Impressionism Music Style

The styles of music and art have been developed in parallel with each other through the different stylistic periods and impressionism has been found to follow this same trend. As with impressionistic art, impressionistic music sought to create descriptive impressions using the elements of music in a manner that could have been described as unusual compared to other styles. Impressionistic music develops the idea of impressionism by using almost every aspect of music including melody, harmony, color, rhythm, and form. The melodies tend to be short in nature and often repeated in different context to give different moods. The melodies also tend to serve no purpose at all in impressionistic music or used to gives us an impression. Notes are often drawn from scale systems other than traditional major and minor scales. Impressionists did not use chords in the traditional way and this misuse of harmony was a major part of impressionism. These chords are often used to set the mood or joyfulness of the piece of music. One part of impressionism that really goes against the mechanism of music is the absence of using chords to build and relieve tension, thus the music has no sense of direction. In Mozart’s work such as in his Sonata in A, he uses cords to build up to a climax and then relieves the tension by using the appropriate chord system. In impressionism, music does not need a build up and relief. A climax or an intense moment in the music can be used randomly throughout the music without any introduction. A perfect impressionistic example of this is Claude Debussy’s Lisle Joyeuse. In the very beginning of the piece, an intense moment is felt and there is no use of chords to build up to this intensity. One of the biggest aspects of impressionism was the weakening of the use of tonality or the use of non-functional chords. This was one of the biggest feats of impressionism because it paved the way for many other musicians who have done away with tonality all together.