Impressionism in music

Impressionism (French: impressionnisme, from impression – impression), the direction in art of the last third of the XIX – beginning of XX centuries.

The application of the term “impressionism” to music is largely arbitrary – musical impressionism does not constitute a direct analogy to impressionism in painting and does not coincide chronologically with it (its heyday was the 90s of the 19th century and the 1st decade of the 20th century).

Impressionism arose in France when a group of artists – C. Monet, C. Pissarro, A. Sis-lei, E. Degas, O. Renoir and others – made their original paintings at Parisian exhibitions of the 70s. Their art sharply differed from the smooth and faceless works of the then academic painters: the Impressionists came out of the walls of the workshops into the free air, learned to reproduce the play of living colors of nature, the sparkle of sunlight, the colorful highlights on the moving river surface, the motley color of the festive crowd. The painters used a special technique of runaway stains, smears, which seemed disordered near, and at a distance gave rise to a real feeling of a lively play of colors, bizarre overflows of light. Continue reading →