Impressionism MUSIC of grade 10 quarter 1

grade 10 quarter 1

1. Impressionism That avoids definite forms or obvious statements, instead highlight suggestion and atmosphere. This style covered the decades from 1870-1920. Impressionist composers’ works expressed reaction to experience rather than the reality itself, keeping a calm perspective. Impressionism in music describes many new styles in composition. Impressionist composers found a new world of richness in rhythms, scales, and colors that showed contrasting styles with western traditional forms.

2. Claude Debussy (1862-1918) Born on August 22, 1862, in St. Germainen-Laye , near Paris. At 11 he entered the Paris Conservatoire. He introduced new chord combination, whole-tone chords, parallel and bitonal chords, chromaticism, dissonances, and interesting rhythms and scales. Famous compositions was Suite Bergamasque . It contained one of the most popular pieces used nowadays, “Clair de Lune” (Moonlight). Great masterpiece of impressionist arts was Debussy’s only opera composition, Pelléas et Mélisande (1902).

3. Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) He was a French post-impressionist composer, conductor and pianist. Born on March 7, 1875, in a village near Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France. Majority of his works described the following styles in music composition: Rhythm are more incisive; Melodies are broader in span and used “added” notes and unresolved appoggiaturas; Harmonies are more dissonant; and Orchestration are influenced from the nineteenth-century composers. Famous works were Daphnis et Chloé, Rapsodie Espagnole and Bolero.

4. Impressionism Musical Styles Whole-tone Scale Parallel or Gliding Chords Octaves and open fifths Fifths and octaves Ninth chord Dissonance

5. Expressionism Was a highly expressive style in art that sought to express disturbed conditions of the mind. This was the answer of the Germans in reaction to French Impressionism. Preferred a hyper-expressive harmony with leaps between the melody and the instrumentation’s extreme registers. Expressionistic composers introduced new methods of composition, new performance techniques and concepts of music theory as compared to the earlier periods.

6. Characteristics of Expressionistic Music Simple Meters Polyrhythm Polymeter Polytonality

7. Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) Born on September 13, 1874, in Vienna, Austria. He began studying violin at the age of 8. He was introduced by Zemlinsky to Vienna’s styles of music. Years after, he composed Transfigured Night, a string sextet which he later orchestrated. He proposed music theories and developed structural procedures to replace tonality. He was considered as the leader of contemporary musical thought since introducing influenced a method of composition called twelve-tone technique .

8. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Is a Russian composer, pianist and conductor. He was born on June 17, 1882, in Oranienbaum , Russia. At twenty, he showed some of his early music pieces to the well-known Russian composer Nicolia Rimsky-Korsakov. He compose The Rite of Spring. This piece is scored for large orchestra.