The works of ancient art were recognized as examples of perfection and it was they who were imitated by the authors of classicism. The existing ones were brought into line with his principles. Only eternal, sublime subjects were taken into account, which were designed to establish a connection between the new time and the art of Ancient Greece and Rome.
Genres of classicism in literature
Literary genres were divided by theorists of classicism into two groups: high and low. The first were odes, heroic songs and tragedy. Tragedy was understood as the presence of a conflict, most often between private interest and duty to the state, in which the latter always won. Thus, the effect of monumentality, service to higher goals and exceptional significance of what was happening was achieved. The heroes of the works often became kings and prominent political figures, as well as prominent historical figures. The low ones included comedies, fables and satirical works. They were written in colloquial language, and their heroes were representatives of the lower classes.
The main domestic disseminators of the ideas of classicism in literature were Sumarokov and Trediakovsky.
The most important characteristic of literary is the principle of trinity. This implies the unity of time, place and action in the work. This meant that the development of the plot had to take place within a short time, in one room or house. Departure from these principles, the introduction of additional plots or stretching of actions in time was not allowed.
Genres of classicism in painting and sculpture
These areas of art were subject to the same canons as. The high ones included canvases and sculptures depicting historical, mythological or religious subjects. More "earthly" genres, such as portraiture, still life, or were considered low if they had no connection with the topics indicated.
The main task of the classicist artists was to create a picture of an ideal world without possible dual interpretations. And vice, and were absolute, in everything the approach and striving for the perfection of the world was declared.
Classicism in other areas of art
Composers and architects followed the same basic principles. The paramount attention was paid to solemn works, glorifying the dignity of man and the greatness of the state, or reminiscences on ancient themes.
Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn are considered the largest representatives of classicism in music.
In architecture, the connection between classicism and antiquity can be traced most clearly. The architects not only used the characteristic details of ancient Roman architecture, but also created complete copies of the best examples of ancient buildings. It was during this period that there was a return to the columns, simplicity and
In music, as in no other art form, the concept of "classic" has an ambiguous content. Everything is relative, and any yesterday's hits that have stood the test of time - whether they are masterpieces by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Prokofiev, or, say, The Beatles - can be attributed to classical works.
Forgive me, lovers of early music, for the frivolous word "hit", but after all, great composers once wrote popular music for their contemporaries, not at all aiming at eternity.
Why all this? To the one, that it is important to share a broad concept classical music and classicism as a direction in musical art.
The era of classicism
Classicism, which replaced the Renaissance in several stages, took shape in France at the end of the 17th century, reflecting in its art partly a serious rise in absolute monarchy, partly a change in worldview from religious to secular.
In the 18th century, a new round of development began public consciousness The Age of Enlightenment has arrived. The pomp and pomp of baroque, the immediate predecessor of classicism, was replaced by a style based on simplicity and naturalness.
Aesthetic settings of classicism
Classical art is based on cult of reason – rationalism, harmony and logic . The name "classicism" by origin is associated with the word from Latin- classicus, which means - "exemplary". The ideal model for artists of this trend was ancient aesthetics with its harmonious logic and harmony. In classicism, reason prevails over feelings, individualism is not welcome, and in any phenomenon, general, typological features. Each work of art must be built according to strict canons. The requirement of the era of classicism is the balance of proportions, excluding everything superfluous, secondary.
Classicism is characterized by a strict division into "high" and "low" genres . "High" works are works that refer to ancient and religious subjects, written in a solemn language (tragedy, hymn, ode). And the “low” genres are those works that are presented in a colloquial language and reflect the life of the people (fable, comedy). Mixing genres was unacceptable.
Classicism in music - Viennese classics
The development of a new musical culture in the middle of the 18th century gave rise to the emergence of many private salons, musical societies and orchestras, open concerts and opera performances.
The capital of the musical world in those days was Vienna. Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven are three great names that went down in history like.
Composers of the Viennese school masterfully mastered a variety of genres of music - from everyday songs to symphonies. The high style of music, in which rich figurative content is embodied in a simple but perfect artistic form, is the main feature of the work of the Viennese classics.
The musical culture of classicism, like literature, as well as fine arts, glorifies the actions of a person, his emotions and feelings, over which the mind reigns. Artists-creators in their works are characterized by logical thinking, harmony and clarity. The simplicity and ease of expression of classical composers might seem banal to the modern ear (in some cases, of course), if their music were not so brilliant.
Each of the Viennese classics had a bright, unique personality. Haydn and Beethoven gravitated towards instrumental music - sonatas, concertos and symphonies. Mozart was universal in everything - he easily created in any. He had a great influence on the development of opera, creating and improving its various types - from opera buff to musical drama.
In terms of composers' preferences for certain figurative spheres, Haydn is more characteristic of objective folk-genre sketches, pastoral, gallantry, Beethoven is close to heroism and drama, as well as philosophy, and, of course, nature, to a small extent, and refined lyrics. Mozart covered, perhaps, all existing figurative spheres.
Genres of musical classicism
The musical culture of classicism is associated with the creation of many genres of instrumental music, such as the sonata, symphony, and concerto. A multi-part sonata-symphony form (4-part cycle) was formed, which is still the basis of many instrumental compositions.
In the era of classicism, the main types of chamber ensembles were formed - the trio, the string quartet. The system of forms developed by the Viennese school is still relevant today - modern “bells and whistles” are layered on it as a basis.
Let us briefly dwell on the innovations characteristic of classicism.
sonata form
The sonata genre existed as early as the beginning of the 17th century, but the sonata form was finally formed in the works of Haydn and Mozart, and Beethoven brought it to perfection and even began to break the strict canons of the genre.
The classical sonata form is based on the opposition of 2 themes (often contrasting, sometimes conflicting) - main and secondary - and their development.
Sonata form includes 3 main sections:
- first section - exposition(carrying out the main topics),
- second - development(development and comparison of topics)
- and third - reprise(a modified repetition of the exposition, in which there is usually a tonal convergence of themes previously opposed to each other).
As a rule, the first, fast parts of a sonata or symphonic cycle were written in sonata form, therefore the name sonata allegro was assigned to them.
Sonata-symphony cycle
In structure, the logic of the sequence of parts, symphonies and sonatas are very similar, hence the common name for their whole musical form- sonata-symphonic cycle.
A classical symphony almost always consists of 4 parts:
- I - fast active part in the sonata allegro form, traditional for it;
- II - slow part (its form, as a rule, is not strictly regulated - variations are possible here, and three-part complex or simple forms, and rondo sonatas, and slow sonata form);
- III - a minuet (sometimes a scherzo), the so-called genre part - in form almost always a complex three-part;
- IV - the final and final fast part, for which the sonata form was also often chosen, sometimes the form of the rondo or rondo sonata.
Concert
The name of the concert, as a genre, comes from the Latin word concertare - "competition". This piece is for orchestra and solo instrument. The instrumental concerto, created in the Renaissance and received simply grandiose development in the work of the Viennese classics, acquired a sonata-symphonic form.
String Quartet
A string quartet usually consists of two violins, a viola and a cello. The form of the quartet, similar to the sonata-symphony cycle, was already determined by Haydn. Mozart and Beethoven also made a huge contribution and paved the way for the further development of this genre.
The musical culture of classicism has become a kind of "cradle" for the string quartet, in subsequent times and to the present day, composers do not stop writing more and more works in the concerto genre - this type of work turned out to be so in demand.
Music of classicism miraculously combines external simplicity and clarity with deep internal content, which is not alien to strong feelings and drama. Classicism, in addition, is the style of a certain historical era, and this style is not forgotten, but has serious connections with the music of our time (neoclassicism, polystylistics).
CLASSICISM (from the Latin classicus - exemplary), style and artistic direction in literature, architecture and art of the 17th - early 19th centuries, classicism is successively associated with the Renaissance; occupied, along with baroque, an important place in the culture of the 17th century; continued its development during the Enlightenment. The origin and spread of classicism is associated with the strengthening of the absolute monarchy, with the influence of the philosophy of R. Descartes, with the development exact sciences. The basis of the rationalist aesthetics of classicism is the desire for balance, clarity, logic of artistic expression (largely perceived from the aesthetics of the Renaissance); belief in the existence of universal and eternal rules not subject to historical changes artistic creativity, which are interpreted as skill, skill, and not a manifestation of spontaneous inspiration or self-expression.
Having perceived the idea of creativity, which goes back to Aristotle, as an imitation of nature, the classicists understood nature as an ideal norm, which had already been embodied in the works of ancient masters and writers: an orientation towards “beautiful nature”, transformed and ordered in accordance with the unshakable laws of art, thus, implied imitation antique samples and even competition with them. Developing the idea of art as a rational activity based on the eternal categories of "beautiful", "expedient", etc., classicism, more than other artistic trends, contributed to the emergence of aesthetics as a generalizing science of beauty.
The central concept of classicism - plausibility - did not imply an accurate reproduction of empirical reality: the world is recreated not as it is, but as it should be. The preference for the universal norm as "due" to everything private, random, concrete corresponds to the ideology of the absolutist state expressed by classicism, in which everything personal and private is subject to the indisputable will of state power. The classicist depicted not a specific, single person, but an abstract person in a situation of a universal, non-historical moral conflict; hence the orientation of the classicists to ancient mythology as the embodiment of universal knowledge about the world and man. The ethical ideal of classicism presupposes, on the one hand, the subordination of the personal to the common, of passions to duty, reason, resistance to the vicissitudes of life; on the other - restraint in the manifestation of feelings, compliance with the measure, appropriateness, the ability to please.
Classicism strictly subordinated creativity to the rules of the genre-style hierarchy. "High" (for example, epic, tragedy, ode - in literature; historical, religious, mythological genre, portrait - in painting) and "low" (satire, comedy, fable; still life in painting) genres were distinguished, which corresponded to a certain style, circle of themes and heroes; a clear delineation of the tragic and the comic, the sublime and the base, the heroic and the mundane was prescribed.
From the middle of the 18th century, classicism was gradually replaced by new trends - sentimentalism, pre-romanticism, romanticism. The traditions of classicism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were resurrected in neoclassicism.
The term "classicism", which goes back to the concept of classics (exemplary writers), was first used in 1818 by the Italian critic G. Visconti. It was widely used in the controversy of classicists and romantics, and among the romantics (J. de Stael, V. Hugo, etc.) it had a negative connotation: classicism and classics, imitating antiquity, were opposed to innovative rum ancient literature. In literary criticism and art history, the concept of "classicism" began to be actively used after the works of scientists of the cultural-historical school and G. Wölfflin.
Stylistic trends similar to the classicism of the 17th-18th centuries are seen by some scientists in other eras; in this case, the concept of "classicism" is interpreted in a broad sense, denoting a stylistic constant that is periodically updated at various stages of the history of art and literature (for example, "ancient classicism", "Renaissance classicism").
N. T. Pakhsaryan.
Literature. The origins of literary classicism are in normative poetics (Yu. Ts. Scaliger, L. Castelvetro, etc.) and in Italian literature of the 16th century, where a genre system was created, correlated with the system language styles and oriented to antique samples. The highest flowering of classicism is associated with French literature of the 17th century. The founder of the poetics of classicism was F. Malherbe, who regulated the literary language on the basis of live colloquial speech; the reform he carried out was secured by the French Academy. In the most complete form, the principles of literary classicism were set forth in the treatise "Poetic Art" by N. Boileau (1674), who summarized the artistic practice of his contemporaries.
