Neoromanticism

Neoromanticism in classical music names the current of 20th- and 21st-century composers who write in an avowedly tonal, expressive idiom descended from late Romanticism, favouring long-breathed melody, traditional forms and direct emotional statement over modernist technique. In its first phase it described Americans such as *Samuel Barber*, *Howard Hanson* and *David Diamond*, who continued the Romantic symphony beside the avant-garde; after the 1970s it attached to the postmodern return to tonality of *George Rochberg*, *David Del Tredici* and *Ellen Taaffe Zwilich*. The term is descriptive rather than a school: its composers share an idiom, not an institution.