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1. The Contemporary Period Post-Romanticism – Germany, Austria
Impressionism -- France
2. Impressionism French!
Movement began with the painters . . . Use of light and color to create their “first impressions”
Subjects – preferred stills, dancing girls, nudes, everyday scenes of middle-class life, picnics, boating and café scenes; nature
3. La Promenade (1875)
4. Poppies (1873)
5. Fishing Boats Leaving the Harbor (1874)
6. The Boat Studio (1876)
7. Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)The Girl with the Watering Can
8. At the Theatre
9. Poet Counterparts – the Symbolists Direct poetic expression unspoiled by intellectual elements. Sought to suggest rather than describe
Baudelaire, Mallarme, etc.
Greatly influenced by the famous American poet, Edgar Allan Poe
10. Impressionism – origins and influences Paris Exhibition – attracted to other sounds
Got away from the “normal” sounds of the previous period
Scale types
Chromatic
Whole tone
11. Chords/Color/Rhythm Parallel chords
Ninth chords
Use of orchestra
“veiled” sounds
Flutes/clarinets in lower registers (unusual)
Use of harp
Instruments used differently
Rhythms
“veiled”
12. Forms Smaller forms (got away from larger forms, i.e., symphonies)
Descriptive titles
13. Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
14. Claude Debussy “Let’s go . . . He’s beginning to develop.”
“The idea of spreading one drama over four evenings! Is this admissible, especially when in these four evenings you always hear the same thing? . . . My God! How unbearable these people in skins and helmets become by the fourth night.”
15. Music Subtle, discreet
Short, flexible forms
Evokes images
Wrote wonderful orchestral music
Wrote much for piano – was one of the most important composers for the piano of that time
Vocal composer
16. Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun Best known orchestral work (1894) From a poem by the Symbolist, Stephane Mallarme Image of a faun, who wakes from a dream . . . Wondering if it was a dream A-B-A