# Neo-Baroque Music



## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

There was a wave throughout the 20th century of compositions based on old Baroque frameworks, either by taking the form of a Baroque suite, by utilizing rhythms or textures from Baroque music, using Baroque instruments like the harpsichord, or otherwise. I find much of this music fascinating, and I want to hear more of it.

Some neo-baroque works that come to mind include:

Dmitri Shostakovich: 24 Preludes and Fugues op.87
Arnold Schoenberg: Suite for piano, op.25
Peter Warlock: Capriol Suite
Maurice Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin
Heitor Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras
Paul Hindemith: Ludus Tonalis

What else is out there?


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks is one of the major works in this genre, also Bartok's Divertimento for String Orchestra. Debussy's Cello Sonata and Two Arabesques have some neo-Baroque elements in them.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

The Neo-Baroque wave has continued into the present century with the works of Spanish composer and Vivaldi scholar, Pablo Queipo de Llano. He is a member of Vox Sæculorum and The Delian Society, international societies devoted to the recreation of Baroque Music.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> The Neo-Baroque wave has continued into the present century with the works of Spanish composer and Vivaldi scholar, Pablo Queipo de Llano. He is a member of Vox Sæculorum and The Delian Society, international societies devoted to the recreation of Baroque Music.


This is nice, but sounds more so baroque pastiche than neo-baroque. Also, is this a midi rendering or a real performance? I can't tell. Anyway, this kind of thing could be pertinent to my interest too so long as it's well-executed.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

tdc said:


> Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks is one of the major works in this genre, also Bartok's Divertimento for String Orchestra. Debussy's Cello Sonata and Two Arabesques have some neo-Baroque elements in them.


Somehow I've never heard the Dumbarton Oaks, do you happen to know of a good recording of it?


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

flamencosketches said:


> Somehow I've never heard the Dumbarton Oaks, do you happen to know of a good recording of it?


I haven't heard that many different recordings of it. I have the work on a 4 cd set of Stravinsky's music on Newton Classics conducted by Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and it sounds good to me.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Stravinsky Dumbarton Oaks
Mendelssohn String Symphonies
Beethoven Fugue in the Diabelli Variations
Mendelssohn Elijah
Schnittke Concerto Grosso No. 1


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

ORigel said:


> Mendelssohn String Symphonies
> Beethoven Fugue in the Diabelli Variations
> Mendelssohn Elijah


I think the OP is asking for Neo-baroque compositions of *the 20th-century* specifically, not stuff like these:


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

flamencosketches said:


> There was a wave throughout the 20th century of compositions based on old Baroque frameworks, either by taking the form of a Baroque suite, by utilizing rhythms or textures from Baroque music, using Baroque instruments like the harpsichord, or otherwise. I find much of this music fascinating, and I want to hear more of it.
> 
> Some neo-baroque works that come to mind include:
> 
> ...


Michael Finnissy's ricercari for cello and piano






From the notes, the pieces are conceived as a series of discussions between an antique cello and a modern piano, the topics for the discussions being (I) general allusions to Bach's unaccompanied cello sarabandes and gigues, and the études of Jean Louis Duport (II) Giuseppe Cenci's lament _Dunque Clorinde _ (III) Domenico Gabrieli's 5th ricercar . . . I'll post the rest if anyone's interested.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

The second movement (batagglia/follia) from Rihm's 10th quartet


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

flamencosketches said:


> There was a wave throughout the 20th century of compositions based on old Baroque frameworks, either by taking the form of a Baroque suite, by utilizing rhythms or textures from Baroque music, using Baroque instruments like the harpsichord, or otherwise. I find much of this music fascinating, and I want to hear more of it.
> 
> Some neo-baroque works that come to mind include:
> 
> ...


Not a composer I know anything about but I think Schnittke is quite a big figure for neo baroque.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Mandryka said:


> Not a composer I know anything about but I think Schnittke is quite a big figure for neo baroque.


Right, all those concerti grossi. I should hear one of them.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Reger - 6 Preludes and Fugues for Piano, op. 99
Franz Schmidt - Chaconne for Orchestra
Stravinsky - Piano Sonata (1924); Duo Concertante for Violin and Piano
Tippett - Concerto for Double String Orchestra


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## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

Walter Piston, Concerto for Orchestra.






Ennio Morricone, The score to "The Mission".






