Neoclassical is a term used across the arts to describe works that hark back to the proportions and gestures of an earlier ‘classic’ period, but in music defining a style that achieved enormous influence between the two world wars and persists in some composers’ language today – though ‘neo-baroque’ might be a more accurate description. Composers like Stravinsky and Hindemith felt compelled to recycle the forms and key schemes of the 17th and 18th cents, sensing that modernism had pushed the boundaries of harmony and tonality as far as they could go — Andrew Clements