Classical writers treat literature as an important mission of translating into words and conveying to the reader the requirements of nature and reason, as a way of "teaching while entertaining." The literature of classicism is striving for a clear expression of significant thought, meaning (“... meaning always lives in my creation” - F. von Logau), it refuses stylistic sophistication, rhetorical embellishments. The classicists preferred laconicism to verbosity, simplicity and clarity to metaphorical complexity, decentness to extravagant. Following the established norms did not mean, however, that the classicists encouraged pedantry and ignored the role of artistic intuition. Although the rules were presented to the classicists as a way to keep creative freedom within the boundaries of reason, they understood the importance of intuitive insight, forgiving the talent for deviation from the rules, if it was appropriate and artistically effective.
The characters of the characters in classicism are built on the allocation of one dominant feature, which contributes to their transformation into universal universal types. Favorite collisions are the clash of duty and feelings, the struggle of reason and passion. At the center of the works of the classicists is a heroic personality and, at the same time, a well-bred person who stoically strives to overcome his own passions and affects, to curb or at least realize them (like the heroes of the tragedies of J. Racine). Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" plays the role of not only a philosophical and intellectual, but also an ethical principle in the attitude of the characters of classicism.
At the heart of literary theory, classicism is a hierarchical system of genres; the analytical dilution in various works, even artistic worlds, of "high" and "low" heroes and thus is combined with the desire to ennoble "low" genres; for example, to rid satire of coarse burlesque, comedy of farcical features (Moliere's "high comedy").
The main place in the literature of classicism was occupied by drama based on the rule of three unities (see The theory of three unities). Tragedy became its leading genre, the highest achievements of which are the works of P. Corneille and J. Racine; in the first, the tragedy acquires a heroic character, in the second, a lyrical one. Other "high" genres play a much smaller role in the literary process (the unsuccessful experience of J. Chaplin in the genre of the epic poem is later parodied by Voltaire; solemn odes were written by F. Malherbe and N. Boileau). At the same time, the "low" genres were developing significantly: the heroic-comic poem and satire (M. Renier, Boileau), the fable (J. de La Fontaine), and the comedy. Genres of small didactic prose are cultivated - aphorisms (maxims), "characters" (B. Pascal, F. de La Rochefoucauld, J. de La Bruyère); oratorical prose (J. B. Bossuet). Although the theory of classicism did not include the novel in the system of genres worthy of serious critical reflection, M. M. Lafayette's psychological masterpiece The Princess of Cleves (1678) is considered an example of a classicist novel.
At the end of the 17th century, there was a decline in literary classicism, but the archaeological interest in antiquity in the 18th century, the excavations of Herculaneum, Pompeii, the creation by I. I. Winkelman of the ideal image of Greek antiquity as “noble simplicity and calm grandeur” contributed to its new rise in the Enlightenment. The main representative of the new classicism was Voltaire, in whose work rationalism, the cult of reason served to justify not the norms of absolutist statehood, but the right of the individual to be free from the claims of church and state. Enlightenment classicism, actively interacting with other literary trends of the era, relies not on "rules", but rather on the "enlightened taste" of the public. The appeal to antiquity becomes a way of expressing the heroism of the French Revolution of the 18th century in the poetry of A. Chenier.
In France in the 17th century, classicism developed into a powerful and consistent artistic system, and had a noticeable impact on baroque literature. In Germany, classicism, having arisen as a conscious cultural effort to create a "correct" and "perfect" poetic school worthy of other European literatures (M. Opitz), on the contrary, was drowned out by the baroque, whose style was more in line with the tragic era of the Thirty Years' War; the belated attempt of I. K. Gottsched in the 1730s and 40s to direct German literature along the path of the classicist canons caused fierce controversy and was generally rejected. An independent aesthetic phenomenon is the Weimar classicism of J. W. Goethe and F. Schiller. In the UK, early classicism is associated with the work of J. Dryden; its further development proceeded in line with the Enlightenment (A. Pope, S. Johnson). By the end of the 17th century, classicism in Italy existed in parallel with Rococo and sometimes intertwined with it (for example, in the work of the poets of Arcadia - A. Zeno, P. Metastasio, P. Y. Martello, S. Maffei); Enlightenment classicism is represented by the work of V. Alfieri.
In Russia, classicism was established in the 1730s-1750s under the influence of Western European classicism and the ideas of the Enlightenment; however, it clearly traces the connection with the baroque. Distinctive features of Russian classicism are pronounced didacticism, accusatory, socially critical orientation, national-patriotic pathos, reliance on folk art. One of the first principles of classicism was transferred to Russian soil by A. D. Kantemir. In his satires, he followed I. Boileau, but, creating generalized images of human vices, he adapted them to domestic reality. Kantemir introduced new poetic genres into Russian literature: transcriptions of psalms, fables, a heroic poem (“Petrida”, not finished). The first example of a classic laudatory ode was created by V. K. Trediakovsky ("Ode Solemn on the Surrender of the City of Gdansk", 1734), who accompanied it with the theoretical "Reasoning about the ode in general" (both of which followed Boileau). The influence of baroque poetics marked the odes of M. V. Lomonosov. The most complete and consistent Russian classicism is represented by the work of A. P. Sumarokov. Having outlined the main provisions of the classicist doctrine in the Epistle on Poetry (1747), written in imitation of Boileau's treatise, Sumarokov sought to follow them in his works: tragedies oriented towards the work of the French classicists of the 17th century and the dramaturgy of Voltaire, but addressed mainly to the events of national history; partly - in comedies, the model for which was the work of Moliere; in satires, as well as fables that brought him the glory of the "northern Lafontaine". He also developed the song genre, which was not mentioned by Boileau, but was included by Sumarokov himself in the list of poetic genres. Until the end of the 18th century, the classification of genres, proposed by Lomonosov in the preface to the collected works of 1757 - “On the Usefulness of Church Books in the Russian Language”, retained its significance, which correlated the theory of three styles with specific genres, linking a heroic poem, ode, solemn speeches; with the middle - tragedy, satire, elegy, eclogue; with low - comedy, song, epigram. An example of a heroic poem was created by V. I. Maikov (“Elisha, or the Irritated Bacchus”, 1771). The first completed heroic epic was Rossiyada by M. M. Kheraskov (1779). At the end of the 18th century, the principles of classic dramaturgy manifested themselves in the works of N. P. Nikolev, Ya. B. Kniazhnin, V. V. Kapnist. At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, classicism was gradually replaced by new trends in literary development associated with pre-romanticism and sentimentalism, but retained its influence for some time. Its traditions can be traced in the 1800s-20s in the work of Radishchev poets (A. Kh. Vostokov, I. P. Pnin, V. V. Popugaev), in literary criticism (A. F. Merzlyakov), in literary and aesthetic program and genre-stylistic practice of the Decembrist poets, in the early work of A. S. Pushkin.
A. P. Losenko. "Vladimir and Rogneda". 1770. Russian Museum (St. Petersburg).
N. T. Pakhsaryan; T. G. Yurchenko (classicism in Russia).
Architecture and fine arts. The tendencies of classicism in European art were already outlined in the 2nd half of the 16th century in Italy - in the architectural theory and practice of A. Palladio, the theoretical treatises of G. da Vignola, S. Serlio; more consistently - in the writings of G. P. Bellori (17th century), as well as in the aesthetic standards of the academicians of the Bologna school. However, in the 17th century, classicism, which developed in an acutely polemical interaction with the Baroque, only in French artistic culture developed into an integral stylistic system. Classicism of the 18th - early 19th centuries was also predominantly formed in France, which became a pan-European style (the latter is often referred to as neoclassicism in foreign art history). The principles of rationalism underlying the aesthetics of classicism determined the view of a work of art as the fruit of reason and logic, triumphing over the chaos and fluidity of sensually perceived life. Orientation to a reasonable beginning, to enduring patterns also determined the normative requirements of the aesthetics of classicism, the regulation of artistic rules, a strict hierarchy of genres in the visual arts (the “high” genre includes works on mythological and historical plots, also "ideal landscape" and formal portrait; to "low" - still life, everyday genre, etc.). The activities of the royal academies founded in Paris - painting and sculpture (1648) and architecture (1671) - contributed to the consolidation of the theoretical doctrines of classicism.
The architecture of classicism, in contrast to the baroque with its dramatic conflict of forms, energetic interaction of volume and spatial environment, is based on the principle of harmony and internal completeness, both in a separate building and in an ensemble. The characteristic features of this style are the desire for clarity and unity of the whole, symmetry and balance, the certainty of plastic forms and spatial intervals that create a calm and solemn rhythm; a system of proportioning based on multiple ratios of integers (a single module that determines the patterns of shaping). The constant appeal of the masters of classicism to the heritage of ancient architecture meant not only the use of its individual motifs and elements, but also the comprehension of the general laws of its architectonics. The basis of the architectural language of classicism was the architectural order, proportions and forms closer to antiquity than in the architecture of previous eras; in buildings, it is used in such a way that it does not obscure the overall structure of the building, but becomes its subtle and restrained accompaniment. The interiors of classicism are characterized by clarity of spatial divisions, softness of colors. Widely using perspective effects in monumental and decorative painting, the masters of classicism fundamentally separated the illusory space from the real one.
An important place in the architecture of classicism belongs to the problems of urban planning. Projects of "ideal cities" are being developed, new type regular absolutist city-residence (Versailles). Classicism strives to continue the traditions of antiquity and the Renaissance, laying in the basis of its decisions the principle of proportionality to a person and, at the same time, a scale that gives the architectural image a heroic-elevated sound. And although the rhetorical splendor of palace decor comes into conflict with this dominant trend, the stable figurative structure of classicism preserves the unity of style, no matter how diverse its modifications in the process of historical development.
The formation of classicism in French architecture is associated with the works of J. Lemercier and F. Mansart. The appearance of buildings and construction techniques at first resemble the architecture of castles of the 16th century; a decisive turning point occurred in the work of L. Levo - first of all, in the creation of the palace and park ensemble of Vaux-le-Vicomte, with a solemn enfilade of the palace itself, imposing murals by Ch. Lebrun and the most characteristic expression of new principles - the regular parterre park of A. Le Nôtre. The eastern façade of the Louvre, realized (since the 1660s) according to the plan of C. Perrault, became the programmatic work of classicism architecture (it is characteristic that the projects of J. L. Bernini and others in the Baroque style were rejected). In the 1660s, L. Levo, A. Le Nôtre and Ch. Lebrun began to create an ensemble of Versailles, where the ideas of classicism are expressed with particular completeness. Since 1678, the construction of Versailles was led by J. Hardouin-Mansart; according to his designs, the palace was significantly expanded (wings were added), the central terrace was converted into the Mirror Gallery - the most representative part of the interior. He also built the Grand Trianon Palace and other buildings. The ensemble of Versailles is characterized by a rare stylistic integrity: even the jets of fountains were combined into a static form, similar to a column, and trees and shrubs were trimmed in the form of geometric shapes. The symbolism of the ensemble is subordinated to the glorification of the “king-sun” Louis XIV, but its artistic and figurative basis was the apotheosis of reason, imperiously transforming the natural elements. At the same time, the emphasized decorativeness of the interiors justifies the use of the stylistic term “baroque classicism” in relation to Versailles.
