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Impressionist Period

Impressionist Period. Mods 5-6 Erich Junge + Michael Stobb. Date 1885 - 1910. Important Composers Claude Debussy Maurice Ravel. Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918). Notable Compositions Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun La fille aux cheveux de lin La cathédrale engloutie

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Impressionist Period

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  1. Impressionist Period Mods 5-6 Erich Junge + Michael Stobb

  2. Date1885 - 1910 Important Composers • Claude Debussy • Maurice Ravel

  3. Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918) • Notable Compositions • Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun • La fille aux cheveux de lin • La cathédraleengloutie • Pelléas et Mélisande • Études • Jeux • Clair de Lune Debussy was stripped of his civil rights from an early age due to his father’s involvement in a workers uprising. He therefore could not attend public school so he entered the Paris Conservatoire at age 10. He became well known for his revolutionary compositions. As classical.net puts it, “Simply put, Debussy invented music of a new, freer kind.” Contemporary critics compared his music to Expressionist paintings and he picked up that label, although he did not agree with it. He had many influences including Liszt, Chopin and Wagner. He died in 1918 from cancer.

  4. Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937) • Notable Compositions • Jeuxd’eau • Miroirs • Gaspard de la nuit • Daphnis et Chloé • String Quartet in F Major • Pavane pour une infante défunte • Boléro Ravel entered the Paris Conservatoire at age 14. He was influenced by Debussy but less rebellious in his compositions. Ravel had “cleanly shaped melodies, etched textures, distinct rhythms, and firm structures” (classical.net). He had a falling out with the Conservatory in 1905 when he failed to win a contest. This caused a public scandal and changed the way in which impressionist music was judged. He was a private but sporadically prolific composer. He died in 1937 after brain surgery was unsuccessful.

  5. Historical Events The Impressionist movement in music was heavily influenced by the Impressionist movement in art. Impressionism was named after Monet’s painting Impression, Sunrise and was used to describe the collection of mostly French artists who began breaking the traditional rules of painting. The term was then applied to composers who did much the same with their music.

  6. The Impressionist Era Historically “Throughout history, art and music have developed in parallel with each other” (library.thinkquest.org). The advent of the Impressionist Era was brought on first by the French painter Claude Monet who with his painting Impression, Sunrise did not follow a rigid structure (Ex. Pointillism - A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by Georbes Seurat {Last Slide}). It flowed and blurred together in such a way to inspire a short (25 years) and confined (France), yet “important” Era in Artistic and Musical History. The two noteworthy composers of the Era in Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel took this “Impressionist” idea and applied it to their music, allowing for a less-strict, more free-flowing form of music to be created. From this, the Impressionist Era evolved from a mere painting ideal in part of France to a full-fledged Musical Era with lasting effects on music.

  7. Impressionist Characteristics • Bitonality, which is the use of two keys simultaneously. Served to influence atonality in later music. • Increased use of dissonance in the harmonies • New influences from exotic sources like Jazz and Arabian music (Ex. Boléroby Maurice Ravel). • Moved away from just the major and minor scales to less used scales such as the whole note scale as well as a return of modes (Ex. Use of Dorian Mode in Fetes by Claude Debussy) (Impressionism, Michael Bower). • Composers used nocturne, arabesque, and prelude instead of longer forms. • A style was developed where rather than focusing on a story or emotion, the music would focus on setting a specific atmosphere or mood while being listened to.

  8. Elsewhere in the World • Nothing of historical importance happened in France from 1885-1910. • United States of America undergoes mass-urbanization and industrialization. • Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) – The idea of “Separate but Equal” emerges as a both legal and socially acceptable form of racism in the U.S. • Ragtime and Jazz begin in America. • Spanish-American War in Cuba and the Philipines. • Worldwide imperialistic desires (Mostly the United States, Great Britain, Spain, and Germany) begin to set the stage for World War I just after the Impressionist Period ends. • The American Progressive Era begins about year 1900 as a response to the combination of corporate and political corruption, the belief of Social Darwinism, and the horrid working conditions in factories and living conditions in urban areas.

  9. FREEDOM FRIES!

  10. Sources http://www.empire.k12.ca.us/capistrano/Mike/capmusic/impressionism/impressi.htm http://library.thinkquest.org/27110/noframes/periods/impressionism.html http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/impressionism_(music).aspx http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/debussy.php

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