Chapter 32: The Impressionist Era
Study Plan
Not color but half-shades!
Ah! nuance alone unites
Dream with dream and flute with horn."
Key Points
- Two important movements surfaced at the turn of the twentieth century: Post-Romanticism in Germany and Austria; and Impressionism, in France.
- Impressionism was a movement developed by painters who tried to capture their "first impression" of a subject through varied treatments of light and color.
- The literary response to Impressionism was Symbolism, in which writings are suggestive of images and ideas rather than literally descriptive.
- Impressionism in music is characterized by exotic scales (chromatic, whole tone), unresolved dissonances, parallel chords, rich orchestral color, and free rhythm, all generally cast in small-scale programmatic forms.
- The most important French Impressionist composer was Claude Debussy. His orchestral work, Prelude to "The Afternoon of a Faun," was inspired by a Symbolist poem.
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