Knowra Impressionism in music Impressionism in music Impressionism in music is a late 19th- and early 20th-century style that emphasizes atmosphere, timbral color, fluid harmony, and suggestive forms over forceful development.
Extended tertian harmony : Harmony built by stacking thirds beyond a seventh chord, adding tones such as ninths, elevenths, and thirteenths. Added chord tones enrich sonority without requiring conventional dominant resolution.
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune : A symphonic poem by Claude Debussy, composed in 1892–1894 and inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem. Its floating flute opening and shifting orchestral colors became a defining early example.
Claude Debussy : A French composer whose works helped establish modern approaches to harmony, timbre, and musical form. His piano and orchestral works are central examples of impressionism in music.
Romantic music : A broad European musical tradition, especially prominent in the 19th century, marked by expanded expression and harmony. Impressionist composers often softened the goal-directed development and emotional rhetoric of Romantic works.
Whole-tone scale : A six-note scale whose adjacent pitches are separated by whole tones, producing an evenly spaced, tonally ambiguous sound. Its symmetry weakens the pull of a single tonal center in characteristic passages.
Estampes : A three-movement piano suite by Claude Debussy, composed in 1903. Its movements evoke distant places through piano sonorities, including the gamelan-inspired textures of “Pagodes.”
Maurice Ravel : A French composer known for precise craft, vivid orchestration, and distinctive harmonic language. His coloristic music overlaps with impressionism while retaining a more sharply articulated style.
Expressionism in music : A modernist musical movement that intensifies subjective expression through dissonance, fragmentation, and extremes. Its heightened tension contrasts with impressionism’s emphasis on atmosphere and sonic ambiguity.
Pentatonic scale : A musical scale containing five distinct pitches within an octave. Pentatonic melodies offer an alternative to major-minor patterns and their familiar leading tones.
La mer : A three-movement orchestral work by Claude Debussy, composed between 1903 and 1905. Its fluid forms and orchestral colors suggest the sea without depicting a fixed narrative.
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