Continuity or discontinuity ?

[eschiss1]

not sure if there is a productive topic here or too broad a one- and maybe it has too little to do with Unsung Composers.

(Also, the idea for it is a bit- under-coherent in my mind at present. Something about - the look to the past, the interest in early music, being a constant ... theme (sorry), with Liszt writing a transcription - need to check?- of di Lasso's "Regina coeli laetare", with Brahms' collection of Scarlatti sonatas and etc. and etc. and etc., with... (going back to the better Classical-era composers with their involvement in the Swieten circle and interest- Mozart especially, I think- in combining earlier styles with their own style in a fluid, rather than cordoned-off, manner- among other things, again.) Raff and his Bach transcriptions, again, comes to mind too, and HMB as one comes toward the end of the 19th century sees a growing number of publications of earlier music (in a Romantic style, at least generally, but speaking to an audience.) Saint-Saëns' Henry VIII ballet music (I recall seeing in a well-known book of themes) quotes the "Jolly Miller" tune, even. (To paraphrase Austin, what Stravinsky brought to neoclassicism wasn't the idea itself, but distance and irony. Don't really care for much neo-classical Stravinsky- Apollo and a fair number of other works always excepted! - but I can agree anyway. In another "area" of the 20th century I have always noticed that a fair number of otherwise diverse composers - Webern, Krenek, Wellesz etc.- were united by their interest in Renaissance (and Byzantine, since I mention Wellesz) music- etc.  John Powell writing on Sorabji mentioned something about the spirit and forms of the Baroque without their harmonies, and I think that may cover what all this verbiage may be over-covering... were some of these composers trying to capture (or merge with, together with their own...) the spirits of earlier eras (not just in obvious places like intentionally archaic suites, but elsewhere too, even when the harmony was as modern as they ever got? Part of me says the question is obvious and throwaway, another part wonders as usual if I should close the window and have stopped making any sense.)

I noticed that e.g. Farrenc contributed a prelude and fugue set..., and we've had a thread on that too. Again not quite what I mean though I do mean I'd like to hear hers (and other such)...

[chill319]

Not sure I understand where you're going with this thread, Eric. So I'm going to construe your post as the start of an
inquiry into how broadly nineteenth-century composers wrote music "in olden styles" and what the relation was
between this and their other music.

If this reading is not amiss, you have clearly begun a topic that could easily require a volume of MGG for its treatment.
Which is not to say that we can't have anecdotal fun with it here.

You mention Liszt and di Lasso. The role of the Cecilian movement is clearly pertinent here. As you know, there is in
classical music an unbroken tradition of conservative music where the Mass is concerned. For Mozart it was the
stile antico essayed in some of his early Masses. Fast forward to the masses of Bruckner and the revival of Palestrinian
and Reformation styles, not to mention 16th-century styles, has become a "progressive" feature of liturgical music. (Of
course the ripples spread to nonliturgical music as well -- Sibelius being a case in point.) Meanwhile, in Lutheran circles,
the influence of Mendelssohn's Bach revival with its insertion of chorale numbers and especially chorale variations into
oratorios and such was an influential parallel stream.

How like a Liszt (Weinen Klagen...) or Chopin (Mazurka, op. 59/3) to seek ways to enrich their native styles with antique
techniques, as Beethoven also did, with profound and possibly otherwise unattainable expressive results, in the finale
to Symphony 9.

This unbroken choral tradition has, however, to be differentiated from the revival (and inevitably enrichment) of antique
instrumental styles, forms, and sonorities. Dussek and especially Reicha reimagined Baroque counterpoint in an early
romantic context. By the 1820s Beethoven had moved from extended fugatos to fugues pure and simple in his
instrumental works. The sophisticated fugues in Russian modes of Balakirev, Lyapunov, Taneyev, and others continue
the transparent -- organic as opposed to self-consciously old-fashioned -- integration of baroque compositional
techniques into romantic idioms.

But separate from this was another antico thread, not dependent on fugue per se, seen in Czerny's 1847
sonata in the style of Scarlatti. We tend to call Scarlatti's keyboard works 'sonatas', but of course he called some of
them 'Essercizi' and one can see why Czerny, in his pedagical mode, wanted to edit so many of these.