In the 2nd half of the 17th century, new planning techniques were developed that provided for the organic connection of urban development with elements of the natural environment, the creation of open areas that spatially merge with a street or embankment, ensemble solutions for the key elements of the urban structure (Louis the Great Square, now Vendôme, and Victory Square ; the architectural ensemble of the Les Invalides, all - J. Hardouin-Mansart), triumphal entrance arches (Saint-Denis gate designed by N. F. Blondel; all - in Paris).
The traditions of classicism in France of the 18th century were almost not interrupted, but in the 1st half of the century the rococo style prevailed. In the middle of the 18th century, the principles of classicism were transformed in the spirit of the aesthetics of the Enlightenment. In architecture, the appeal to "naturalness" put forward the requirement for constructive justification of the order elements of the composition, in the interior - the need to develop a flexible layout of a comfortable residential building. The landscape (landscape) environment became the ideal environment for the house. The rapid development of knowledge about Greek and Roman antiquity (excavations of Herculaneum, Pompeii, etc.) had a huge impact on the classicism of the 18th century; The works of J. I. Winkelmann, J. W. Goethe, and F. Militsia made their contribution to the theory of classicism. In the French classicism of the 18th century, new architectural types were defined: an exquisitely intimate mansion (“hotel”), a front public building, an open square connecting the main thoroughfares of the city (Louis XV Square, now Place de la Concorde, in Paris, architect J. A. Gabriel; he also built the Petit Trianon Palace in the Versailles Park, combining the harmonic clarity of forms with the lyrical refinement of the drawing). J. J. Souflot carried out his project of the Sainte-Genevieve church in Paris, based on the experience of classical architecture.
In the era preceding the French Revolution of the 18th century, architecture manifested a striving for severe simplicity, a bold search for the monumental geometrism of a new, orderless architecture (K. N. Ledoux, E. L. Bulle, J. J. Lekeu). These searches (noted also by the influence of the architectural etchings of G. B. Piranesi) served as the starting point for the late phase of classicism - the French Empire (1st third of the 19th century), in which magnificent representativeness is growing (Ch. Percier, P. F. L. Fontaine , J. F. Chalgrin).
English Palladianism of the 17th and 18th centuries is in many respects related to the system of classicism, and often merges with it. Orientation to the classics (not only to the ideas of A. Palladio, but also to antiquity), strict and restrained expressiveness of plastically clear motives are present in the work of I. Jones. After the "Great Fire" of 1666, K. Wren built the largest building in London - St. Paul's Cathedral, as well as over 50 parish churches, a number of buildings in Oxford, marked by the influence of ancient solutions. Extensive urban plans were realized by the middle of the 18th century in the regular development of Bath (J. Wood the Elder and J. Wood the Younger), London and Edinburgh (the Adam brothers). The buildings of W. Chambers, W. Kent, J. Payne are associated with the flourishing of country park estates. R. Adam was also inspired by Roman antiquity, but his version of classicism takes on a softer and more lyrical appearance. Classicism in Great Britain was the most important component of the so-called Georgian style. At the beginning of the 19th century, features similar to the Empire style appeared in English architecture (J. Soane, J. Nash).
In the 17th - early 18th century, classicism was formed in the architecture of Holland (J. van Kampen, P. Post), which gave rise to a particularly restrained version of it. Cross-links with French and Dutch classicism, as well as with the early baroque, affected the short flowering of classicism in the architecture of Sweden in the late 17th and early 18th centuries (N. Tessin the Younger). In the 18th and early 19th centuries, classicism also established itself in Italy (G. Piermarini), Spain (J. de Villanueva), Poland (J. Kamsetzer, H. P. Aigner), and the USA (T. Jefferson, J. Hoban). The strict forms of the Palladian F. W. Erdmansdorf, the “heroic” Hellenism of K. G. Langhans, D. and F. Gilly, and the historicism of L. von Klenze are characteristic of the German classicism architecture of the 18th - 1st half of the 19th century. In the work of K. F. Shinkel, the harsh monumentality of images is combined with the search for new functional solutions.
By the middle of the 19th century, the leading role of classicism was coming to naught; it is replaced by historical styles (see also Neo-Greek style, Eclecticism). At the same time, the artistic tradition of classicism comes to life in the neoclassicism of the 20th century.
Fine art of classicism is normative; its figurative structure is characterized by clear signs of social utopia. The iconography of classicism is dominated by ancient legends, heroic deeds, historical plots, that is, interest in the fate of human communities, in the "anatomy of power." Not satisfied with a simple "portrait of nature", the artists of classicism strive to rise above the concrete, the individual - to the universally significant. The classicists defended their idea of artistic truth, which did not coincide with the naturalism of Caravaggio or the Little Dutch. The world of rational deeds and bright feelings in the art of classicism rose above the imperfect everyday life as the embodiment of a dream of the desired harmony of being. Orientation to the lofty ideal gave rise to the choice of "beautiful nature". Classicism avoids the casual, the deviant, the grotesque, the crude, the repulsive. The tectonic clarity of classical architecture corresponds to a clear delimitation of plans in sculpture and painting. The plastic of classicism, as a rule, is designed for a fixed point of view, it is distinguished by the smoothness of forms. The moment of movement in the poses of figures usually does not violate their plastic isolation and calm statuary. In classical painting, the main elements of form are line and chiaroscuro; local colors clearly reveal objects and landscape plans, which brings the spatial composition of the painting closer to the composition of the stage.
The founder and greatest master of classicism of the 17th century was the French artist N. Poussin, whose paintings are marked by the loftiness of the philosophical and ethical content, the harmony of the rhythmic structure and color.
The "ideal landscape" (N. Poussin, C. Lorrain, G. Duguet), which embodied the dream of the classicists of the "golden age" of mankind, was highly developed in the painting of classicism of the 17th century. The most significant masters of French classicism in sculpture of the 17th - early 18th centuries were P. Puget (heroic theme), F. Girardon (search for harmony and laconism of forms). In the 2nd half of the 18th century, French sculptors again turned to public significant topics and monumental solutions (J. B. Pigalle, M. Clodion, E. M. Falcone, J. A. Houdon). Civic pathos and lyricism were combined in the mythological painting of J. M. Vienne, the decorative landscapes of J. Robert. The painting of the so-called revolutionary classicism in France is represented by the works of J. L. David, whose historical and portrait images are marked by courageous drama. In the late period of French classicism, painting, despite the appearance of individual major masters (J. O. D. Ingres), degenerates into official apologetic or salon art.
Rome became the international center of classicism in the 18th - early 19th centuries, where the academic tradition dominated in art with a combination of nobility of forms and cold, abstract idealization, often for academicism (painters A. R. Mengs, J. A. Koch, V. Camuccini, sculptors A. Kakova and B. Thorvaldsen). In the visual art of German classicism, contemplative in spirit, the portraits of A. and V. Tishbein, the mythological cartoons of A. Ya. Karstens, the plastic art of I. G. Shadov, K. D. Raukh stand out; in arts and crafts - furniture by D. Roentgen. In Great Britain, the classicism of graphics and sculpture by J. Flaxman are close, in the arts and crafts - ceramics by J. Wedgwood and the masters of the factory in Derby.
A. R. Mengs. "Perseus and Andromeda". 1774-79. Hermitage (St. Petersburg).
The heyday of classicism in Russia dates back to the last third of the 18th - 1st third of the 19th century, although already the beginning of the 18th century was marked by a creative appeal to the urban planning experience of French classicism (the principle of symmetrical-axial planning systems in the construction of St. Petersburg). Russian classicism embodied a new historical stage in the flourishing of Russian secular culture, unprecedented for Russia in scope and ideological fullness. Early Russian classicism in architecture (1760-70s; J. B. Vallin-Delamot, A. F. Kokorinov, Yu. M. Felten, K. I. Blank, A. Rinaldi) still retains the plastic enrichment and dynamics of forms characteristic of baroque and rococo.
The architects of the mature era of classicism (1770-90s; V. I. Bazhenov, M. F. Kazakov, I. E. Starov) created the classic types of the capital's palace-estate and comfortable residential building, which became models in the extensive construction of suburban noble estates and in the new, front building of cities. The art of the ensemble in suburban park estates is a major contribution of Russian classicism to world artistic culture. The Russian variant of Palladianism arose in manor construction (N. A. Lvov), and a new type of chamber palace developed (C. Cameron, J. Quarenghi). A feature of Russian classicism is the unprecedented scale of state urban planning: regular plans were developed for more than 400 cities, ensembles of the centers of Kaluga, Kostroma, Poltava, Tver, Yaroslavl, etc. were formed; the practice of "regulating" city plans, as a rule, successively combined the principles of classicism with the historically established planning structure of the old Russian city. The turn of the 18th-19th century was marked by the largest urban development achievements in both capitals. A grandiose ensemble of the center of St. Petersburg was formed (A. N. Voronikhin, A. D. Zakharov, J. F. Thomas de Thomon, later K. I. Rossi). On other urban planning principles, “classical Moscow” was formed, which was built up during its restoration after the fire of 1812 with small mansions with cozy interiors. The beginnings of regularity here were consistently subordinated to the general pictorial freedom of the spatial structure of the city. The most prominent architects of late Moscow classicism are D. I. Gilardi, O. I. Bove, A. G. Grigoriev. The buildings of the 1st third of the 19th century belong to the Russian Empire style (sometimes called Alexander classicism).
In the visual arts, the development of Russian classicism is closely connected with the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (founded in 1757). Sculpture is represented by “heroic” monumental-decorative plasticity, which forms a finely thought-out synthesis with architecture, monuments filled with civic pathos, tombstones imbued with elegiac enlightenment, easel plasticity (I.P. Prokofiev, F.G. Gordeev, M.I. Kozlovsky, I. P. Martos, F. F. Shchedrin, V. I. Demut-Malinovsky, S. S. Pimenov, I. I. Terebenev). In painting, classicism was most clearly manifested in the works of the historical and mythological genre (A. P. Losenko, G. I. Ugryumov, I. A. Akimov, A. I. Ivanov, A. E. Egorov, V. K. Shebuev, early A. A. Ivanov, in scenography - in the work of P. di G. Gonzago). Some features of classicism are also inherent in the sculptural portraits of F. I. Shubin, in painting - portraits of D. G. Levitsky, V. L. Borovikovsky, landscapes of F. M. Matveev. In the decorative and applied art of Russian classicism, artistic modeling and carved decor in architecture, bronze products, cast iron, porcelain, crystal, furniture, damask fabrics, etc., stand out.
A. I. Kaplun; Yu. K. Zolotov (European fine arts).
Theater. The formation of theatrical classicism began in France in the 1630s. The activating and organizing role in this process belonged to literature, thanks to which the theater established itself among the "high" arts. The French saw samples of theatrical art in the Italian "learned theater" of the Renaissance. Since the court society was the legislator of tastes and cultural values, the court ceremonial and festivities, ballets, and ceremonial receptions also influenced the stage style. The principles of theatrical classicism were worked out on the Paris stage: in the Mare theater headed by G. Mondori (1634), in the Palais-Cardinal built by Cardinal Richelieu (1641, from 1642 the Palais-Royal), whose arrangement met the high requirements of Italian stage technology ; in the 1640s, the Burgundy Hotel became the site of theatrical classicism. Simultaneous decoration gradually, by the middle of the 17th century, was replaced by a picturesque and uniform perspective decoration (palace, temple, house, etc.); a curtain appeared, which rose and fell at the beginning and at the end of the performance. The scene was framed like a painting. The game took place only on the proscenium; the performance was centered by several figures of protagonist characters. An architectural backdrop, a single scene of action, a combination of acting and pictorial plans, a common three-dimensional mise-en-scene contributed to the creation of the illusion of plausibility. In stage classicism of the 17th century, there was the concept of the “fourth wall”. “He acts like this,” F. E. a'Aubignac wrote about the actor (“The Practice of the Theater”, 1657), “as if the audience does not exist at all: his characters act and speak as if they really are kings, and not Mondori and Belrose, as if they were in the palace of Horace in Rome, and not in the Burgundy hotel in Paris, and as if they were seen and heard only by those who are present on the stage (i.e., in the depicted place).
