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Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint and compression we are simply objecting to the classicism of classic art. A violent emphasis or a sudden acceleration of rhythmic movement would have destroyed those qualities of balance and completeness through which it retained until the present century its position of authority in the restricted repertoire of visual images."^[1] Classicism, as Clark noted, implies a canon of widely accepted ideal forms, whether in the Western canon that he was examining in The Nude (1956), or the Chinese classics.

Classicism is a force which is often present in post-medieval European and European influenced traditions; however, some periods felt themselves more connected to the classical ideals than others, particularly the Age of Enlightenment, and some classicizing movements in Modernism.^{[citation needed]}

General term[link]

Not all heroic nudes are classical: Fountain of the Four Rivers, Bernini, 1651.

Classicist door in Olomouc, The Czech Republic.

Classicism is a specific genre of philosophy, expressing itself in literature, architecture, art, and music, which has Ancient Greek and Roman sources and an emphasis on society. It was particularly expressed in the Neoclassicism of the Age of Enlightenment.

Classicism was a recurrent tendency in the Late Antique period, and had a major revival in Carolingian and Ottonian art. There was another, more durable revival in the Italian renaissance when the fall of Byzantium and rising trade with the Islamic cultures brought a flood of knowledge about, and from, the antiquity of Europe. Until that time the identification with antiquity had been seen as a continuous history of Christendom from the conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine I. Renaissance classicism introduced a host of elements into European culture, including the application of mathematics and empiricism into art, humanism, literary and depictive realism, and formalism. Importantly it also introduced Polytheism, or "paganism", and the juxtaposition of ancient and modern.

The classicism of the Renaissance led to, and gave way to, a different sense of what was "classical" in the 16th and 17th centuries. In this period classicism took on more overtly structural overtones of orderliness, predictability, the use of geometry and grids, the importance of rigorous discipline and pedagogy, as well as the formation of schools of art and music. The court of Louis XIV was seen as the center of this form of classicism, with its references to the gods of Olympus as a symbolic prop for absolutism, its adherence to axiomatic and deductive reasoning, and its love of order and predictability.

This period sought the revival of classical art forms, including Greek drama and music. Opera, in its modern European form, had its roots in attempts to recreate the combination of singing and dancing with theatre thought to be the Greek norm. Examples of this appeal to classicism included Dante, Petrarch, and Shakespeare in poetry and theatre. Tudor drama, in particular, modeled itself after classical ideals and divided works into Tragedy and Comedy. Studying Ancient Greek became regarded as essential for a well-rounded education in the liberal arts.

The Renaissance also explicitly returned to architectural models and techniques associated with Greek and Roman antiquity, including the golden rectangle as a key proportion for buildings, the classical orders of columns, as well as a host of ornament and detail associated with Greek and Roman architecture. They also began reviving plastic arts such as bronze casting for sculpture, and used the classical naturalism as the foundation of drawing, painting and sculpture.

The Age of Enlightenment identified itself with a vision of antiquity which, while continuous with the classicism of the previous century, was shaken by the physics of Sir Isaac Newton, the improvements in machinery and measurement, and a sense of liberation which they saw as being present in the Greek civilization, particularly in its struggles against the Persian Empire. The ornate, organic, and complexly integrated forms of the baroque were to give way to a series of movements that regarded themselves expressly as "classical" or "neo-classical", or would rapidly be labelled as such. For example the painting of Jacques-Louis David which was seen as an attempt to return to formal balance, clarity, manliness, and vigor in art.

The 19th century saw the classical age as being the precursor of academicism, including such movements as uniformitarianism in the sciences, and the creation of rigorous categories in artistic fields. Various movements of the romantic period saw themselves as classical revolts against a prevailing trend of emotionalism and irregularity, for example the Pre-Raphaelites. By this point classicism was old enough that previous classical movements received revivals; for example, the Renaissance was seen as a means to combine the organic medieval with the orderly classical. The 19th century continued or extended many classical programs in the sciences, most notably the Newtonian program to account for the movement of energy between bodies by means of exchange of mechanical and thermal energy.

The 20th century saw a number of changes in the arts and sciences. Classicism was used both by those who rejected, or saw as temporary, transfigurations in the political, scientific, and social world and by those who embraced the changes as a means to overthrow the perceived weight of the 19th century. Thus, both pre-20th century disciplines were labelled "classical" and modern movements in art which saw themselves as aligned with light, space, sparseness of texture, and formal coherence.

In the present day philosophy classicism is used as a term particularly in relation to Apollonian over Dionysian impulses in society and art; that is a preference for rationality, or at least rationally guided catharsis, over emotionalism.

In the theatre[link]

Molière in classical dress, by Nicolas Mignard, 1658.

