How does impressionism translate to music

You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Skip to content Impressionism in art is fairly easy to describe: thin brush strokes, obscured edges, the play of light. Like this: Like Loading Next Next post: Group to follow: the spellbinding folk-rock in chiaroscuro by Noir Audio. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:.

Email Address never made public. Follow Following. Pas De Merde Join other followers. Sign me up. Already have a WordPress. Log in now. Their art is the reflection and impression of a magical city: Paris. In literature especially poetry , Impressionism was translated into a movement called "Symbolism". The Symbolists wished to free-verse techniques to achieve fluidity.

Poetry's new function was to suggest or evoke, but not to describe. Rejecting realism, these poets chose to express their immediate reactions to a subject by means of symbolic words, which were arranged for their emotional values. The basic theories of the Impressionists were most wonderfully expressed in the sonorous art of music. Since music is essentially an abstract art, it was ideal in projecting Impressionism's vague images. The Impressionist composers had two favorite mediums: the orchestra because of its variety of color and the piano because its damper pedal permitted vibrating harmonies to "suspend in mid-air".

The Impressionist painters, as we have seen, tried to capture the movement of color and light. Music is predominantly the art of abstract movement. For this reason, the favorite images of the Impressionist painting -- the play of light on water, clouds, gardens in he rain, sunlight through the leaves -- lent themselves readily to musical expression.

Such descriptive titles as "Reflections on the Water", "The Snow is Dancing", "Sounds and perfumes Swirl in the Evening Air", reveal composers as poets and painters in addition to being musicians. Literature: Baudelaire, Mallarme, Verlaine, Rimbaud.

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. He was fascinated by the music of the native orchestra, the gamelan, with percussive rhythms and bewitching instrumental colors.

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.