In the high tragedy of classicism (P. Corneille, J. Racine), the dynamics, entertainment and adventure plots of the plays by A. Hardy (the repertoire of the first permanent French troupe of V. Leconte in the 1st third of the 17th century) were replaced by static and in-depth attention to the spiritual the world of the hero, the motives of his behavior. The new dramaturgy required changes in the performing arts. The actor became the embodiment of the ethical and aesthetic ideal of the era, creating a close-up portrait of his contemporary with his acting; his costume, stylized as antiquity, corresponded to modern fashion, plastic obeyed the requirements of nobility and grace. The actor had to have the pathos of a speaker, a sense of rhythm, musicality (for the actress M. Chanmele, J. Racine inscribed notes over the lines of the role), the art of eloquent gesture, the skills of a dancer, even physical strength. The dramaturgy of classicism contributed to the emergence of a school of stage recitation, which combined the entire set of performing techniques (reading, gesture, facial expressions) and became the main expressive means of the French actor. A. Vitez called the recitation of the 17th century "prosodic architecture". The performance was built in the logical interaction of monologues. With the help of the word, the technique of excitation of emotion and its control was worked out; the success of the performance depended on the strength of the voice, its sonority, timbre, possession of colors and intonations.
"Andromache" by J. Racine in the Burgundy hotel. Engraving by F. Chauveau. 1667.
The division of theatrical genres into "high" (tragedy in the Burgundy hotel) and "low" (comedy in the "Palais Royal" of the time of Molière), the emergence of roles fixed the hierarchical structure of the theater of classicism. Remaining within the boundaries of "ennobled" nature, the performance pattern and outlines of the image were determined by the individuality of the major actors: J. Floridor's manner of recitation was more natural than that of the excessively posing Belrose; M. Chanmelet was characterized by a sonorous and melodious "recitation", and Montfleury did not know equal in the affects of passion. The concept that developed later on the canon of theatrical classicism, which consisted of standard gestures (surprise was depicted with hands raised to shoulder level and palms facing the audience; disgust - with the head turned to the right, and hands repelling the object of contempt, etc.) , refers to the era of decline and degeneration of style.
In the 18th century, despite the decisive retreat of the theater towards educational democracy, the actors of the Comedie Francaise A. Lecouvreur, M. Baron, A. L. Lequin, Dumesnil, Cleron, L. Preville developed the style of stage classicism in accordance with tastes and demands era. They departed from the classic norms of recitation, reformed the costume and made attempts to direct the play, creating an ensemble of actors. At the beginning of the 19th century, at the height of the struggle of the romantics with the tradition of the “court” theater, F.J. Talma, M.J. ”and sought-after style. The traditions of classicism continued to influence the theatrical culture of France at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and even later. The combination of styles of classicism and modernity is characteristic of the game of J. Mounet-Sully, S. Bernard, B.C. Coquelin. In the 20th century, the French director's theater became closer to the European one, the stage style lost its national specificity. Nevertheless, significant events in the French theater of the 20th century correlate with the traditions of classicism: the performances of J. Copeau, J. L. Barraud, L. Jouvet, J. Vilard, Vitez's experiments with the classics of the 17th century, productions by R. Planchon, J. Desart and etc.
Having lost the significance of the dominant style in France in the 18th century, classicism found successors in other European countries. J. W. Goethe consistently introduced the principles of classicism in the Weimar theater led by him. The actress and entrepreneur F. K. Neuber and the actor K. Eckhoff in Germany, the English actors T. Betterton, J. Quinn, J. Kemble, S. Siddons propagandized classicism, but their efforts, despite personal creative achievements, turned out to be ineffective and, ultimately were rejected. Stage classicism became the object of a pan-European controversy, and thanks to the German, and after them the Russian theorists of the theater, it received the definition of "false classical theater".
In Russia, the classic style flourished at the beginning of the 19th century in the work of A. S. Yakovlev and E. S. Semyonova, later manifested itself in the achievements of the St. Petersburg theater school in the person of V. V. Samoilov (see Samoilovs), V. A. Karatygin (see Karatygin), then Yu. M. Yuriev.
E. I. Gorfunkel.
Music. The term "classicism" in relation to music does not imply an orientation towards ancient samples (only monuments of ancient Greek musical theory were known and studied), but a series of reforms designed to put an end to the remnants of the Baroque style in musical theater. Classicist and baroque tendencies were inconsistently combined in the French musical tragedy of the 2nd half of the 17th - 1st half of the 18th century (the creative collaboration of the librettist F. Kino and composer J. B. Lully, operas and opera-ballets by J. F. Rameau) and in Italian opera seria, which occupied a leading position among the musical and dramatic genres of the 18th century (in Italy, England, Austria, Germany, Russia). The heyday of the French musical tragedy came at the beginning of the crisis of absolutism, when the ideals of heroism and citizenship of the period of the struggle for a nationwide state were replaced by the spirit of festivity and ceremonial officialdom, an attraction to luxury and refined hedonism. The sharpness of the conflict of feeling and duty typical of classicism in the context of a mythological or knightly-legendary plot of a musical tragedy decreased (especially in comparison with tragedy in a drama theater). The requirements of genre purity (the absence of comedy and everyday episodes), unity of action (often also place and time), and a “classical” 5-act composition (often with a prologue) are associated with the norms of classicism. The central position in musical drama is occupied by recitative - an element closest to rationalistic verbal-conceptual logic. In the intonational sphere, declamatory-pathetic formulas (interrogative, imperative, etc.) associated with natural human speech predominate, at the same time, rhetorical and symbolic figures characteristic of baroque opera are excluded. Extensive choral and ballet scenes with fantastic and pastoral-idyllic themes, a general orientation towards spectacle and entertainment (which eventually became dominant) were more in line with the traditions of the Baroque than with the principles of classicism.
Traditional for Italy were inherent in the genre opera seria cultivation of singing virtuosity, development of a decorative element. In line with the requirements of classicism put forward by some representatives of the Roman Academy "Arcadia", the northern Italian librettists of the early 18th century (F. Silvani, J. Frigimelica-Roberti, A. Zeno, P. Pariati, A. Salvi, A. Piovene) were expelled from serious opera comic and everyday episodes, plot motifs associated with the intervention of supernatural or fantastic forces; the circle of plots was limited to historical and historical-legendary, moral and ethical issues were brought to the fore. In the center artistic concept early opera seria - an exalted heroic image of a monarch, less often a statesman, courtier, epic hero, demonstrating the positive qualities of an ideal personality: wisdom, tolerance, generosity, devotion to duty, heroic enthusiasm. The 3-act structure, traditional for Italian opera, was preserved (5-act dramas remained experiments), but the number of actors was reduced, intonational expressive means, overture and aria forms, and the structure of vocal parts were typified in music. The type of dramaturgy, entirely subordinated to musical tasks, was developed (from the 1720s) by P. Metastasio, whose name is associated with the pinnacle stage in the history of the opera seria. In his stories, the classicist pathos is noticeably weakened. The conflict situation, as a rule, arises and deepens due to the protracted "delusion" of the main actors, and not due to a real conflict of their interests or principles. However, a special predilection for an idealized expression of feelings, for the noble impulses of the human soul, albeit far from strict rational justification, ensured the exceptional popularity of Metastasio's libretto for more than half a century.
Culmination in development musical classicism of the Enlightenment (in the 1760s and 70s) was the creative community of K. V. Gluck and librettist R. Calzabidzhi. In Gluck's operas and ballets, classicist tendencies were expressed in an emphasis on ethical issues, the development of ideas about heroism and generosity (in the musical dramas of the Parisian period, in a direct appeal to the theme of duty and feeling). The norms of classicism also corresponded to genre purity, the desire for maximum concentration of action, reduced to almost one dramatic collision, a strict selection of expressive means in accordance with the tasks of a particular dramatic situation, the utmost limitation of a decorative element, a virtuoso beginning in singing. The enlightening nature of the interpretation of the images was reflected in the interweaving of the noble qualities inherent in the classic heroes, with the naturalness and freedom of expression of feelings, reflecting the influence of sentimentalism.
In the 1780s and 1790s, revolutionary classicist tendencies, reflecting the ideals of the French Revolution of the 18th century, found expression in the French musical theater. Genetically connected with the previous stage and represented mainly by the generation of composers who followed the Gluckian opera reform (E. Megul, L. Cherubini), revolutionary classicism emphasized, first of all, the civic, tyrannical pathos that had previously been characteristic of the tragedies of P. Corneille and Voltaire. Unlike the works of the 1760s and 70s, in which the resolution tragic conflict was difficult to achieve and required the intervention of external forces (the tradition of "deus ex machina" - the Latin "god from the machine"), for the writings of the 1780-1790s, a characteristic denouement through a heroic deed (refusal of obedience, protest, often an act of retribution, the murder of a tyrant) became characteristic etc.), which created a bright and effective discharge of voltage. This type of dramaturgy formed the basis of the genre of "rescue opera", which appeared in the 1790s at the intersection of the traditions of classicist opera and realistic philistine drama.
In Russia, in the musical theater, original manifestations of classicism are rare (the opera “Cefal and Prokris” by F. Araya, the melodrama “Orpheus” by E. I. Fomin, the music by O. A. Kozlovsky for the tragedies of V. A. Ozerov, A. A. Shakhovsky and A. N. Gruzintseva).
Towards comic opera, as well as instrumental and vocal music of the 18th century, not associated with theatrical action, the term "classicism" is used largely conditionally. It is sometimes used in a broad sense to refer to the initial stage of the classical-romantic era, gallant and classical styles (see the article Vienna Classical School, Classics in Music), in particular to avoid judgment (for example, when translating the German term "Klassik" or in expression "Russian classicism" applied to all Russian music of the 2nd half of the 18th - early 19th centuries).
In the 19th century, classicism in the musical theater gave way to romanticism, although certain features of classicist aesthetics were sporadically revived (by G. Spontini, G. Berlioz, S. I. Taneyev, and others). In the 20th century, classicist artistic principles were revived again in neoclassicism.
