Overview of Impressionist Music
Time Period: 1874 - 1866
The period known as Impressionism did not begin with music but in fact with art. It is a term that is primarily used to describe painting. The Impressionist movement was at its apex between the years of 1874 and 1866. The term stuck after Louis Leroy wrote a critique of Monet's Impression: Soleil Levant in Paris in 1874. Leroy mocked Monet and his contemporaries and called them ‘impressionnistes’. In 1877 Monet and his associates Pissaro, Renoir, Degas and Sisley decided to adopt the title of impressionists.
During the nineteenth century it was not difficult to draw similarities between specific kinds of music and impressionist art. For example: Wagner’s Forest Murmurs creates a musical texture that could be compared to the blurred outlines of an impressionist painting. During this time Wagner did seem to draw many comparisons between impressionist painters like Monet and Pissaro. Other early impressionist passages are found in the music of other composers such as Bela Bartok, Franz Liszt and Fredric Chopin. Therefore, Impressionism in music predates Claude Debussy and his technique of harmonic ambiguity; Debussy is arguably the most well known impressionist in music.
Much like the impressionist painters the impressionists in music were met with contempt and disapproval. Debussy’s Printemps which was the second entry from the Prix de Rome written in 1887 was mocked and was said to “lack precision, as a direct consequence of the composer's ‘exaggerated sense of musical color’.” By the year 1894 the term impressionism was no longer met with disdain, by the year 1905 the term was inseparable from the music of Debussy. Other famous impressionist composers include Maurice Ravel and Eric Satie.
Impressionism in music blurs the lines between traditional harmonic progressions and is characterized by chromatic and modal features. These factors imitate impressionist painters by eliminating hard edges and sharp and sudden contrasts in the music and favoring blurred ambiguous images and textures. The technique of impressionism favored color and timbre opposed to precision.
References:
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians - Edited by Stanley Sadie Vol 9 - Iacobus-Kerman pg (30-31)