Classicism in the theatre was developed by 17th century French playwrights from what they judged to be the rules of Greek classical theatre, including the "Classical unities" of time, place and action, found in the Poetics of Aristotle.

• Unity of time referred to the need for the entire action of the play to take place in a fictional 24-hour period
• Unity of place meant that the action should unfold in a single location
• Unity of action meant that the play should be constructed around a single 'plot-line', such as a tragic love affair or a conflict between honour and duty.

Examples of classicist playwrights are Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine and Moliere. In the period of Romanticism, Shakespeare, who conformed to none of the classical rules, became the focus of French argument over them, in which the Romantics eventually triumphed; Victor Hugo was among the first French playwrights to break these conventions.

The influence of these French rules on playwrights in other nations is debatable. In the English theatre, Restoration playwrights such as William Wycherly and William Congreve would have been familiar with them. William Shakespeare and his contemporaries did not follow this Classicist philosophy, in particular since they were not French and also because they wrote several decades prior to their establishment. Those of Shakespeare's plays that seem to display the unities, such as The Tempest, probably indicate a familiarity with actual models from classical antiquity.

In architecture[link]

Villa Rotonda, Palladio, 1591

Classicism in architecture developed during the Italian Renaissance, notably in the writings and designs of Leon Battista Alberti and the work of Filippo Brunelleschi. It places emphasis on symmetry, proportion, geometry and the regularity of parts as they are demonstrated in the architecture of Classical antiquity and in particular, the architecture of Ancient Rome, of which many examples remained.

Orderly arrangements of columns, pilasters and lintels, as well as the use of semicircular arches, hemispherical domes, niches and aedicules replaced the more complex proportional systems and irregular profiles of medieval buildings. This style quickly spread to other Italian cities and then to France, Germany, England, Russia and elsewhere.

In the 16th century, Sebastiano Serlio helped codify the classical orders and Palladio's legacy evolved into the long tradition of Palladian architecture. Building off of these influences, the 17th-century architects Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren firmly established classicism in England.

For the development of classicism from the mid-18th-century onwards, see Neoclassical architecture.

In the fine arts[link]

• For Greek art of the 5th century B.C.E., see Classical art in ancient Greece and the Severe style

Italian Renaissance painting and sculpture are marked by their renewal of classical forms, motifs and subjects. In the 15th century Leon Battista Alberti was important in theorizing many of the ideas for painting that came to a fully realised product with Raphael's School of Athens during the High Renaissance. The themes continued largely unbroken into the 17th century, when artists such as Nicolas Poussin and Charles Le Brun represented of the more rigid classicism. Like Italian classicizing ideas in the 15th and 16th centuries, it spread through Europe in the mid to late 17th century.

Later classicism in painting and sculpture from the mid-18th and 19th centuries is generally referred to a Neoclassicism.

Political philosophy[link]

See also[link]

Further reading[link]

• Kallendorf, Craig W., editor. A Companion to the Classical Tradition. Blackwell Publishing, 2007. Essays by various authors on topics related to historical periods, places, and themes. Limited preview online.^[2]

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Classicist art

External links[link]

• Renaissance & Classicism from encyclopedia

Rhys Chatham
Background information
Born	(1952-09-19) September 19, 1952 (age 59)
Origin	New York City, New York, U.S.
Genres	Minimalism, No wave, experimental rock Cyber jazz
Occupations	Composer, guitarist, music theorist, trumpeter
Instruments	Electric guitar, trumpet
Years active	1971–present
Labels	Moers Musc Dossier Homestead New Tone (NTone)/ Ninja Tune Table of the Elements Wire
Associated acts	Tony Conrad La Monte Young Band of Susans Martin Wheeler
Website	www.rhyschatham.net, www.rhyschatham.com
Notable instruments
Electric guitar, drums/percussion, electric bass guitar, amplified trumpet

Rhys Chatham (born September 19, 1952, New York City) is an American composer, guitarist, and trumpet player, primarily active in avant-garde and minimalist music. He is best known for his "guitar orchestra" compositions. He has lived in France since 1987.

Early years[link]

Chatham began his musical career as a piano tuner for avant-garde pioneer La Monte Young as well as harpsichord tuner for Gustav Leonhard, Rosalyn Turek and Glenn Gould. He soon studied under electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick and minimalist icon La Monte Young and was a member of Young's group, The Theater of Eternal Music, during the early seventies; Chatham also played with Tony Conrad in an early version of Conrad's group, The Dream Syndicate. In 1971, while still in his teens, Chatham became the first music director at the experimental art space The Kitchen in lower Manhattan. His early works, such as Two Gongs (1971) owed a significant debt to Young and other minimalists.

