David Stewart asks about Britten's Young Person's Guide as a neo-classical
work:

>How? Isn't it simply the Purcell tune that makes it non-modern?

The question is what makes the work neo-classical?  I like what Jim Tobin
wrote and have very little to add.

Neo-classicism I believe began in reaction to the late 19th century (which
is one reason why I have a hard time accepting any Schoenberg as neoclassic
- all his music seems to me a continuation of the late 19th century),
particularly the Wagnerian idea of endless melody and the Wagnerian view
of the orchestra.  What was wanted was not the endless melody, but defined
structures, based mainly on Baroque and classical dance and not the
super-rich Wagnerian orchestral sounds, achieved through doubling and
tripling diverse instruments.  Music of late 19th-century Romanticism
tended toward expansion and epic.  Neoclassicists favored concision and
epigram.  Neoclassicism also emphasized independence of contrapuntal parts.
There's a kind of modesty to neoclassicism - of proportion, of expression,
of forces.  I would emphasize these tendencies, rather than the slogans of
"Back to Bach!" or "Back to Mozart." Although there had been in the 19th
century various homages to Bach and Mozart (the Tchaikovsky 4th Orchestral
Suite, eg), they still reflect in some way late 19th-century musical
thinking.

What make the Britten Young Person's Guide neoclassic to me are

1.  The very clear structure of each variation, and furthermore structure
    mostly based on Baroque or Classical song and dance types

2.  The lack of repetitious sequence

3.  The clarity of the lines, even in that concluding "devil of a fugue"

4.  The clarity of the orchestration - where each line gets no more than
    one instrument.

Someone can now tell me I don't know what I'm talking about.

Steve Schwartz