P. V. Lutsker.
Lit.: General works. Zeitler R. Classizismus und Utopia. Stockh., 1954; Peyre H. Qu'est-ce que le classicisme? R., 1965; Bray R. La formation de la doctrine classique en France. R., 1966; Renaissance. Baroque. Classicism. The problem of styles in Western European art of the XV-XVII centuries. M., 1966; Tapie V. L. Baroque et classicisme. 2 ed. R., 1972; Benac H. Le classicisme. R., 1974; Zolotov Yu. K. Moral foundations of action in French Classicism XVII V. // Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Ser. literature and language. 1988. V. 47. No. 3; Zuber R., Cuénin M. Le classicisme. R., 1998. Literature. Vipper Yu. B. Formation of classicism in French poetry of the early 17th century. M., 1967; Oblomievsky D. D. French classicism. M., 1968; Serman I. Z. Russian classicism: Poetry. Drama. Satire. L., 1973; Morozov A. A. The fate of Russian classicism // Russian literature. 1974. No. 1; Jones T. W., Nicol B. Neo-classical dramatic criticism. 1560-1770. Camb., 1976; Moskvicheva G. V. Russian classicism. M., 1978; Literary manifestos of Western European classicists. M., 1980; Averintsev S. S. Ancient Greek Poetics and World Literature // Poetics ancient Greek literature . M., 1981; Russian and Western European classicism. Prose. M., 1982; L'Antiquité gréco-romaine vue par le siècle des lumières / Éd. R. Chevalier. Tours, 1987; Classic im Vergleich. Normativität und Historizität europäischer Klassiken. Stuttg.; Weimar, 1993; Pumpyansky L.V. On the history of Russian classicism // Pumpyansky L.V. Classical tradition. M., 2000; Genetiot A. Le classicisme. R., 2005; Smirnov A. A. Literary theory of Russian classicism. M., 2007. Architecture and fine arts. Gnedich P. P. History of Arts. M., 1907. T. 3; he is. Art history. Western European Baroque and Classicism. M., 2005; Brunov N.I. Palaces of France in the 17th and 18th centuries. M., 1938; Blunt A. Francois Mansart and the origins of French classical architecture. L., 1941; idem. Art and architecture in France. 1500 to 1700. 5th ed. New Haven, 1999; Hautecoeur L. Histoire de l'architecture classique en France. R., 1943-1957. Vol. 1-7; Kaufmann E. Architecture in the age of Reason. Camb. (Mass.), 1955; Rowland V. The classical tradition in western art. Camb. (Mass.), 1963; Kovalenskaya N. N. Russian classicism. M., 1964; Vermeule S. S. European art and the classical past. Camb. (Mass.), 1964; Rotenberg E. I. Western European art of the 17th century. M., 1971; he is. Western European painting of the 17th century. Thematic principles. M., 1989; Nikolaev E.V. Classical Moscow. M., 1975; Greenhalgh M. The classical tradition in art. L., 1978; Fleming J. R. Adam and his circle, in Edinburgh and Rome. 2nd ed. L., 1978; Yakimovich A. K. Classicism of the Poussin era. Fundamentals and principles // Soviet art history'78. M., 1979. Issue. 1; Zolotov Yu. K. Poussin and freethinkers // Ibid. M., 1979. Issue. 2; Summerson J. The classical language of architecture. L., 1980; Gnudi C. L'ideale classico: saggi sulla tradizione classica nella pittura del Cinquecento e del Seicento. Bologna, 1981; Howard S. Antiquity restored: essays on the afterlife of the antique. Vienna, 1990; The French Academy: classicism and its antagonists / Ed. J Hargrove. newark; L., 1990; Arkin D. E. Images of architecture and images of sculpture. M., 1990; Daniel S. M. European classicism. St. Petersburg, 2003; Karev A. Classicism in Russian painting. M., 2003; Bedretdinova L. Ekaterininsky classicism. M., 2008. Theatre. Celler L. Les décors, les costumes et la mise en scène au XVIIe siècle, 1615-1680. R., 1869. Gen., 1970; Mantius K. Moliere. Theater, public, actors of his time. M., 1922; Mongredien G. Les grands comediens du XVIIe siècle. R., 1927; Fuchs M. La vie théâtrale en province au XVIIe siècle. R., 1933; About the theatre. Sat. articles. L.; M., 1940; Kemodle G. R. From art to theatre. Chi., 1944; Blanchart R. Histoire de la mise en scène. R., 1948; Vilar J. On the theatrical tradition. M., 1956; History of the Western European Theatre: In 8 vols. M., 1956-1988; Velekhova N. In disputes about style. M., 1963; Boyadzhiev G. N. The Art of Classicism // Questions of Literature. 1965. No. 10; Leclerc G. Les grandes aventures du theater. R., 1968; Mints N. V. Theatrical collections of France. M., 1989; Gitelman L. I. Foreign acting art of the XIX century. St. Petersburg, 2002; History of foreign theater. SPb., 2005.
Music. Materials and documents on the history of music. 18th century / Under the editorship of M. V. Ivanov-Boretsky. M., 1934; Buken E. Music of the epoch of Rococo and Classicism. M., 1934; he is. Heroic style in opera. M., 1936; Livanova T. N. On the way from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment of the 18th century. // From the Renaissance to the XX century. M., 1963; she is. style problem in music XVII V. // Renaissance. Baroque. Classicism. M., 1966; she is. Western European music of the 17th-18th centuries. in the arts. M., 1977; Liltolf M. Zur Rolle der Antique in der musikalischen Tradition der französischen Epoque Classique // Studien zur Tradition in der Musik. Munch., 1973; Keldysh Yu. V. The problem of styles in Russian music of the 17th-18th centuries. // Keldysh Yu. V. Essays and research on the history of Russian music. M., 1978; Lutsker P.V. Style problems in musical art at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. // Epochal milestones in the history of Western art. M., 1998; Lutsker P. V., Susidko I. P. Italian opera of the 18th century. M., 1998-2004. Ch. 1-2; Kirillina L. V. Gluck's reformist operas. M., 2006.
1. Introduction.Classicism as an artistic method...................................2
2. Aesthetics of classicism.
2.1. Basic principles of classicism .................................…………….….....5
2.2. The picture of the world, the concept of personality in the art of classicism...…...5
2.3. Aesthetic nature of classicism .............................................................. ........9
2.4. Classicism in painting ....................................................... .........................15
2.5. Classicism in sculpture .............................................................. .......................16
2.6. Classicism in architecture ............................................................... .....................18
2.7. Classicism in Literature .................................................................. .......................20
2.8. Classicism in music .............................................................. ...............................22
2.9. Classicism in the theater .............................................................. ...............................22
2.10. The originality of Russian classicism .............................................................. ....22
3. Conclusion……………………………………...…………………………...26
Bibliography..............................…….………………………………….28
Applications ........................................................................................................29
1. Classicism as an artistic method
Classicism is one of the artistic methods that really existed in the history of art. Sometimes it is denoted by the terms "direction" and "style". Classicism (fr. classicisme, from lat. classicus- exemplary) - artistic style and aesthetic direction in European art of the XVII-XIX centuries.
Classicism is based on the ideas of rationalism, which were formed simultaneously with the same ideas in the philosophy of Descartes. A work of art, from the point of view of classicism, should be built on the basis of strict canons, thereby revealing the harmony and logic of the universe itself. Of interest to classicism is only the eternal, unchanging - in each phenomenon, he seeks to recognize only essential, typological features, discarding random individual features. The aesthetics of classicism attaches great importance to the social and educational function of art. Classicism takes many rules and canons from ancient art (Aristotle, Horace).
Classicism establishes a strict hierarchy of genres, which are divided into high (ode, tragedy, epic) and low (comedy, satire, fable). Each genre has strictly defined features, mixing of which is not allowed.
The concept of classicism creative method assumes by its content a historically conditioned way of aesthetic perception and modeling of reality in artistic images: the picture of the world and the concept of personality, the most common for the mass aesthetic consciousness of a given historical era, are embodied in ideas about the essence of verbal art, its relationship with reality, its own internal laws .
Classicism arises and is formed in certain historical and cultural conditions. The most common research belief connects classicism with the historical conditions of the transition from feudal fragmentation to a single national-territorial statehood, in the formation of which the absolute monarchy plays a centralizing role.
Classicism is an organic stage in the development of any national culture, despite the fact that the classic stage is different national cultures take place in different time, due to the individuality of the national version of the formation of a general social model of a centralized state.
The chronological framework for the existence of classicism in different European cultures is defined as the second half of the 17th - the first thirty years of the 18th century, despite the fact that early classicist trends are palpable at the end of the Renaissance, at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries. Within these chronological limits, French classicism is considered the standard embodiment of the method. Closely associated with the flourishing of French absolutism in the second half of the 17th century, it gave European culture not only the great writers - Corneille, Racine, Molière, Lafontaine, Voltaire, but also the great theorist of classic art - Nicolas Boileau-Depreo. Being himself a practicing writer who earned fame during his lifetime with his satires, Boileau was mainly famous for creating the aesthetic code of classicism - the didactic poem "Poetic Art" (1674), in which he gave a coherent theoretical concept of literary creativity, derived from the literary practice of his contemporaries. Thus, classicism in France became the most self-conscious embodiment of the method. Hence its reference value.
The historical prerequisites for the emergence of classicism are associated aesthetic issues method with the era of exacerbation of the relationship between the individual and society in the process of becoming an autocratic statehood, which, replacing the social permissiveness of feudalism, seeks to regulate the law and clearly distinguish between the spheres of public and private life and the relationship between the individual and the state. This defines the content aspect of art. Its main principles are motivated by the system of philosophical views of the era. They form a picture of the world and the concept of personality, and already these categories are embodied in the totality of artistic techniques of literary creativity.
The most general philosophical concepts present in all philosophical currents of the second half of the XVII - late XVI 2nd century and directly related to the aesthetics and poetics of classicism - these are the concepts of "rationalism" and "metaphysics", relevant for both idealistic and materialistic philosophical teachings of this time. The founder of the philosophical doctrine of rationalism is the French mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650). The fundamental thesis of his doctrine: "I think, therefore I exist" - was realized in many philosophical currents of that time, united by the common name "Cartesianism" (from the Latin version of the name Descartes - Cartesius). In essence, this is an idealistic thesis, since it derives the material existence from an idea. However, rationalism, as an interpretation of reason as the primary and highest spiritual ability of a person, is equally characteristic of the materialistic philosophical currents of the era - such as, for example, the metaphysical materialism of the English philosophical school of Bacon-Locke, which recognized experience as a source of knowledge, but put it below the generalizing and analytical activity of the mind, extracting from the multitude of facts obtained by experience the highest idea, a means of modeling the cosmos - the highest reality - from the chaos of individual material items.
To both varieties of rationalism - idealistic and materialistic - the concept of "metaphysics" is equally applicable. Genetically, it goes back to Aristotle, and in his philosophical doctrine it denoted a branch of knowledge that explores the inaccessible to the senses and only rationally speculatively comprehended by the highest and unchanging principles of everything that exists. Both Descartes and Bacon used the term in the Aristotelian sense. In modern times, the concept of "metaphysics" has acquired an additional meaning and has come to denote an anti-dialectical way of thinking that perceives phenomena and objects without their interconnection and development. Historically, this very accurately characterizes the peculiarities of thinking of the analytical era of the 17th-18th centuries, the period of differentiation of scientific knowledge and art, when each branch of science, standing out from the syncretic complex, acquired its own separate subject, but at the same time lost its connection with other branches of knowledge.
2. Aesthetics of classicism
2.1. Basic principles of classicism
1. The cult of reason 2. The cult of civic duty 3. Appeal to medieval subjects 4. Abstraction from the image of everyday life, from historical national identity 5. Imitation of antique samples 6. Compositional harmony, symmetry, unity of a work of art 7. Heroes are carriers of one main feature, given outside development 8. Antithesis as the main technique for creating a work of art
2.2. Worldview, personality concept
in the art of classicism
The picture of the world generated by the rationalistic type of consciousness clearly divides reality into two levels: empirical and ideological. The external, visible and tangible material-empirical world consists of many separate material objects and phenomena that are not connected with each other in any way - this is a chaos of individual private entities. However, above this chaotic multitude of individual objects, their ideal hypostasis exists - a harmonious and harmonious whole, the universal idea of the universe, which includes the ideal image of any material object in its highest, purified from particulars, eternal and unchanging form: in the way it should be according to original intention of the Creator. This general idea can only be comprehended in a rational-analytical way by gradually clearing an object or phenomenon from its specific forms and appearance and penetrating into its ideal essence and purpose.
