Clark+-+Impressionist+Music

 **Impressionist Music... //"delight with imagination"//**

 For my music assignment, I have chosen to research about music during the impressionist period that lasted from around 1868 – 1898. This period of time was about artists and musicians being more open to ideas to result in natural, free-flowing pieces of art and music. Specifically in music, it led to musicians going against traditional structured pieces of music, to more fluid and harmonizing phrases and using mood to create melodies instead of what worked best on a page. Leading musicians during the impressionist period include Debussy, Ravel, Delius, Szymanowski, and Faure. Today I will be discussing two of main stylistic features of the impressionist period; the showcase of atmosphere and mood in the music and the use of harmony and uncommon scales. I hope you enjoy the analysis of this beautiful time in music.

The first stylistic feature that will be discussed is the showcase of atmosphere and mood in the music. The start of the impressionist period was a reaction of the romantic era which couldn’t fully exemplify in its classical music the emotions that were needed and so the impressionist period made up for it. There were strong emotions shown in the music that were never able to be heard before and depictions of story as in program music. As Claude Debussy said “I am trying to do ‘something different’”. With impressionist music, it is also vital to understand that the music was supposed to create descriptive impressions and not to draw clear pictures. It was designed to describe anything perfectly, but to create mood or atmosphere. It was favored to show the mood and atmosphere with short forms of music such as the nocturne, arabesque, and prelude. // Listening example: I have chosen to use the example of “L’isle Joyeuse” (The Island of Joy) by Claude Debussy to exemplify the first stylistic feature of describing the mood and atmosphere of the piece. The piece is a musical interpretation of the painting, “The Embarkation for Cythera”, which both the music and painting tell the story of a journey to the island of Cythera; an ideal place of love and beauty. The opening trills show the excited anticipation of the travelers, and the atmosphere of the water and the boats floating are shown in the middle of the piece. Ecstatic joy is shown when they realize they are at their destination. // **Listen to: [|L'isle Joyeuse]**



 The second stylistic feature being discussed is the use of harmony with uncommon scales. There was a dramatic use of major and minor scales but more use of dissonance, and more uncommon scales such as the whole tone scale. Dissonances were usually unprepared and unresolved. Musicians used melody, harmony, color, rhythm, and form to illustrate the story they are getting across. “Color” in this instance means the notes drawn from scale systems other than the traditional major and minor. These can be pentatonic, whole-tone, or other exotic scales. Musicians put an emphasis on instrumental timbres that create a shimmering interplay of these “colors”. Debussy really took this stylistic feature to heart as he was heavily influenced by Asian music and so integrated this into his music. Also, these colors were great for “surface ornamentation” that would obscure the melody so that the melody wasn’t exactly clear. Again, the same with showing the atmosphere, sometimes the melody of impressionist pieces are not clear; hence we only get an impression of it. Impressionist music was full of static harmony which is the prolongation of one chord rather than series of chord progression. It is made up of a sustained tonic or dominant chord or the oscillation of the tonic or dominant chord with other chords. A lot of times, ninths, elevenths, and thirteenths were added to chords, and cadences switched from perfect V to I, to v9 to 1 or III to 1. // Listening example: I have chosen to use the example “Gaspard de la nuit” by Revel, specifically the 3rd movement called “Scarbo”. It is extremely fast and technically very difficult to play. There is a huge amount of chromatic scales played throughout, and Revel jumps from 1 scale to another throughout the piece. // **Listen to: [|Scarbo]**



These two stylistic features, showcasing mood and atmosphere and using uncommon scales for harmony, are substantial to the characteristics of the impressionist period. Famous songs like “Clair de Lune” helped shape the credibility for this period as an established and beautiful time for music. Overall, even though the time period of impressionism was short, it opened up a whole new way to write music and allowed musicians a lot more musical freedom and expression.

**Bibliography:**

 "**Impressionism**." //Encyclopædia Britannica//. //Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition//. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010. Web. 18 Apr. 2010 <[]>.

 "[|impressionism.]" __The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition__. 2008. //Encyclopedia.com.// 18 Apr. 2010 <[]>.