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7. Williams’s Neoclassicism: Style and Habits
- University of Wisconsin Press
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119 7 Williams’s Neo clas si cism Style and Hab its What is mu si cal neo clas si cism? In art-music historiog ra phy, neo clas si- cism was a trend that brought back the clar ity of past forms as op posed to the ex cesses of con tem po rary music: [It is a] mu si cal trend that arose in the sec ond half of the nine teenth cen tury (with the Bach re vi val pro moted by such com pos ers as Brahms and Max Reger) and gained full vis ibil ity in the 1920s as a re ac tion against post-Wagnerian the mat i cism and chro mat i cism and with the pur pose of the sty lis tic re-creation of clear-cut pre-Romantic forms. Neo clas si cism can be placed within those twentieth-century ar tis tic move ments in spired by the ideals of ob jec tiv ity, ra tion al ity and con crete ness, as op posed to those of sub jec tiv ity and ir ra tion al ity typ i cal of Ro man ti cism and in large part in her ited by Im pres sion ism and Ex pres sion ism.1 For ex am ple, the musi col o gist Guido Sal vetti writes the fol low ing about Igor Stravinsky’s neo clas si cism in Pul ci nella (1920): The mod ifi ca tions of the orig i nal music were not aimed at the def or ma tion of the model: Stra vin sky just added some canon-like dis so nant pas sages, major sec onds to some per fect chords, in a ca dence he placed 120 • Williams’s Neoclassicism the chords built on the V and I de grees si mul ta ne ously, shifted a bar’s ac cent on the weak beat, and of course, in vented a per sonal or ches tral color. . . . This Stra vins kyan “neo clas si cism” was char ac ter ized, even in its early days, by the dual as pect of both the re spect ful re con struc tion and the ir rev er ent par ody. . . . The Stra vins kyan neo clas si cism reached its peak in The Rake’s Prog ress (1951). . . . The huge va riety of cul tural ref er ences re sulted in a huge num ber of mu si cal “tips of the hat” where once again the whole his tory of music is lev eled on a ground where every thing can be reused and en joyed anew.2 What Sal vetti says about Oed i pus Rex (1927) in the fol low ing pas sage seems to apply to the neo clas si cal na ture of the Star Wars score too: “Neo clas si cism is even bet ter under stood in this sense: it is the es cape from the present and the plung ing into the eter nal di men sion of Myth, where Time and His tory lose any per spec tive.”3 The de ci sion to choose this kind of music for Star Wars—very un usual for a sci-fi film—also fol lowed the de sire to evoke a com mon mu si cal her i tage that would re in force the mythic di men sion of the nar ra tive. These neo clas si cal traits are also ac knowl edged by the musi col o gist Ser gio Miceli: [T]here are some char ac ter is tics that dis tin guish Williams from every one else. . . . Williams has proved to be able to take on the most rep re sen ta tive sty lis tic traits of his gen er a tion while smoothing their ex cesses by draw ing in spi ra tion from the sec ond and even first gen er a tion of Hol ly wood film com pos ers. To put it an other way, in a work of syn the sis rather than in no va tion, Williams has skill fully re cov ered leit mo tivic func tions, more ex ten sive and com plex the mat i cism, to gether with the matic inter play and im plicit sym bol ism. The most sig nifi cant dif fer ence if we com pare his work to that of his pre de ces sors...
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