Musical Performance

The term “Impressionism” refers in music to works that evoke rich visual images using subtle and distinct changes in mood. The term is most often applied to the French composers Debussy, Ravel and Satie, and even though Debussy disliked the term, he has always been considered the leading figure of the Impressionist movement. The style of music was not exclusively French, however: similar characteristics appear in the late piano music of Brahms and Liszt, in passages from Wagner’s operas, the songs of Hugo Wolf and the symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Erik Satie Gnossienne

The music of Erik Satie is so distilled and individual that the roots of his musical language and the sources of his inspiration remain something of a mystery. Satie was very eccentric, but despite his complicated personality he managed to achieve a unique level of musical simplicity in his Gnossiennes for solo piano, which were inspired by pictures on an ancient Greek vase of women from Knossos. His famous piano pieces, Gymnopédies, were also inspired by the purity of Greek art.

Maurice Ravel Une barque sur l’océan (A small boat on the ocean)

Ravel’s dazzling depiction of a small, storm-tossed boat on the ocean was a milestone of pianistic Impressionism when it appeared in 1904. Here the listener can easily identify the ebbing and flowing of a swirling sea. “Une barque sur l’océan” is the third part of Ravel’s five- movement masterpiece, Miroirs (Mirrors). In 1906 he orchestrated the movement, which is sometimes played as a separate concert piece.

Claude Debussy Estampes (Engravings)

We have already heard how Debussy was able to conjure images of the sea in La Mer, but no understanding of Impressionism in music could be complete without an understanding of his piano pieces. Estampes, of 1903, is one his most evocative works. The three movements are entitled “Pagodes” (Pagodas), “Soirée dans Grenade” (Evening in Granada) and “Jardins sous la pluie” (Gardens in the Rain).

Ralph Vaughan Williams A London Symphony

Ralph Vaughan Williams’s suggestive and colourful orchestration was learned from Maurice Ravel, from whom he took lessons in 1908. His Second Symphony of 1914 evokes the atmosphere of London both at its quiet dawn and during the City’s bustling business hours. It includes echoes of chiming church bells as well as Cockney street cries. A London Symphony cemented Vaughan Williams’s reputation as a major new talent and brought, for the first time, the influences of French Impressionism to a new school of British composers.

Olivier Messiaen Turangalila

Messiaen was the last of the great French Impressionist composers. In Turangalila, a monumental symphony composed in 1948, Messiaen explores themes of life and love and draws on eastern as well as western musical influences. The score demands an especially large orchestra, a virtuoso solo pianist, a vastly expanded percussion section requiring seven players and a futuristic early electronic instrument known as the “ondes Martenot” (Martenot waves).

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