Neoclassical Music in America by Tobin R. James;

Author:Tobin, R. James;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Works

In his 1964 Music in a New Found Land, just two years after Fine’s death, Wilfrid Mellers noted that Irving Fine “started as a Stravinskian neo-classicist whose work was distinguished by meticulous clarity.”[26] Characterization of Fine’s music by other professional commentators, including Fine’s peers, have concurred with this and expanded on it. Howard Pollack, in his Harvard Composers, attributes to Fine a “body of work that uniformly was technically expert, stylistically sophisticated, and immediately accessible.”[27] More specifically, Pollack writes that “Fine’s music was marked by emotional detachment and expert technique, including elegantly spaced chords, sure harmonic flow, independent, lively bass parts, and felicitous idiomatic writing,” as well as “classical restraint and symmetry.”[28] But Pollack also finds that “Fine’s sort of neoclassicism initially showed the influence of Piston even more than Stravinsky,” especially in his Violin Sonata, as well as stylistic similarity to the style galant of J. C. Bach, “with its elegant and refined lyricism, and its detached, restrained emotions.”[29] Another view is that of Aaron Copland, who, in notes to a recording of three orchestral pieces, says that the neoclassic movement in which Fine grew up musically satisfied Fine’s “need for an emotive world that includes imaginative freedom along with a sense of order and control. There is intensity and movement in all his music, and sometimes a surprising pathos, yet always one is aware of the craftsmanship that shapes the composition with a sure hand.”[30]

Some of Fine’s music has been called romantic, and some late pieces include serialist techniques, which raises the question of the extent to which Fine stayed within the “boundaries” of neoclassicism. These questions will be discussed in connection with those works.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.