| Impressionist music | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | Reaction to 19th century Romanticism |
| Cultural origins | Late 19th century in Paris, France |
| Typical instruments | Woodwind, strings, harp, piano, small chamber ensembles |
| Mainstream popularity | ca. 1875 to 1925 |
Impressionism in music was a tendency in European classical music, mainly in France, which appeared in the late nineteenth century and continued into the middle of the twentieth century. Similarly to its precursor in the visual arts, musical impressionism focuses on a suggestion and an atmosphere rather than on a strong emotion or the depiction of a story as in program music. Musical impressionism occurred as a reaction to the excesses of the Romantic era. While this era was characterized by a dramatic use of the major and minor scale systems, impressionist music was tending to make more use of dissonance. Rather uncommon scales such as whole tone scale are also typical for this movement. Romantic composers were using long forms of music, e.g. symphony and concerto, while impressionist composers were favoring short forms such as nocturne, arabesque and prelude.
Musical impressionism was based in France by the French composer Claude Debussy. He and Maurice Ravel were generally considered to be the two "great" impressionists. However, these days composers are generally not as accurately described by the term "Impressionism" as painters in the genre were. Debussy renounced it, saying: "I am trying to do 'something different' – in a way realities – what the imbeciles call 'impressionism' is a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by art critics."[1]
Musical impressionism is closely related to the superior value of impressionist painting: placing the colour factor to the foreground strongly influenced the shaping of new sound effects. These effects include long, atypical chords, the fast movement of sounds in the piano dynamic, the exploration of interesting timbres of an instrument and specific articulation. On the scope of the form of pieces of music impressionist composers enriched the way of creating musical works. In the majority of cases the form was a one-time idea for putting in the kind of order 'the fantasy of sound'. Glimmering sound has become the main feature of impressionist music. It is conventionally called 'a timbre spot'. This phenomenon is connected with harmonic experiments and with the new meaning of piece's melodics. Precedence of timbre creates the melody from the mixture of accords' timbre and figurations rather than from the clear outline of the theme. It comes that sometimes the melody disappears and only few bizarre accords reads. Impressionist harmonic is also about utilising pentatonic scale, whole-tone scale and modal modes. Instrumentation. In a comparison with orchestral neoromantic pieces the texture of impressionist ones is much clearer as the composers has abandoned the monumental, rebooted cast of instruments. Even in pieces written for a vast orchestral cast the full tutti does not seem at all like the massive timbre. The new type of orchestration was concentrated on revealing the individual, unusual features of each of the instruments and using rarely applied registers. Dynamics. Sensitization for the quality of the sounds influenced exposing the subtle dynamic effects – e.g. the variety hues of piano (p, pp, ppp, pppp) which were often complemented by additional written notes. Debussy has implemented the French definitions that suggest sensual experiences, such as 'similarly to the flute', 'from the distance', 'like a rainbow fog' and many others. Titles referring to the poetic pieces help listeners to trigger of a wide range of emotions connected with the music. The most popular subjects for titles are e.g.: the rain, the play of the sea waves, unimaginative moon landscapes and other natural phenomena. Impressionism is usually connected with the term sensualism.
Maurice Ravel composed many other pieces that aren't identified as impressionist. Nonetheless, the term is widely used today to describe the music seen as a reaction to 19th century Romanticism.
Many musical instructions in impressionist pieces are written in French, as opposed to Italian.
Impressionism also gained a foothold in England, where its traits were assimilated by composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax, and Frederick Delius. Vaughan Williams in particular exhibited music infused with impressionistic gestures--this was not coincidence, as he was a student of Maurice Ravel. Vaughan Williams' music utilizes melodies and harmonies found in English folk music, such as the pentatonic scale and modes, making it perfectly suited to the polarity-breaking ideals of the impressionist movement, which began moving away from the Major-minor based tonality of the Romantic composers.
Besides the two great impressionist composers, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, other composers who composed in what has been described as impressionist style include André Caplet, Frederick Delius, Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, Erik Satie, Albert Roussel, Alexander Scriabin, Lili Boulanger, Federico Mompou, Charles Tomlinson Griffes and Karol Szymanowski.
Ernest Fanelli was claimed to have innovated the style, though his works were unperformed before 1912.[2] Some important precursors of musical impressionism include works by Chopin, Liszt, Mussorgsky, Chabrier, and Grieg.
The French composer Maurice Duruflé is sometimes said to be "the Ravel of the organ" and is clearly inspired by both Ravel and Debussy in several of his compositions, most notably perhaps the Sicilliene of the Suite pour orgue, op. 5. A Duruflé biography edited by Ronald Ebrecht is even titled "The last Impressionist".
Impressionism has also influenced at least some of the music of Manuel de Falla, Paul Dukas, Jean Sibelius, George Butterworth, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, John Ireland, Cyril Scott, Zoltán Kodály, Ottorino Respighi, Jacques Ibert, Bohuslav Martinu, Olivier Messiaen, Alan Hovhaness, Ned Rorem, Gyorgy Ligeti, Selim Palmgren, and Toru Takemitsu, among others,[3] as well as jazz musicians such as Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, Claude Thornhill, Bud Powell, Dave Brubeck, Gil Evans, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Frank Kimbrough, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Shirley Horn and Esperanza Spalding, progressive rock musicians such as King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, and Yes, the entire genre of post-rock, and electronic artists like Tangerine Dream and Popol Vuh, as well as Aphex Twin and Autechre.
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