This book proposes a new theory about the neo-classical style in music. The Danish emeritus professor Finn Egeland Hansen has chosen three different composers - the French Camille Saint-Saens and Charles Gounod and the Danish Niels W. Gade - to discuss his thesis that the classical-romantic main current in classical music in fact represents two sub-currents. One sub-current focusing on the romantic aspects, the other focusing on the classical aspects of its musical style.
In close readings of the works by these three composers, Finn Egeland Hansen demonstrates how in different aspects they were harbingers of the neo-classical style - a style that is usually exemplified through later composers like Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith and the members of the French group Les Six. Finn Egeland Hansen labels these harbingers' style as retro-classicism.
Finn Egeland Hansen's dissertation was about The Grammar of Gregorian Tonality (1979), and his most recent book is Layers of Musical Meaning (2006). Since 1990 he has been Chairman of the Foundation for the Publication of the Works of Niels W. Gade.