And since the idea precedes creation, and the indispensable condition and source of existence is thinking, this ideal reality has the highest primary character. It is easy to see that the main patterns of such a two-level picture of reality are very easily projected onto the main sociological problem of the period of transition from feudal fragmentation to autocratic statehood - the problem of the relationship between the individual and the state. The world of people is the world of individual private human beings, chaotic and disorderly, the state is a comprehensive harmonious idea that creates a harmonious and harmonious ideal world order from chaos. It is this philosophical picture of the world of the XVII-XVIII centuries. determined such substantive aspects of the aesthetics of classicism as the concept of personality and the typology of conflict, universally characteristic (with the necessary historical and cultural variations) for classicism in any European literature.
In the field of human relations with the outside world, classicism sees two types of connections and positions - the same two levels that make up the philosophical picture of the world. The first level is the so-called "natural person", a biological being, standing along with all the objects of the material world. This is a private entity, possessed by selfish passions, disorderly and unrestricted in its desire to ensure its personal existence. At this level of human connections with the world, the leading category that determines the spiritual image of a person is passion - blind and unrestrained in its desire for realization in the name of achieving individual good.
The second level of the concept of personality is the so-called "social person", harmoniously included in society in his highest, ideal image, conscious that his good is an integral part of the common good. A “public person” is guided in his worldview and actions not by passions, but by reason, since it is reason that is the highest spiritual ability of a person, giving him the opportunity for positive self-determination in the conditions of a human community based on the ethical norms of consistent community life. Thus, the concept of the human personality in the ideology of classicism turns out to be complex and contradictory: a natural (passionate) and social (reasonable) person is one and the same character, torn apart by internal contradictions and in a situation of choice.
Hence - the typological conflict of the art of classicism, which directly follows from such a concept of personality. It is quite obvious that the source of the conflict situation is precisely the character of the person. Character is one of the central aesthetic categories of classicism, and its interpretation is significantly different from the meaning that modern consciousness and literary criticism puts into the term "character". In the understanding of the aesthetics of classicism, character is precisely the ideal hypostasis of a person - that is, not an individual warehouse of a particular human personality, but a certain universal view of human nature and psychology, timeless in its essence. Only in this form of an eternal, unchanging, universal human attribute could character be an object of classic art, unambiguously related to the highest, ideal level of reality.
The main components of character are passions: love, hypocrisy, courage, stinginess, a sense of duty, envy, patriotism, etc. It is by the predominance of one passion that the character is determined: “in love”, “stingy”, “envious”, “patriot”. All these definitions are precisely "characters" in the understanding of the classic aesthetic consciousness.
However, these passions are not equivalent to each other, although according to the philosophical concepts of the XVII-XVIII centuries. all passions are equal, since they are all from human nature, they are all natural, and it is not possible for any passion to decide which passion is consistent with the ethical dignity of a person and which is not. These decisions are made only by the mind. While all passions are equally categories of emotional spiritual life, some of them (such as love, avarice, envy, hypocrisy, etc.) are less and more difficult to agree with the dictates of reason and are more connected with the concept of selfish good. Others (courage, sense of duty, honor, patriotism) are more subject to rational control and do not contradict the idea of the common good, the ethics of social ties.
So it turns out that reasonable and unreasonable passions, altruistic and egoistic, personal and public passions collide in conflict. And reason is the highest spiritual ability of a person, a logical and analytical tool that allows you to control passions and distinguish good from evil, truth from falsehood. The most common type of classic conflict is conflict situation between personal inclination (love) and a sense of duty to society and the state, which for some reason excludes the possibility of the realization of love passion. It is quite obvious that by its nature this is a psychological conflict, although a necessary condition for its implementation is a situation in which the interests of an individual and society collide. These most important ideological aspects of the aesthetic thinking of the era found their expression in the system of ideas about the laws of artistic creativity.
2.3. Aesthetic nature of classicism
The aesthetic principles of classicism have undergone significant changes during its existence. A characteristic feature of this trend is the worship of antiquity. The art of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome was considered by the classicists as an ideal model of artistic creativity. Aristotle's "Poetics" and Horace's "Art of Poetry" had a great influence on the formation of the aesthetic principles of classicism. Here, there is a tendency to create sublimely heroic, ideal, rationalistically clear and plastically completed images. As a rule, in the art of classicism, modern political, moral and aesthetic ideals are embodied in characters, conflicts, situations borrowed from the arsenal of ancient history, mythology or directly from ancient art.
The aesthetics of classicism oriented poets, artists, composers to the creation of works of art that are distinguished by clarity, logic, strict balance and harmony. All this, according to the classicists, was fully reflected in ancient artistic culture. For them reason and antiquity are synonymous. The rationalistic nature of the aesthetics of classicism manifested itself in the abstract typification of images, the strict regulation of genres and forms, in the interpretation of the ancient artistic heritage, in the appeal of art to reason, and not to feelings, in an effort to subjugate creative process unshakable norms, rules and canons (norm - from lat. norma - guiding principle, rule, model; generally recognized rule, pattern of behavior or action).
How in Italy the most typical expression was found aesthetic principles Renaissance, so in France of the XVII century. - aesthetic principles of classicism. By the 17th century the artistic culture of Italy has largely lost its former influence. But the innovative spirit of French art was clearly indicated. At this time, an absolutist state was formed in France, which united society and centralized power.
The strengthening of absolutism meant the victory of the principle of universal regulation in all spheres of life, from the economy to the spiritual life. Debt is the main regulator of human behavior. The state embodies this duty and acts as a kind of entity alienated from the individual. Submission to the state, fulfillment of public duty is the highest virtue of the individual. A person is no longer thought of as free, as was typical of the Renaissance worldview, but as subordinate to norms and rules alien to him, limited by forces beyond his control. The regulating and limiting force appears in the form of an impersonal mind, to which the individual must obey and act, following his commands and prescriptions.
The high rise in production contributed to the development of the exact sciences: mathematics, astronomy, physics, and this, in turn, led to the victory of rationalism (from Latin ratio - mind) - a philosophical direction that recognizes the mind as the basis of human knowledge and behavior.
Ideas about the laws of creativity and the structure of a work of art are due to the same epoch-making type of worldview as the picture of the world and the concept of personality. Reason, as the highest spiritual ability of man, is thought not only as an instrument of knowledge, but also as an organ of creativity and a source of aesthetic pleasure. One of the most striking leitmotifs of Boileau's Poetic Art is the rational nature of aesthetic activity:
French classicism affirmed the personality of a person as the highest value of being, freeing him from religious and church influence.
Interest in the art of ancient Greece and Rome emerged as early as the Renaissance, which, after centuries of the Middle Ages, turned to the forms, motifs and plots of antiquity. The greatest theorist of the Renaissance, Leon Batista Alberti, back in the 15th century. expressed ideas that foreshadowed certain principles of classicism and were fully manifested in Raphael's fresco "The School of Athens" (1511).
The systematization and consolidation of the achievements of the great Renaissance artists, especially the Florentine ones led by Raphael and his student Giulio Romano, made up the program of the Bologna school of the late 16th century, the most characteristic representatives of which were the Carracci brothers. In their influential Academy of Arts, the Bolognese preached that the path to the heights of art lay through a scrupulous study of the heritage of Raphael and Michelangelo, imitation of their mastery of line and composition.
Following Aristotle, classicism considered art to be an imitation of nature:
However, nature was by no means understood as a visual picture of the physical and moral world, which appears to the senses, but precisely as the highest intelligible essence of the world and man: not a specific character, but its idea, not a real-historical or modern plot, but a universal human conflict situation, not given landscape, but the idea of a harmonious combination of natural realities in an ideally beautiful unity. Classicism found such an ideally beautiful unity in ancient literature - it was it that was perceived by classicism as the already reached pinnacle of aesthetic activity, the eternal and unchanging standard of art, which recreated in its genre models that very highest ideal nature, physical and moral, which art should imitate. It so happened that the thesis about imitation of nature turned into a prescription to imitate ancient art, from where the term “classicism” itself came from (from Latin classicus - exemplary, studied in class):
Thus, nature in classic art appears not so much reproduced as modeled after a high model - "decorated" by the generalizing analytical activity of the mind. By analogy, one can recall the so-called “regular” (i.e., “correct”) park, where the trees are trimmed in the form of geometric shapes and symmetrically seated, paths that have the correct shape are sprinkled with multi-colored pebbles, and water is enclosed in marble pools and fountains. This style of landscape gardening art reached its peak precisely in the era of classicism. The absolute predominance of poetry over prose in classicism literature follows from the desire to present nature “decorated”: if prose is identical with simple material nature, then poetry, as a literary form, is certainly an ideal “decorated” nature.
In all these ideas about art, namely, as a rational, ordered, normalized, spiritual activity, the hierarchical principle of thinking of the 17th-18th centuries was realized. Within itself, literature was also divided into two hierarchical rows, low and high, each of which was thematically and stylistically associated with one - material or ideal - level of reality. Satire, comedy, fable were classified as low genres; to high - ode, tragedy, epic. In the low genres, everyday material reality is depicted, and a private person appears in social connections (at the same time, of course, both a person and reality are still the same ideal conceptual categories). In high genres, a person is presented as a spiritual and social being, in the existential aspect of his existence, alone and along with the eternal foundations of the questions of being. Therefore, for high and low genres, not only thematic, but also class differentiation on the basis of the character's belonging to one or another social stratum turned out to be relevant. The hero of low genres is a middle-class person; high hero - a historical person, a mythological hero or a fictional high-ranking character - as a rule, a ruler.
In low genres, human characters are formed by base everyday passions (stinginess, hypocrisy, hypocrisy, envy, etc.); in high genres, passions acquire a spiritual character (love, ambition, revenge, sense of duty, patriotism, etc.). And if everyday passions are unambiguously unreasonable and vicious, then existential passions are divided into reasonable - public and unreasonable - personal, and the ethical status of the hero depends on his choice. It is unambiguously positive if it prefers a rational passion, and unambiguously negative if it chooses an unreasonable one. Classicism did not allow semitones in ethical assessment - and this was also affected by the rationalistic nature of the method, which excluded any mixture of high and low, tragic and comic.
Since in the genre theory of classicism those genres that reached the greatest flourishing in ancient literature were legitimized as the main ones, and literary creativity was conceived as a reasonable imitation of high standards, the aesthetic code of classicism acquired a normative character. This means that the model of each genre was established once and for all in a clear set of rules, from which it was unacceptable to deviate, and each specific text was aesthetically evaluated according to the degree of compliance with this ideal genre model.
Ancient examples became the source of the rules: the epic of Homer and Virgil, the tragedy of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Seneca, the comedy of Aristophanes, Menander, Terence and Plautus, the ode of Pindar, the fable of Aesop and Phaedrus, the satire of Horace and Juvenal. The most typical and illustrative case of such genre regulation is, of course, the rules for the leading classic genre, tragedies, drawn both from the texts of ancient tragedians and from Aristotle's Poetics.
