Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is a twentieth-century movement in Western art music in which composers turned back to the balance, clarity and formal models of the Baroque and Classical eras, filtering them through modern harmony, rhythm and orchestration. It favours economy of means, emotional restraint, transparent textures and absolute music over late-Romantic expansiveness and programmatic narrative. *Igor Stravinsky* is its central figure, from "Pulcinella" (1920), which recomposed eighteenth-century material, through the "Symphony of Psalms" and "The Rake's Progress"; the outlook was shared, in nationally inflected forms, by composers including *Paul Hindemith*, *Francis Poulenc*, *Sergei Prokofiev* and *Bohuslav Martinů*.