Impressionism

Most music, apart from basically emotional layer, also has another, less emotionally basic level, layer of deeper emotionality, that we usually call atmosphere, or moods, and that is too subtle to be easily talked about. Every romantic classical composer, or more deep jazz musician such as Miles Davies, or more deep pop music such as say Depeche Mode, while sharing more basic emotional impulses with other music, has something specific for it, the unrepeatable atmosphere of it’s own. Music that concentrates on this layer, although essentially existed since always, got a name with Claude Debussy – impressionism. Definitions of impressionism were never too easy to grasp from paper, although one would immediately understand when hearing an impressionistic piece what it is about. Tries to describe and define impressionism go down these lines:

Like the Impressionist painters, and like the Symbolist poets, he (Debussy) tried to capture a fleeting impression or mood, tried to pin down the exact essence of a thought as economically as possible…

…Debussy clearly showed that he did not intend to write program music. He never tells a story. Rather he gives an impression – an impression of the sea, of moonlight, of goldfish, of Spain. He is the musical painter and epigrammatist par excellence… La Mer is a series of tonal impressions in which one does not see waves but feels them, a series of impressions in which the images are implied rather than specific”. From “The Lives of Great Composers” by Harold C. Schoenberg

Maybe more simple way to say the same is, that impressionism is music which strongly emphasizes moods and has a highly descriptive character, including sensual content. It deals with experiences of not primarily emotional nature, be it sensual – a picture, a smell, or more spiritual, abstract atmospheric. This idea can be some very strange and nameless atmosphere, sublimation of many different ideas or feelings, often seemingly contradictory. It can also be a personal idea about something, rather than that something objectively. Since this is what usually impressionistic painters do, it got it’s name from painting.

Term 'impressionism' is mostly tied for Debussy, who was however far from the first or the only one to deal with it. One can even argue that Debussy was not the most impressionistic composer even in his time, and certainly he still had much purely romantic and even classicist elements in him, that have little to do with impressionism. Despite growing only recently, and getting a name by the end of XIX century with Claude Debussy, the stream of “imagistic” music, music of “pure moods” existed since always. It can be traced back to baroque. Vivaldi composed his four seasons much as impressionistic pieces, evoking atmospheres and pictures of different seasons, and was fully aware of that: he even gave instructions in what ambient to listen to some of the pieces, such as “winter, next to the fire, while it snows outside”. Baroque operatic composer Gluck used orchestra in impressionistic purposes, to set the atmosphere. Berlioz was later mightily impressed:

[…] The Opéra is something different (sc. than the lectures he had been attending); I doubt I can give you even the slightest idea of what it is like. Short of fainting I could not have been more moved than when I saw a performance of Gluck’s masterpiece Iphigénie en Tauride. Imagine for a start an orchestra of eighty players performing with such ensemble that you would think they are a single instrument. The opera begins: in the distance you can see a vast plain (yes! the illusion is complete) and further away the sea is visible. The orchestra announces a storm, black clouds are seen descending slowly and cover the entire plain. The theater is only lit by flashes of lightning which tear the clouds, all done with a realism and perfection that have to be seen to be believed. There is a moment of silence when no actor steps forward. The orchestra murmurs softly, as though you could hear the wind blowing […]. Gradually the scene becomes more agitated, a storm breaks out, and you see Orestes and Pylades in chains brought by the barbarians from Tauris, who sing the terrifying chorus: "Il faut du sang pour venger nos crimes" ["We demand blood to avenge our crimes"]. It is unbearable; I defy even the most insensitive person not to be deeply moved by the sight of these two unfortunates each clamoring for death as the greatest blessing. […]

Impressionistic approach can also be seen from Beethoven’s most imagistic work, his pastoral symphony (no. 6). While working on it, he first wanted to make some titles to movements of symphony, but later abandoned them and let just music to speak.

