Neoclassicism (music)

Neoclassicism (music), in music, a term most often referring to music that was composed between the two world wars and that avoided the exaggerated gestures and complex forms of late romanticism. Instead, such music adopted more clearly perceptible themes and revived forms of earlier periods. Especially representative is the music of the Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky from Pulcinella (1920) to The Rake's Progress (1951); other examples are the Soviet composer Sergey Prokofiev's Classical Symphony (1917) and the French composer Erik Satie's Sonatine bureaucratique (1917).