In general, these composers strove for an immediacy between the creative impulse and the musical result (in contrast to the elaborate precompositional planning characteristic of the avant garde), with the intention also of communicating more readily with audiences.
In some cases this meant a return to the tonal language of the 19th century as well as to the traditional forms (symphony, sonata) and instrumental combinations (string quartet, piano trio) which had been avoided for the most part by the avant garde.
At least three writers have gone so far as to argue that one of the Darmstadt avant-garde composers against whom the New Simplicity was ostensibly rebelling, Karlheinz Stockhausen, had anticipated their position through a radical simplification of his style accomplished between 1966 and 1975, which culminated in his Tierkreis melodies.
These are particularly associated with the Cologne School and include such figures as Walter Zimmermann,[6] Johannes Fritsch,[citation needed] Ladislav Kupkovič, Péter Eötvös, Bojidar Dino, Daniel Chorzempa, John McGuire, Mesías Maiguashca, and Clarence Barlow,[7] as well as others from different countries such as Christopher Fox, Gerald Barry, Gavin Bryars, and Kevin Volans.
In Denmark some fifteen years earlier than the German movement, a less widely known group also called "The New Simplicity" (Den Ny Enkelhed) arose, including composers Hans Abrahamsen, Henning Christiansen, and Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen.