How Was Impressionism in Music Like Impressionism in Art Essay

end-to-end history, art and medicinal drug have developed in parallel with each other. The impressionistic movement is no exception. Impressionism in art began in France near the end of the 19th century. Impressionist painters did non seek to array reality in the classical sense of a picture-perfect image instead, they emphasized light and color to get around an overall impression of their subjects. Much in the same way, impressionism in practice of medicine aims to create descriptive impressions, not necessarily to draw clear pictures.The music is not designed to explicitly describe anything, but rather to create a mood or atmosphere. This is done through almost every aspect of music melody, harmony, color, rhythm, and form. Melodies tend to be short in nature, often repeated in contrasting contexts to give different moods. In terms of color, notes are often drawn from scale systems other than the tralatitious major and minor. These complicate pentatonic, whole-tone, or o ther exotic scales (for example, Debussy, a major figure of impressionism, was influenced by Asian music).The use (or misuse, as some critics might say) of harmony was a major part of impressionism. Impressionists did not use chords in the traditional way. For nearly the entire history of Western music, chords had been used to build and relieve tension, thus giving the music a sense of direction. Now to provide an example of impressionism, we have Lsle Joyeuse (The Island of Joy) by Claude Debussy. This is actually a musical interpretation of the painting The Embarkation for Cythera by Jean-Antoine Watteau. Both the painting and the effect tell the story of a journey to the mythical island of Cythera, an ideal place of love and beauty.The opening trills adumbrate the excited anticipation of the travelers a middle section depicts them floating over the water their arrival is announce by jubilant trumpeting and their ecstatic joy in realizing their destination provides a climactic f inish. The chords in this rear sometimes serve no harmonic purpose in the traditional sense these chords set the prideful color and mood of the piece, and are no longer exclusively used to build and release tension. sometimes the melody isnt very clear, but rather implied we only get an impression of it.Impressionism marked the low gear major steps into the Debussy and Maurice Ravel. An especially noteworthy aspect of impressionism was the weakening of the concept of paint. Even though impressionist music was still tonal in nature, the non-functional chords paved the way for the later likes of Schoenberg, and others to do away withtonality altogether.