Anyone who has an idea of country life can make out for himself the intentions of the composer without many titles… From “Der Himmel Voller Geigen” by Rudolf Thiel

And he was understood from Schuman who wrote about last two movements on Pastoral:

… Suddenly the big gate opened wide and everything was trembling, shaken and arisen, thundering and reverberated, lightnings were flashing brightly and in the midst of this great battle heart felt very little indeed – then the tender voices sung the prayer of God and overcame the thundering, and from the dark chaos, as the beautiful dawn, sounds left out, coming down warmly and calmly on frightened heart, and look the wonder! On young earth fell the golden morning. From “Der Himmel Voller Geigen” by Rudolf Thiel

Still, Beethoven himself never went as far as to claim that music is a kind of a story, or movie in sound.

He derided program music. While composing The Pastoral Symphony (no.6) he thought about the problem and set down some observations:

All painting in instrumental music is lost if pushed too far… Also, without titles, the whole will be recognized as a matter more of feeling than of painting in sounds” From “The Lives of Great Composers” by Harold C. Schoenberg

However, as romanticism progressed, music will become more and more suggestive of sights and moods. Composers since always wanted to tell stories through music, and therefore needed to express very concrete things, such as suggest a place and it’s mood. Actually when romantic composers, striving towards musical literature, tried to do more and more musical storytelling, what they achieved is music not becoming more like literature, but rather picturesque. Schuman speaks from XIX century:

Music is the art that developed latest. In the beginning there was only major and minor, joy and sorrow. Now we penetrated deeper into the secrets of harmony and became skilled in painting more refined emotional nuances: rage and redemption, pleasant and unpleasant feelings. Beethoven and Schubert can transport any life state into musical speech. From “Der Himmel Voller Geigen” by Rudolf Thiel

The writer adds: “At the bottom of his heart, schoolboy Schuman probably believed in his ability to express even more subtle and precise nuances of emotion through music.” On another place he says:

When the boy Schuman searched for accords on a piano, he didn’t do it like Beethoven, do find a pathetic tonal line. He only took joy in mixing of tones, in dissonances that like a drill penetrated the mind, harmonies that slowly evaporated. He enjoyed in music of magical colors, as it’s element is not a motion, but an image that comes to our consciousness through sound. From “Der Himmel Voller Geigen” by Rudolf Thiel

Here we see that the step further from pathos and pure romanticism leads towards music full of atmosphere, moods and pictures. Also let’s notice the usage of expressions “like a drill penetrated the mind” and “it’s element is not a motion” – this more expressive music is directly connected with music as a language of tones and timbres, and not music as playing the instruments or singing.

Obviously, by trying to say more and more concrete things, and intrinsically probably unable to really tell a story like a book, it was inevitable that music will move towards painting. Wagner was already making much impressionistic music, acting as a sort of musical painter, although he actually tried to be a writer. Same goes for Gustav Mahler, most known among romantics for his musical canvas, and the instruction to the orchestra for his first movement of his first symphony: “as a voice of nature”. He is sometimes taken to be the first composer with purely impressionistic approach.

Debussy himself was greatly inspired with a work of an unusual Russian composer, Modest Mussorgsky, whose pure authorship he admired. Mussorgsky is another example of impressionistic music, his most famous piece even being called “Pictures from an exhibition”.

But maybe the most radical example of an impressionistic composer never called so, is Rimsky Korsakov. He is often described as a composer being at his best when suggesting a mood or a place – yet never associated with impressionism. Rachmaninoff spoke of him: “In Rimsky Korsakov’s scores there is never the slightest doubt about the “meteorological picture” the music is meant to convey… He was the great master of orchestral sound-painting and one can still learn from him“.

Everyone will agree that music can’t do more then convey broad, abstract ideas and moods. So while it is impossible for music to tell a story, it was still a surprise and a delight how very naturally it can convey something like a picture and recreate subtle moods. Even if people didn’t quite expect this, that is where music started going towards for more than a century now. Hearing some of the first impressionistic music, people must have felt it as something almost alien and impossible, and they partially still do.

