Lesson 40 Impressionist techniques

Lesson 40 - Impressionist Techniques

Part I - Impressionism.

The Impressionist period was a short movement sandwiched between two larger style periods: The Romantic, and the the Twentieth Century.  Despite its length, it still held importance as a period of dramatic changes.

There are seven style elements that identify the Impressionist period.

1. Emphasis on tone color rather than melody.

2. Absence of most brass and percussion from the orchestra--in most cases only the French horn and small delicate percussion such as finger cymbals remained.

3. Dreamy and atmospheric textures and moods.

4. Lack of strong rhythmic impulses to propel the music.

5. Programatic writing (meaning that the music usually contains some sort of extramusical meaning, even if it is not an overt story (such as in "The Moldau"))

6.  Interest in writing music about water

7.  Use of non-functional progressions instead of functional harmony.

Part II - Parallelism

In all of functional harmony, parallelism is avoided and seen as bad part writing (Because the parallel intervals are difficult to sing and hear). However, in Impressionist music, Parallelism is actually encouraged.  In this example, there are two different examples of parallelism.    

 This example is called that because the parallelism (The fifth) is not a perfect fifth                               This is named as such, because the parallelism IS perfect fifths.

Part III - The Modes

The Modes that we learned in the previous chapter are used constantly in the music of the impressionist period.  The modes that one typically sees are: Aeolian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian.  Typically melodies in the Impressionist period are based on scales other than Major and minor.

Part IV - Other Scales

Of course, the modes aren't the only scales that can be used to make music.  Examples of other scales include: The Whole-tone scale, Pentatonic scale, 

 Whole-tone scales:
In addition to the modes, a composer could also use the whole-tone scale or the pentatonic scale

• The Whole-tone scale is constructed of six tones, each equally distant from each other
• Any pitch in the scale can serve as the "tonic"
• The whole-tone scale can be started on any pitch class
• Unlike traditional major and minor scales, the whole-tone scale is only made up of six distinct pitches.

Four different iterations of a Whole-tone scale:

The next type if scale that can be used is the Pentatonic scale.  This is a scale where only five distinct pitches are present.  The pattern of intervals is: M2, m3, M2, m3.  Any note of the scale can serve as it's starting point (Without altering the pitches).  

Pentatonic scale on F#:

Other patterns for the pentatonic scale:

                                         M2          m3        M2      m3       M2                        m3         M2       m3       M2        M2

                                           M2       m3        M2      M2        m3                            m3       M2      M2       m3       M2