Remo Giazotto. The Albinoni Adagio.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

flamencosketches said:


> *Heitor Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras*


I, _love_ those fugal movements from the Bachianas Brasilieras. Just perfection. Even though the "Bach" is in the name and the goal is to blend Baroque style with Brazillian, I'm not sure I get the Baroque connection in the other movements, even though they're labeled "Tocatta" and "Giga" and so forth. Doesn't really matter though, they're still amazing.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Ernest Bloch's two concerti grosso are both fantastic for early-mid 20th c. Howard Hanson's old Mercury recording with the Eastman-Rochester orch. are still among the best.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Not a composer I know anything about but I think Schnittke is quite a big figure for neo baroque.


From what I've heard, Schnittke's baroque style passages are often facets in polystylistic works which can include neo-Classical, neo-Romantic, neo-Stalin era, etc., music as well. Sometimes the passages are brief anachronistic islands of calm or nostalgia in turbulent seas.


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## tortkis (Jul 13, 2013)

Michael Nyman is a baroque musicologist and some of his compsitions are based on melodies or harmonic progressions of baroque music: Purcell in Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds, Croft in An Eye for Optical Theory, Couperin in Come unto these yellow sands, and so on.


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## gregorx (Jan 25, 2020)

EdwardBast said:


> From what I've heard, Schnittke's baroque style passages are often facets in polystylistic works which can include neo-Classical, neo-Romantic, neo-Stalin era, etc., music as well. Sometimes the passages are brief anachronistic islands of calm or nostalgia in turbulent seas.


neo-Stalin?!!? Yikes!

I'm not sure I understand what neo-Baroque is, but several of the pieces mentioned above are favorites of mine or by favorite composers. Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No. 6, for example, is a favorite work by a favorite composer. We're talking about forms and techniques here? Not style? Not instrumentation? If a work has a fugue or other counterpoint element it's considered neo-Baroque? So, Lutoslawski's Preludes and Fugue for 13 Solo Strings is neo-Baroque? But if a composer writes a piece with a harpsichord in it, that would not be enough to make it neo-Baroque?


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

gregorx said:


> neo-Stalin?!!? Yikes!
> 
> I'm not sure I understand what neo-Baroque is, but several of the pieces mentioned above are favorites of mine or by favorite composers. Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No. 6, for example, is a favorite work by a favorite composer. We're talking about forms and techniques here? Not style? Not instrumentation? If a work has a fugue or other counterpoint element it's considered neo-Baroque? So, Lutoslawski's Preludes and Fugue for 13 Solo Strings is neo-Baroque? But if a composer writes a piece with a harpsichord in it, that would not be enough to make it neo-Baroque?


Here is what I wrote in the OP:



> compositions based on old Baroque frameworks, either by taking the form of a Baroque suite, by utilizing rhythms or textures from Baroque music, using Baroque instruments like the harpsichord, or otherwise


So all of the above that you've named would fall under my definition of neo-Baroque, which is really not a serious term that should be used in musicological discussion, just a way of thinking about certain trends in the 20th century (and prior).


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

gregorx said:


> *neo-Stalin?!!? Yikes!*
> 
> I'm not sure I understand what neo-Baroque is, but several of the pieces mentioned above are favorites of mine or by favorite composers. Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No. 6, for example, is a favorite work by a favorite composer. We're talking about forms and techniques here? Not style? Not instrumentation? If a work has a fugue or other counterpoint element it's considered neo-Baroque? So, Lutoslawski's Preludes and Fugue for 13 Solo Strings is neo-Baroque? But if a composer writes a piece with a harpsichord in it, that would not be enough to make it neo-Baroque?


Neo-Stalin _era_. Yes, as when he hints at (quotes?) Miaskovsky (the teacher of his teacher), like in the second movement of the third symphony.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

I always like when composers for film and game have no knowledge of Baroque but try to capture it somehow. It sounds like a reimagining of history:


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## gregorx (Jan 25, 2020)

Ethereality said:


> I always like when composers for film and game have no knowledge of Baroque but try to capture it somehow. It sounds like a reimagining of history:


Ha! Great stuff. Monkey Island 3 sounds like a mishmash of Baroque and Rennaisance pastiche, and the other like Baroque meets English folk music circa Robin Hood.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

flamencosketches said:


> There was a wave throughout the 20th century of compositions based on old Baroque frameworks, either by taking the form of a Baroque suite, by utilizing rhythms or textures from Baroque music, using Baroque instruments like the harpsichord, or otherwise. I find much of this music fascinating, and I want to hear more of it.
> 
> Some neo-baroque works that come to mind include:
> 
> ...


I think this is better than the Shostakovich









https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7996942--novak-p-24-preludes-fugues


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