For the tragedy, a poetic form (“Alexandrian verse” - a six-foot iambic with a pair of rhymes), an obligatory five-act construction, three unities - times, places and actions, high style, a historical or mythological plot and a conflict, suggesting a mandatory situation of choosing between reasonable and unreasonable passion, and the very process of choice was supposed to constitute the action of the tragedy. It was in the dramatic section of the aesthetics of classicism that rationalism, hierarchy and normativity of the method were expressed with the greatest completeness and obviousness:
Everything that has been said above about the aesthetics of classicism and the poetics of classic literature in France applies equally to almost any European variety of the method, since French classicism was historically the earliest and aesthetically the most authoritative incarnation of the method. But for Russian classicism, these general theoretical provisions found a kind of refraction in artistic practice, as they were due to the historical and national features of the formation of a new Russian culture of the 18th century.
2.4. Classicism in painting
At the beginning of the 17th century, young foreigners flocked to Rome to get acquainted with the heritage of antiquity and the Renaissance. The most prominent place among them was taken by the Frenchman Nicolas Poussin, in his paintings, mainly on the themes of ancient antiquity and mythology, who gave unsurpassed examples of geometrically accurate composition and thoughtful correlation of color groups. Another Frenchman, Claude Lorrain, in his antiquity landscapes of the environs of the "eternal city" streamlined the pictures of nature by harmonizing them with the light of the setting sun and introducing peculiar architectural scenes.
Poussin's coldly rational normativism evoked the approval of the court of Versailles and was continued by court painters like Lebrun, who saw in classic painting an ideal artistic language for praising the absolutist state of the "sun king". Although private customers preferred various options Baroque and Rococo, the French monarchy kept Classicism afloat by funding academic institutions such as the School of Fine Arts. The Rome Prize provided the most talented students with the opportunity to visit Rome for a direct acquaintance with the great works of antiquity.
The discovery of “genuine” ancient painting during the excavations of Pompeii, the deification of antiquity by the German art historian Winckelmann, and the cult of Raphael, preached by the artist Mengs, who was close to him in terms of views, breathed new breath into classicism in the second half of the 18th century (in Western literature this stage is called neoclassicism). The largest representative of the "new classicism" was Jacques-Louis David; his extremely laconic and dramatic artistic language served with equal success to promote the ideals of the French Revolution ("Death of Marat") and the First Empire ("Dedication of Emperor Napoleon I").
In the 19th century, classicism painting enters a period of crisis and becomes a force restraining art development not only in France, but also in other countries. Artistic line David was successfully continued by Ingres, while maintaining the language of classicism in his works, he often turned to romantic subjects with an oriental flavor (“Turkish baths”); his portrait work is marked by a subtle idealization of the model. Artists in other countries (as, for example, Karl Bryullov) also imbued classically shaped works with the spirit of romanticism; this combination is called academism. Numerous art academies served as its breeding grounds. IN mid-nineteenth century, against the conservatism of the academic establishment, the young generation gravitating towards realism rebelled, represented in France by the Courbet circle, and in Russia by the Wanderers.
2.5. Classicism in sculpture
The impetus for the development of classical sculpture in the middle of the 18th century was the works of Winckelmann and archaeological excavations of ancient cities, which expanded the knowledge of contemporaries about ancient sculpture. On the verge of baroque and classicism, such sculptors as Pigalle and Houdon fluctuated in France. Classicism reached its highest embodiment in the field of plastic art in the heroic and idyllic works of Antonio Canova, who drew inspiration mainly from the statues of the Hellenistic era (Praxiteles). In Russia, Fedot Shubin, Mikhail Kozlovsky, Boris Orlovsky, Ivan Martos gravitated towards the aesthetics of classicism.
Public monuments, which became widespread in the era of classicism, gave sculptors the opportunity to idealize the military prowess and wisdom of statesmen. Loyalty to the ancient model required the sculptors to depict models naked, which was in conflict with accepted moral standards. To resolve this contradiction, the figures of modernity were at first depicted by sculptors of classicism in the form of naked ancient gods: Suvorov - in the form of Mars, and Polina Borghese - in the form of Venus. Under Napoleon, the issue was resolved by moving to the image of contemporary figures in antique togas (such are the figures of Kutuzov and Barclay de Tolly in front of the Kazan Cathedral).
Private customers of the era of classicism preferred to perpetuate their names in tombstones. The popularity of this sculptural form was facilitated by the arrangement of public cemeteries in the main cities of Europe. In accordance with the classical ideal of the figure on tombstones, as a rule, are in a state of deep dormancy. Sculpture of classicism is generally alien to sharp movements, external manifestations of such emotions as anger.
Late, Empire classicism, represented primarily by the prolific Danish sculptor Thorvaldsen, is imbued with a rather dry pathos. The purity of lines, the restraint of gestures, the impassivity of expressions are especially valued. In the choice of role models, the emphasis shifts from Hellenism to the archaic period. Religious images are coming into fashion, which, in the interpretation of Thorvaldsen, make a somewhat chilling impression on the viewer. The tomb sculpture of late classicism often bears a slight touch of sentimentality.
2.6. Classicism in architecture
The main feature of the architecture of classicism was the appeal to the forms of ancient architecture as the standard of harmony, simplicity, rigor, logical clarity and monumentality. The architecture of classicism as a whole is characterized by the regularity of planning and the clarity of volumetric form. The basis of the architectural language of classicism was the order, in proportions and forms close to antiquity. Classicism is characterized by symmetrical axial compositions, restraint of decorative decoration, and a regular system of city planning.
The architectural language of classicism was formulated at the end of the Renaissance by the great Venetian master Palladio and his follower Scamozzi. The Venetians absolutized the principles of ancient temple architecture so much that they applied them even in the construction of such private mansions as Villa Capra. Inigo Jones brought Palladianism north to England, where local Palladian architects followed Palladio's precepts with varying degrees of fidelity until the middle of the 18th century.
By that time, the surfeit of the "whipped cream" of the late Baroque and Rococo began to accumulate among the intellectuals of continental Europe. Born by the Roman architects Bernini and Borromini, the baroque thinned into rococo, a predominantly chamber style with an emphasis on interior decoration and arts and crafts. For solving major urban problems, this aesthetics was of little use. Already under Louis XV (1715-74) urban planning ensembles in the “ancient Roman” style were being built in Paris, such as Place de la Concorde (architect Jacques-Ange Gabriel) and the Church of Saint-Sulpice, and under Louis XVI (1774-92) a similar “noble laconicism" is already becoming the main architectural trend.
The most significant interiors in the style of classicism were designed by the Scot Robert Adam, who returned to his homeland from Rome in 1758. He was greatly impressed by both the archaeological research of Italian scientists and the architectural fantasies of Piranesi. In the interpretation of Adam, classicism was a style that was hardly inferior to rococo in terms of sophistication of interiors, which gained him popularity not only among democratic-minded circles of society, but also among the aristocracy. Like his French colleagues, Adam preached a complete rejection of details devoid of a constructive function.
The Frenchman Jacques-Germain Soufflot, during the construction of the Saint-Genevieve church in Paris, demonstrated the ability of classicism to organize vast urban spaces. The massive grandeur of his designs foreshadowed the megalomania of Napoleonic Empire and late Classicism. In Russia, Bazhenov was moving in the same direction as Soufflet. The Frenchmen Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and Etienne-Louis Boulet went even further towards the development of a radical visionary style with an emphasis on the abstract geometrization of forms. In revolutionary France, the ascetic civic pathos of their projects was of little use; Ledoux's innovation was fully appreciated only by modernists of the 20th century.
The architects of Napoleonic France drew inspiration from majestic images military glory left behind by imperial Rome, such as the triumphal arch of Septimius Severus and Trajan's column. By order of Napoleon, these images were transferred to Paris in the form of the triumphal arch of Carruzel and the Vendôme column. In relation to the monuments of military greatness of the era of the Napoleonic wars, the term "imperial style" - Empire style is used. In Russia, Karl Rossi, Andrey Voronikhin and Andrey Zakharov showed themselves to be outstanding masters of the Empire style. In Britain, the Empire corresponds to the so-called. "Regency style" (the largest representative is John Nash).
The aesthetics of classicism favored large-scale urban development projects and led to the ordering of urban development on the scale of entire cities. In Russia, almost all provincial and many county towns were replanned in accordance with the principles of classic rationalism. Such cities as St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Warsaw, Dublin, Edinburgh and a number of others have turned into genuine open-air museums of classicism. Throughout the space from Minusinsk to Philadelphia, a single architectural language, dating back to Palladio, dominated. Ordinary building was carried out in accordance with the albums of standard projects.
In the period following the Napoleonic Wars, classicism had to get along with romantically colored eclecticism, in particular with the return of interest in the Middle Ages and the fashion for architectural neo-Gothic. In connection with the discoveries of Champollion, Egyptian motifs are gaining popularity. Interest in ancient Roman architecture is replaced by reverence for everything ancient Greek (“Neo-Greek”), which was especially pronounced in Germany and the United States. German architects Leo von Klenze and Karl Friedrich Schinkel are building up, respectively, Munich and Berlin with grandiose museums and other public buildings in the spirit of the Parthenon. In France, the purity of classicism is diluted with free borrowings from the architectural repertoire of the Renaissance and Baroque (see Beaus-Arts).
2.7. Classicism in literature
The French poet Francois Malherbe (1555-1628), who reformed the French language and verse and developed poetic canons, is considered the founder of the poetics of classicism. The leading representatives of classicism in dramaturgy were the tragedians Corneille and Racine (1639-1699), whose main subject of creativity was the conflict between public duty and personal passions. "Low" genres also reached high development - fable (J. La Fontaine), satire (Boileau), comedy (Molière 1622-1673).
Boileau became famous throughout Europe as the "legislator of Parnassus", the largest theoretician of classicism, who expressed his views in the poetic treatise "Poetic Art". Under his influence in Great Britain were the poets John Dryden and Alexander Pope, who made the alexandrine the main form of English poetry. The English prose of the era of classicism (Addison, Swift) is also characterized by Latinized syntax.
Classicism of the 18th century developed under the influence of the ideas of the Enlightenment. The work of Voltaire (1694-1778) is directed against religious fanaticism, absolutist oppression, filled with the pathos of freedom. The goal of creativity is to change the world for the better, to build society itself in accordance with the laws of classicism. From the positions of classicism, the Englishman Samuel Johnson surveyed contemporary literature, around whom a brilliant circle of like-minded people formed, including the essayist Boswell, the historian Gibbon and the actor Garrick. Three unities are characteristic of dramatic works: the unity of time (the action takes place one day), the unity of place (in one place) and the unity of action (one storyline).
In Russia, classicism originated in the 18th century, after the transformations of Peter I. Lomonosov carried out a reform Russian verse, the theory of "three calms" was developed, which was essentially an adaptation of the French classical rules to the Russian language. The images in classicism are devoid of individual features, as they are intended primarily to capture stable generic features that do not pass over time, acting as the embodiment of any social or spiritual forces.
Classicism in Russia developed under the great influence of the Enlightenment - the ideas of equality and justice have always been the focus of attention of Russian classic writers. Therefore, in Russian classicism, genres that imply a mandatory authorial assessment of historical reality have received great development: comedy (D. I. Fonvizin), satire (A. D. Kantemir), fable (A. P. Sumarokov, I. I. Khemnitser), ode (Lomonosov, G. R. Derzhavin).
