The Impressionistic.

The Impressionistic.

            As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the fine arts entered a new era: called "Impressionism", it lasted only a few decades into the twentieth century. French artists such as Monet, Manet, Renoir and Degas first applied the term, "Impressionism", to paintings. Around 1870, a group of young artists abandoned the accepted school of realism in favor of a new movement in painting, which was dedicated to ideals considered revolutionary by their contemporaries. These artists maintained that for their purposes, realism played now part in achieving an artistic result. They concentrated on the "manner" in which a picture was painted, and were completely unconcerned with subject matter. Their chief aim was to reproduce the general "impression" of the moment made by the subject on the artist. They tended to look at nature with an "innocent eye", seeing the world in a continual state of change with its outlines melting into haze. They would contrast bits of pure color on the canvas, leaving it to the eye of the beholder to do the mixing. Impressionist painters were repelled by the heroic themes of the Romantic painters. The hero of the Impressionist was not man, but light. They chose as subjects dancing girls (ballerinas), picnics, boating, cafe scenes and nature. Their art is the reflection and impression of a magical city: Paris.

Prominent Musical Characteristics:

• Modal Influences: The medieval modes were attractive to composers who sought to escape the "tyranny" of the major/minor sound. Emphasized were primary intervals -- octaves, fourths, and fifths -- in parallel motion. This resembled a medieval procedure known as "organum", where a melody was harmonized by another which ran parallel to it at a distance of a fourth or fifth.
• Whole-Tone Scale: Claude Debussy heard the musicians of the Far East (Java, Bali, and Indo-China). He was fascinated by the music of the native orchestra, the gamelan, with percussive rhythms and bewitching instrumental colors. The music of the Far East makes use of certain scales, which divide the octave into equal major/minor system and leads to obscured fluidity.
• Pentatonic Scale: The pentatonic (five-note) scale is sounded when the black yes of the piano are struck (or also C, D, F, G and A). This scale is popularly associated with Chinese music, but is even more familiar to us through Scottish, Irish and English folk tunes ("Auld Lang Syne" and "Comin' Through the Rye").
• Impressionist Harmony: Impressionist composers regarded the chord as an entity by itself, a "thrill" that hit the ear with a style all its own. Impressionism released the chord from its function as harmony to movement within the melody.
• Parallel Motion: In Classicism, tension was produced by moving voices in a contrary fashion. Impressionism, on the other hand, vied chords as melodic entities. This, it was "proper to move voices in a parallel fashion (this was "forbidden" in the Classical era).
• Escaped Chords: These were harmonies which gave the impression of having "escaped" to another tonality. Such chords are neither prepared for, nor are they resolved in any traditional sense. They simply "evaporate".

impressionism