Impressionism (c. 1890–1920)

The word comes from painting (Monet, Impression, Sunrise) and Debussy rather disliked it. Yet it aptly describes a French revolution around 1900: music seeks colour, atmosphere and suggestion rather than development and tonal tension.

Characteristics

• New scales: old modes, the pentatonic scale, the whole-tone scale (six notes a whole tone apart).
• Chords for their colour: unresolved sevenths and ninths, parallel chords (planing), bare fourths and fifths.
• Distant influences: the Javanese gamelan heard at the 1889 Paris World's Fair, an imagined Spain, Antiquity.
• The sound of the piano itself: resonance, held pedal, washes of sound, extreme registers.
• Evocative titles (in Debussy's Préludes, they are placed at the end of each piece, in brackets).

The whole-tone scale

M:4/4
L:1/4
K:C
C D E ^F | ^G ^A c2 |]

With no semitones, it has no leading tone and no clear tonic: everything floats. Debussy uses it in “Voiles” (Préludes, Book I).

Parallel chords

Instead of moving the voices in contrary motion, the same chord shape is shifted as a block, like a brushstroke: parallel fifths, forbidden in classical harmony, become a colour.

M:4/4
L:1/4
%%staves {RH LH}
V:RH clef=treble
V:LH clef=bass
K:C
[V:RH] [EGc]2 [FAd]2 | [GBe]2 [FAd]2 | [EGc]4 |]
[V:LH] [C,G,]4 | [C,G,]4 | [C,G,]4 |]

Composers and works to hear

Playing in style

• Pedal: generous but precise; half-pedal, “flutter” pedal (quick small lifts) to clear without cutting off.
• Una corda for distant sonorities; Debussy dreamed of a piano “without hammers”.
• Touch: press the key rather than strike it, fingers close to the keys, relaxed arm weight.
• Sound planes: each layer (held bass, chords, melody) has its own volume.
• Exact rhythm: despite the harmonic haze, Debussy demands great rhythmic precision.