In Europe in the 19th century, Impressionism gradually developed into literature and music, starting with painting. Impressionist painting style, which attempted to depict the instantaneous impression of an object that changes from moment to moment du...
In Europe in the 19th century, Impressionism gradually developed into literature and music, starting with painting. Impressionist painting style, which attempted to depict the instantaneous impression of an object that changes from moment to moment due to light, had a great influence on music history, and just as Impressionist artists tried to express the change in color with light, they tried to contain the beauty of contrast between light and shadow in music. Impressionist music expressed a dreamy and ambiguous sense of color using various musical techniques such as parallel progression, diatonic scale, and church modes, and this change became an important era in music history after the Romantic era.
Claude Achille Debussy(1862-1918), a representative composer of Impressionist music, aimed for free music that was not bound by a frame. He created a new style of music that broke away from the previously firm structure of German music and the Romantic era, which emphasized the expression of inner emotions, and created his own unique music through form, scale, harmony, melody, tone, and rhythm. Debussy's early work, ⟪Suite Bergamasque⟫, consists of a total of four songs: Prelude, Minuet, Clair de Lune, and Passepied. It aptly displays Impressionistic techniques and grounds Debussy's piano repertoire.
In this study, we first investigate the origin and characteristics of impressionist music, and then study the form, harmony, rhythm, and melody of ⟪Bergamasque Suite⟫ which reveals Debussy's impressionist musical characteristics.