In connection with the call proclaimed by Rousseau to closeness to nature and naturalness, crisis phenomena are growing in the classicism of the late 18th century; the cult of tender feelings - sentimentalism - comes to replace the absolutization of reason. The transition from classicism to pre-romanticism was most clearly reflected in the German literature of the Sturm und Drang era, represented by the names of J. W. Goethe (1749-1832) and F. Schiller (1759-1805), who, following Rousseau, saw in art the main force of education person.
2.8. Classicism in music
The concept of classicism in music is steadily associated with the work of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, called Viennese classics and determined the direction of further development of musical composition.
The concept of "music of classicism" should not be confused with the concept of "classical music", which has a more general meaning as the music of the past that has stood the test of time.
The music of the era of Classicism sings of the actions and deeds of a person, the emotions and feelings experienced by him, the attentive and holistic human mind.
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The theatrical art of classicism is characterized by a solemn, static structure of performances, measured reading of poetry. The 18th century is often referred to as the "golden age" of the theatre. The founder of European classical comedy is the French comedian, actor and theatrical figure, the stage art reformer Molière (nast, name Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) (1622-1673). For a long time Molière traveled with a theater troupe around the provinces, where he got acquainted with the stage technique and the tastes of the public. In 1658 he received permission from the king to play with his troupe at the court theater in Paris. Based on the traditions of the folk theater and the achievements of classicism, he created the genre of social comedy, in which buffoonery and plebeian humor were combined with grace and artistry. Overcoming the schematism of Italian comedies del arte (Italian commedia dell "arte - a comedy of masks; the main masks are Harlequin, Pulcinella, the old merchant Pantalone, etc.), Molière created life-like images. He ridiculed the class prejudices of aristocrats, the limitations of the bourgeois, the hypocrisy of the nobles ( "The tradesman in the nobility", 1670). With particular intransigence, Moliere exposed hypocrisy, hiding behind piety and ostentatious virtue: "Tartuffe, or the Deceiver" (1664), "Don Juan" (1665), "The Misanthrope" (1666). The artistic heritage of Molière had a profound influence on the development of world drama and theater. The most mature embodiment of the comedy of manners is recognized as " barber of seville"(1775) and" The Marriage of Figaro "(1784) by the great French playwright Pierre Augustin Beaumarchais (1732-1799). They depict the conflict between the third estate and the nobility. Operas by V.A. Mozart (1786) and G. Rossini (1816). |
2.10. The originality of Russian classicism
Russian classicism arose in similar historical conditions - its prerequisite was the strengthening of autocratic statehood and national self-determination of Russia since the era of Peter I. The Europeanism of the ideology of Peter the Great's reforms aimed Russian culture at mastering the achievements of European cultures. But at the same time, Russian classicism arose almost a century later than French: by the middle of the 18th century, when Russian classicism was just beginning to gain strength, in France it had reached the second stage of its existence. The so-called "enlightenment classicism" - the combination of classic creative principles with the pre-revolutionary ideology of the Enlightenment - flourished in French literature in the work of Voltaire and acquired an anticlerical, socially critical pathos: a few decades before the French Revolution, the times of apologia for absolutism were already a distant history. Russian classicism, by virtue of its strong connection with the secular cultural reform, firstly, initially set itself educational tasks, striving to educate its readers and set the monarchs on the path of public good, and secondly, acquired the status of a leading trend in Russian literature towards the time when Peter I was no longer alive, and the fate of his cultural reforms was put in jeopardy in the second half of the 1720s - 1730s.
Therefore, Russian classicism begins “not with the fruit of spring - an ode, but with the fruit of autumn - satire”, and socially critical pathos is inherent in it from the very beginning.
Russian classicism also reflected a completely different type of conflict than Western European classicism. If in French classicism the socio-political principle is only the ground on which the psychological conflict of rational and unreasonable passions develops and the process of free and conscious choice between their dictates is carried out, then in Russia, with its traditionally anti-democratic catholicity and the absolute power of society over the individual, the situation was completely otherwise. For Russian mentality, who had just begun to comprehend the ideology of personalism, the need to humble the individual before society, the individual before the authorities was not at all such a tragedy as for the Western worldview. The choice, relevant for the European consciousness as an opportunity to prefer one thing, in Russian conditions turned out to be imaginary, its outcome was predetermined in favor of society. Therefore, the very situation of choice in Russian classicism lost its conflict-forming function, and was replaced by another.
The central problem of Russian life in the XVIII century. there was a problem of power and its succession: not a single Russian emperor after the death of Peter I and before the accession of Paul I in 1796 came to power legally. 18th century - this is the age of intrigues and palace coups, which too often led to the absolute and uncontrolled power of people who by no means corresponded not only to the ideal of an enlightened monarch, but also to ideas about the role of the monarch in the state. Therefore, Russian classic literature immediately took a political and didactic direction and reflected precisely this problem as the main tragic dilemma of the era - the inconsistency of the ruler with the duties of the autocrat, the conflict of experiencing power as an egoistic personal passion with the idea of power exercised for the benefit of subjects.
Thus, the Russian classicist conflict, having preserved the situation of choosing between rational and unreasonable passion as an external plot pattern, was fully realized as a socio-political one in nature. The positive hero of Russian classicism does not humble his individual passion in the name of the common good, but insists on his natural rights, defending his personalism from tyrannical encroachments. And the most important thing is that this national specificity of the method was well understood by the writers themselves: if the plots of the French classicist tragedies were drawn mainly from ancient mythology and history, then Sumarokov wrote his tragedies on the plots of Russian chronicles and even on plots of not so distant Russian history.
Finally, another specific feature of Russian classicism was that it did not rely on such a rich and continuous tradition of national literature as any other national European variety of method. What any European literature had at the time of the emergence of the theory of classicism - namely, a literary language with an ordered style system, the principles of versification, a well-defined system of literary genres - all this had to be created in Russian. Therefore, in Russian classicism, literary theory was ahead of literary practice. Normative acts of Russian classicism - versification reform, style reform and regulation genre system- were carried out between the middle of 1730 and the end of the 1740s. - that is, basically before a full-fledged literary process unfolded in Russia in line with classic aesthetics.
3. Conclusion
For the ideological premises of classicism, it is essential that the desire of the individual for freedom is assumed here to be just as legitimate as the need of society to bind this freedom with laws.
The personal principle continues to retain that immediate social significance, that independent value, with which the Renaissance first endowed it. However, in contrast to him, now this beginning belongs to the individual, along with the role that society now receives as a social organization. And this implies that any attempt by an individual to defend his freedom in spite of society threatens him with the loss of completeness. life connections and the transformation of freedom into an unsupported devastated subjectivity.
The category of measure is a fundamental category in the poetics of classicism. It is unusually multifaceted in content, has both a spiritual and plastic nature, touches, but does not coincide with another typical concept of classicism - the concept of the norm - and is closely connected with all aspects of the ideal affirmed here.
The classic mind, as a source and guarantor of balance in nature and people's lives, bears the stamp of poetic faith in the original harmony of everything that exists, confidence in the natural course of things, confidence in the presence of an all-encompassing correspondence between the movement of the world and the formation of society, in the humanistic, human-oriented nature of this connections.
I am close to the period of classicism, its principles, poetry, art, creativity in general. The conclusions that classicism makes about people, society, the world seem to me the only true and rational. Measure, as the middle line between opposites, the order of things, systems, and not chaos; a strong relationship of a person with society against their rupture and enmity, excessive genius and selfishness; harmony against extremes - in this I see the ideal principles of being, the foundations of which are reflected in the canons of classicism.
List of sources
The term "classical" in music is mainly used to define serious, artistic music, ie. music that is not folk, popular, jazz, rock, etc. But there is also a "classical" period in the history of music called classicism.
THE AGE OF CLASSICISM - Classicism, which replaced the Renaissance in several stages, developed in France at the end of the 17th century, reflecting in its art partly a serious rise in absolute monarchy, partly a change in worldview from religious to secular. In the 18th century, a new round of development of social consciousness began - the Age of Enlightenment began. The pomp and pomp of baroque, the immediate predecessor of classicism, was replaced by a style based on simplicity and naturalness. The basis of the art of classicism is the cult of reason - rationalism, harmony and logic. The name "classicism" by origin is associated with the word from the Latin language - classicus, which means - "exemplary". The ideal model for artists of this trend was ancient aesthetics with its harmonious logic and harmony. In classicism, reason prevails over feelings, individualism is not welcome, and in any phenomenon, general, typological features are of paramount importance. Each work of art must be built according to strict canons. The requirement of the era of classicism is the balance of proportions, excluding everything superfluous, secondary. Classicism is characterized by a strict division into "high" and "low" genres. "High" works are works that refer to ancient and religious subjects, written in a solemn language (tragedy, hymn, ode). And the “low” genres are those works that are presented in a colloquial language and reflect the life of the people (fable, comedy). Mixing genres was unacceptable.
CLASSICISM IN MUSIC - VIENNA CLASSICS
The development of a new musical culture in the middle of the 18th century gave rise to the emergence of many private salons, musical societies and orchestras, holding open concerts and opera performances. The capital of the musical world in those days was Vienna. The most prominent composers of classicism were the great Austrians - Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Haydn created fantastic choral, operatic, orchestral and instrumental music, but his greatest achievement is his symphonies, of which he wrote over a hundred.
Mozart is the greatest composer of all time. Having lived a short life, he left an incredible musical legacy (for example, 41 symphonies). Operas are considered his greatest achievement, in which he showed himself and how great musician And How talented playwright, some of his finest operas are Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute.
At the end of the eighteenth century, another star of classical music rises - Ludwig van Beethoven, a composer who began to compose music in the classical style inherited from Mozart and Haydn, but eventually outgrew this and literally split the classical style, marking the dawn of a new era known as Romantic period in music.
Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven are three great names that went down in history as Viennese classics. The composers of the Viennese school masterfully mastered a wide variety of genres of music - from everyday songs to symphonies. The high style of music, in which rich figurative content is embodied in a simple but perfect artistic form, is the main feature of the work of the Viennese classics. The musical culture of classicism, like literature, as well as fine arts, glorifies the actions of a person, his emotions and feelings, over which the mind reigns. Artists-creators in their works are characterized by logical thinking, harmony and clarity of form. Each of the Viennese classics had a bright, unique personality. Haydn and Beethoven gravitated towards instrumental music - sonatas, concertos and symphonies. Mozart was universal in everything - he easily created in any genre. He had a great influence on the development of opera, creating and improving its various types - from opera buff to musical drama. In terms of composers' preferences for certain figurative spheres, Haydn is more characteristic of objective folk-genre sketches, pastoral, gallantry, Beethoven is close to heroism and drama, as well as philosophy, and, of course, nature, to a small extent, and refined lyrics. Mozart covered, perhaps, all existing figurative spheres.
Haydn. Symphony No. 45.
GENRES OF MUSICAL CLASSICISM
The musical culture of classicism is associated with the creation of many genres of instrumental music - such as sonata, symphony, concerto. In the era of classicism, the main types of chamber ensembles were formed - the trio, the string quartet. The system of forms developed by the Viennese school is still relevant today. The sonata genre existed as early as the beginning of the 17th century, but the sonata form was finally formed in the works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
Mozart. Piano concert №13.
Beethoven. Sonata No. 5 for violin and piano op.24
The classical era was a time when composers introduced a sense of elegance into music. This clear and pure music, bringing peace and relaxation, is actually much deeper and one can detect a dramatic core and touching feelings in it.
Text from various sources.