The reason why Debussy was promoted into a synonym for impressionism in the still dominant circles is, that what modern music is generally about – moods and atmosphere - was never worshiped in classical music. One should only remember wild attacks against Korsakov in his time. I vaguely remember somewhere how Bernard Show - was it him? – talked something down the lines of how “everyone says Beethoven reduced himself to mere imitation of bird song on one place of his pastoral symphony, where we all know we like that part the most”. With romanticism being the highlight of classical expresivity, impressionism, unlike expressionism, was never at home in classical music. While romanticism is the highlight and full maturity of musical expresivity of classical era, impressionism is music entering a different, more subtle phase. Still, in times of romanticism – and even today still - awareness of this was blurred. On one of the livelier Internet forums about classical music on the net I had the chance to read with amusement and amazement what lovers of classical music have to say on the theme of “what is that music can tell to you”. Many people answered (at least 30), and not a single one mentioned anything that has to do with creating atmosphere and mood. This caught my attention so much, that I wanted to add the missing part, and I did. Suddenly, most agreed with me that mood is the most music can radiate on you.

During XX century impressionism became practically commonplace, especially among movie scores and contemporary electronic music. The concept of soundworld completely started to live. Some pieces tended to sound like a painter or a designer swinging with his brush in front of us, and name “sound design” arrived. Modern electronic impressionistic music often aims for archetypal sights and moods, such as pieces from Andreas Vollenweider “Behind The Gardens”, that brings an idyllic, archetypal garden, with all it’s heavenly self-content and calm, or equally evocative “Caverna Magica”, bringing a wondrous, surreal sight of a cave of wonders as suddenly opening to spellbound explorers.

There is always a certain atmosphere that floats around everything we do in concrete. Often even atmosphere even is not good enough word. You need no more then sitting under the tree in spring, or on the ocean shore in summertime, to have a whole world of feelings and thoughts. As Walter Benjamin says on one place of his essay already mentioned in previous chapters:

In the summer afternoon, calmly resting, following with gaze a chain of mountains on the horizon or some branch which casts shade on the one who rests – means inhaling the aura of those mountains, of that branch.

Impressionistic music may aim to capture those low-key, unnamed, watter-down moods that float around everything we do and emphasize them, turning them into intensive emotional experience. Again, we can use epithet “aural”. A subtle mood that we knew just as a vague intuition, unnamed and low-key, we suddenly live through as a strong, concentrated emotion; so even if it is something we know from our everyday life, it comes to us as a surprise and as something new. By emphasizing those deep, vague feelings and atmospheres, music can make us know them better; what’s more, it is making us aware of them at all; it is in a way naming those nameless feelings, in everyday life too weak and background to have a name. It could be, for example, a feeling of living in a city.

While so impressionism has to do with music becoming more atmospherically full and descriptive, it is often wrongly equated with “imagistic music”, “picturesque” music”, “sound painting”. While some of it may be such, often this is music in which pictures appear in mind casually, as a part of the message that music conveys, simply because music is powerful in it’s impact so it stimulates on a more general level than basically emotional. For example, opening of Oldfield’s Ommadawn carries a particular mood and idea, very difficult to describe. But a picture comes to mind: a desert before the sunset, a tired caravan, and sand-watches, that makes the emotional content of music come out a bit more lively. So it’s not that music with impressionistic character must be only picturesque kind of music; pictures and sensual impressions can appear casually, even if author didn’t want to evoke them. We are catching ourselves inventing pictures to music, to somehow understand it better.

• Basically, impressionism is the same as richer emotionality - music that tries to convey as detailed and interesting ideas and atmospheres as possible.

This most concrete side of music is these days often called “sound-scapes”; music that aims towards recreation of the world rather than something happening. It tries not to move us where we are, but rather to make us feel being in some particular time and place.

Debussy: “What I am trying to do is something different – an effect of reality” From “The Lives of Great Composers” by Harold C. Schoenberg

Or a piece can be a transfigured, musicalized natural sound. An example of that in traditional acoustical classical music is famous “Flight of a Bumblebee” from Korsakov, a music piece that is a musicalization of sound of a bug that flies. I still remember amazement of my girlfriend when she heard it for the first time, wondering how can something like that exist.

It’s not strange that impressionistic music started to finally live it’s full life when synthesizers appeared. It became immediately apparent to musicians that electronic instrument is what impressionistic music was always waiting for.

Jean Michel Jarre, 1977: “Synthesizer may be the first impressionist instrument in the history of music”.