His concert productions included experimenters Maryanne Amacher, Robert Ashley, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, and early alternative rockers such as Fred Frith, Robert Fripp, Arto Lindsay, and John Lurie. He has worked closely with visual artist/musician Robert Longo, particularly in the 1980s, and on an experimental opera called XS: The Opera Opus (1984-6) with the visual artist Joseph Nechvatal.

Compositions from the late 1970s and early 1980s[link]

By 1977, Chatham's music was heavily influenced by punk rock, having seen an early Ramones concert. He was particularly intrigued by and influential upon the group of artists music critics would label No Wave in 1978. That year, he began performing Guitar Trio around downtown Manhattan with an ensemble that included Glenn Branca, as well as Nina Canal of Ut. During this period, he wrote several works for large guitar ensembles, including Drastic Classicism, a collaboration with dancer Karole Armitage. Drastic Classicism was first released in 1982 on the compilation New Music from Antarctica, put together by Kit Fitzgerald, John Sanborn and Peter Laurence Gordon. It was also included on the 1987 album that also included his 1982 composition Die Donnergötter (German for "The Thundergods").

Members of the New York City noise rock band Band of Susans began their careers in Chatham's ensembles; they later performed a cover of Chatham's "Guitar Trio" on their 1991 album, The Word And The Flesh. (This parallels the way that members of fellow NYC noise rockers Sonic Youth began their careers in Branca's ensembles; Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth did play with Chatham as well.)

Chatham began playing trumpet in 1983, and his more recent works explore improvisatory trumpet solos; these are performed by Chatham himself, employing much of the same amplification and effects that he acquired with the guitar, over synthesized dance rhythms by the composer Martin Wheeler. His 1990s recordings in this style saw release on Ninja Tune Records as the compilation Neon.

Recent activity[link]

In 2002, he enjoyed a resurgence following the release of a limited-edition 3 CD retrospective box set on the record label Table of the Elements, An Angel Moves Too Fast To See: Selected Works 1971-1989, complete with 130-page booklet. The An Angel Moves Too Fast To See part of the title comes from Chatham's 1989 composition for 100 guitars. He has been since touring with his 100-guitar orchestra in Europe.

In 2005, he was commissioned by the city of Paris, in his adopted homeland, to write a composition for 400 electric guitars entitled A Crimson Grail, as part of the Nuit Blanche Festival. Approximately 10,000 people were present at the performance, and 100,000 more watched it on live television. A CD of excerpts from this concert was released in January 2007 by Table Of The Elements.

Rhys Chatham is currently touring the original 30 minute version of Guitar Trio in the USA and Europe, renamed G3 because the instrumentation has been increased to between six and ten electric guitars, electric bass and drums. In February 2007 he completed a twelve-city tour called the Guitar Trio (G3) Is My Life North America Tour, which was accompanied by the original film by Robert Longo that was projected behind the performance, entitled Pictures for Music (1979). The sets consisted of local musicians from each city of the performances, including members of Sonic Youth, Tortoise, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Hüsker Dü, Brokeback, 90 Day Men, Town & Country, Die Kreuzen, Bird Show and others. A three-CD box set of these performances was released by Table of the Elements in March 2008.

Chatham has continued to tour the original version of Guitar Trio in Europe throughout 2007 and 2008, including performances at:

• Festival Desgressions - 7 March 2007, Barcelona, Spain
• L'Ecole Régionale de Beaux Arts - 25, 26 April 2007, Valence, France
• Kosmische Club - 10 August 2007, Oslo, Norway
• ZXZW Independent Culture Festival - 22, 23 September 2007, Tilburg, the Netherlands
• Festival Soy - 29 October 2007, Nantes, France
• Galleria Toledo - 26 March 2008, Naples, Italy
• State-X Festival - 12 December 2008, The Hague, the Netherlands

Rhys Chatham made his first American presentation of a composition for a one-hundred guitar orchestra in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, on May 23, 2008, with an orchestra composed of local students and teachers, as well as many professional guitarists. This performance was the premiere of a new composition entitled Les 100 Guitares: G100.

The American premiere of A Crimson Grail was on August 8, 2009. Two-hundred electric guitarists performed the piece at the Damrosch Park Bandshell in New York City. The performance was part of a free concert series, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, that was being commissioned by the Lincoln Center. Originally, the piece was supposed to be performed for 2008's Lincoln Center Out of Doors, but rain canceled the concert for safety reasons. For the 2009 premiere, precautions were taken so that the concert could go on even if it rained.

