://www.carter100.com/ Elliott Carter Centenary 2008]
• John Link's Analysis of Night Fantasies
• Joshua B. Mailman's "Imagined Drama of Competitive Opposition in Carter's Scrivo in Vento (with Notes on Narrative, Symmetry, Quantitative Flux and Heraclitus)"
• (French) A biography of Elliott Carter, from IRCAM's website.
• Lifetime Honors - National Medal of Arts