It would be fascinating to trace and unravel the intertwining threads that include Czerny's 1847 hommage; Bizet's 1855
neoclassical symphony in C; Raff's neobaroque movements from his piano suites beginning 1857; Hiller's neobaroque
works of the 1870s; Tchaikovsky's neobaroque Suite No. 1, 1879, and neoclassical Serenade for Strings, 1880;  perhaps
the most influential amalgams of all, Wagner's 1867 Meistersinger prelude and Grieg's 1884 Holberg suite. By the late
1890s there were busloads of neobaroque and neoclassical movements to choose from in many instrumental settings.
I believe much of Debussy's Pour le piano, for example, was written in the early to mid 1890s. Enescu's first big piano
work (1897 if memory serves) was a neobaroque suite.

A list of composers who _didn't_ contribute to the non-Cecilian, non-fugal threads would be interesting in itself. Any
common factors for these composers?

So, as you say, Eric, when Prokofiev's neoclassical Symphony 1 and Stravinsky's neobaroque Octet stimulated
the 'Back to Bach' movement of the 1920s and 1930s (I don't mean to suggest these pieces were the only influential
ones), composers were following in several long and _essentially unbroken_ romantic instrumental traditions: (1) of
incorporating baroque techniques as seamlessly as possible into modern idioms; (2) of writing semi-pastiches of baroque
era music; (3) of writing semi-pastiches of classical era music; (4) of incorporating Reformation and Renaissance modality
and rhythms in non-choral music (e.g., Holst, Sibelius, Barber, Orff).

I do think there is one major difference, however, between Stravinsky's use of music of the past and that of other
composers from his generation or earlier: Stravinsky treated past musics, whether by Pergolesi or Tchaikovsky, as texts,
or found objects, that he could appropriate whole and rewrite to present an aesthetic the original composers would
not have recognized. In that he departed boldly from what the romantics had done, and regardless of how attractive
and tonal the results, this probably puts his works out of the current purview of this forum.

[eschiss1]

If one believes Alfred Einstein (I think he hit on it, myself) that "transparent integration" is something that distinguishes Mozart's later music from his earlier, his later approach from that which he'd learned under Martini in Italy (which indeed involved alternating "modern" movements with movements based on what the 18th century thought was the style of Palestrina et al. - but never combining them in the same section or even the same movement; sections would be homophonic or in a very rigid sort of counterpoint, never fluidly polyphonic...)

- and it started happening around the time he was introduced by van Swieten to the choral and other works (he already knew, as they were published, the WTC and some other works) of JS Bach. Slowly and gradually (resulting in some of those unfinished fragments and odd works, like those K.400ish violin sonatas...) (Einstein describes it as a "crisis" in Mozart's work), not all at once.  Among my favorite examples of this sort of fluid polyphony is in brief moments like the end of the development section of the D major string quintet (a wonderful inspiration), or even more briefly in the first movement of the K.499 "Hofmeister" quartet. Erm.
Einstein rightly notes that Beethoven took this obligato style of writing, almost always giving everyone -something- interesting to do at some point, from Haydn (as of his own op.33; another story..) and Mozart and made it his standard practice - to everyone's benefit. Especially those of composers who might have been inclined to write less interesting textures (and sometimes still did, admittedly. I often like too-busy textures- Johann Max Reger and many more recent composers, I hear you - but the opposite, not so much.)
Anyhow, thanks!!
(Re Stravinsky- well, yes, regardless of my opinion of him, he - like Debussy and Ravel for their suites (though I admit Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin may be my favorite work of his... er- anyway.) - would deserve inclusion in a very general discussion. And Mozart began a neo-Baroque suite (K399) of course, around the same time as the works I mentioned above - it's not as though nostalgia is what it used to be but its existence seems constant (er... not sure where i'm going with that sentiment). Not sure what I meant (or Austin meant) by Stravinsky's irony anycase; your distinction seems better-aimed.)

(And to add to your list, Hubay began an opera with a - time-appropriate - antique-sounding scale, or rather, music set with/to/in a very "ancient" modal scale. (The Venus of Milo, of course...))

[pcc]

I think Sullivan has to be included in the mix as well, with the "madrigals" in the Savoy operas - as well as much of the entire flavour of YEOMEN, which I think one of of the most successful and evocative "period" operas of any kind ever written.  There was also the Madrigal Society in London that was active in the 19th century through at least the 1850s, encouraging and giving prizes to composers willing to contribute works in that form; some of the pieces I've seen from their contests that were published are very attractive and imaginative.