Concurrent with his work for guitar orchestras and smaller ensembles, Chatham's trumpet style has evolved from its characteristic distorted sound of the 90s to its present more dreamy and laid back approach to playing the instrument, influenced by players such as Don Cherry and Jon Hassell. An example of this style can be heard on Chatham's latest release, The Bern Project, released by Hinterzimmer Records in January 2010.

Discography[link]

• Factor X (LP), Moers Music 1983

  containing:

  • For Brass (1982)
  • Guitar Ring (1982)
  • The Out Of Tune Guitar (1982)
  • Cadenza (1981)

• Die Donnergötter (LP), Dossier Records (Europe)/Homestead Records (USA) 1987

  containing:

  • Die Donnergötter (1984–86)
  • Waterloo No. 2 (1986)
  • Guitar Trio (1977)
  • Drastic Classicism (1982)

• Neon (12", CDEP), Ntone 1997

  All compositions in collaboration with Martin Wheeler.

  containing:

  • Charm (1996)
  • Ramatek (1994)
  • Hornithology (1996)
  • Neon (1993)

• Septile (12", CD EP), Ntone 1997

  All compositions in collaboration with Jonathan Kane & DJ Elated System.

• Hardedge, The Wire Editions 1999

  Made in collaboration with Pat Thomas, Gary Smith, Gary Jeff, Lou Ciccotelli.

• A Rhys Chatham Compendium (CD), Table of the Elements 2002

  Limited-edition CD featuring selections and edits from the An Angel Moves Too Fast To See box-set.

  containing:

  • An Angel Moves Too Fast To See (1989) [edit]
  • Guitar Trio (1977) [edit]
  • Drastic Classicism (1982) [edit]
  • Two Gongs (1971) [edit]
  • Guitar Cetet (1977) [bonus track not contained in box set]
  • Waterloo, No. 2 (1986) [edit]
  • Die Donntergötter (1985) [complete version]

• An Angel Moves Too Fast To See (Selected Works 1971-1989) (3xCD box set), Table of the Elements 2002
  • disc 1:
    • Two Gongs (1971)
  • disc 2:
    • Die Donnergötter (1985)
    • Waterloo, No. 2 (1986)
    • Drastic Classicism (1982)
    • Guitar Trio (1977)
    • Massacre on MacDougal Street (1982)
  • disc 3:
    • An Angel Moves Too Fast To See (1989)

• Echo Solo (LP), Azoth Schallplatten Gesellschaft 2003

• Three Aspects Of The Name (12"), Table of the Elements 2003

• An Angel Moves Too Fast To See (For 100 Electric Guitars, Electric Bass, And Drums) (LP, CD), Table of the Elements/Radium 2006

• Die Donnergötter (LP, CD), Table of the Elements/Radium 2006

  containing:

  • Die Donnergötter (1985/86)
  • Waterloo, No. 2 (1986)
  • Drastic Classicism (1982)
  • Guitar Trio (1977)
  • Massacre on MacDougal Street (1982)

• A Crimson Grail (For 400 Electric Guitars) (CD), Paris Version / Indoor Version, Table of the Elements 2007

• The Bern Project (CD), Hinterzimmer Records 2010

  containing:

  • War In Heaven (2009)
  • A Rite for Samhain (2009)
  • Scrying in Smoke (2009)
  • My Lady of the Loire (2009)
  • Is there Life After Guitar Trio (2009)
  • Under the Petals of the Rose (2009)

• A Crimson Grail (For 200 Electric Guitars) (CD), New York Version / Outdoor Version, Nonesuch Records 2010

• Outdoor Spell (LP, CD), Northern-Spy 2011

  containing:

  • Outdoor Spell
  • Crossing the Sword Bridge
  • Corn Maiden's Rite
  • The Magician

• Rêve Parisien (LP), Primary Information 2011

External links[link]

• Rhys Chatham's Table of the Elements site
• The official "Guitar Trio Is My Life" USA 2007 tour site
• "Composer's Notebook" section of personal site
• Rhys Chatham on Myspace
• Rhys Chatham at Allmusic
• Rhys Chatham discography at MusicBrainz
• Rhys Chatham discography at Discogs
• Trouser Press entry ( not comprehensive)
• audio excerpt from XS: The Opera Opus published at Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine
• Reve Parisien excerpt from Primary Information
• Review of Guitar Trio Is My Life on Pitchfork Media
• NewMusicBox cover: Rhys Chatham in conversation with Frank J. Oteri, August 14, 2008 (includes video)
• New York Times article about the American premiere of A Crimson Grail, published on the New York Times website, July 22, 2009
• Golden, Barbara. “Conversation with Rhys Chatham.” eContact! 12.2 — Interviews (2) (April 2010). Montréal: CEC.
• Rhys Chatham and Joseph Nechvatal in discussion at the School of Visual Arts 2011 [1]