Impressionism in music was a movement among various composers in Western classical music, mainly during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was initiated by French composer Claude Debussy and is characterized by its focus on mood and atmosphere, conveying the moods and emotions aroused by the subject rather than a detailed tone-picture. The term "Impressionism" was borrowed from late 19th-century French painting after Monets Impression, Sunrise.
The most prominent feature in musical Impressionism is the use of "color," or in musical terms, timbre, which can be achieved through orchestration, harmonic usage, texture, and other elements. Other characteristics of musical Impressionism include:
- New chord combinations and ambiguous tonality.
- Extended harmonies and tensionless harmony.
- Melodies that lack directed motion.
- Surface ornamentation that obscures or substitutes for melody.
- An avoidance of traditional musical form.
- Evocative titles, such as Debussy's "Reflets dans l'eau" (Reflections on the water, 1905).
Impressionism in music can be seen as a reaction against the rhetoric of Romanticism, disrupting the forward motion of standard harmonic progressions. The other composer most often associated with Impressionism is Maurice Ravel, and impressionistic passages can be found in earlier music by Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Richard Wagner, as well as in music by later composers such as Charles Ives, Béla Bartók, and George Gershwin. The influence of composers like Debussy, Ravel, Fanelli, Sibelius, and Scriabin is felt throughout modern classical music to this day.
