Art is an outcome of an integrative kind and according to each way of expression, a field of art presents its characteristics and signs. Music, for instance, expresses its beauty with the flow of melody, whereas the fine arts use their original colors...
Art is an outcome of an integrative kind and according to each way of expression, a field of art presents its characteristics and signs. Music, for instance, expresses its beauty with the flow of melody, whereas the fine arts use their original colors and literature uses symbolic style of writing in a bid to express each field's characteristics. Also, such fields of art reflect a current, background and something that represents the times. This is why we should understand art in an integrative way, instead of understanding it separately. Therefore, this study analyzed and researched the characteristics of the impressionist music and art, in a bid to understand the impressionist music, which can be seen as the beginning of the modern music, that is, the music of the 20th century, in an easier and in a detailed way. In doing so, this study tried to find the relations among the characteristics and aimed to find an integrative teaching method that is proper in this regard.
The seventh revision of the education course defines the goal of music education to be "helping the students to find and develop their musical potentials and creativity in order to make them express their thoughts and emotions through music, raising the quality of their lives, supporting them to have whole personality and having them understand, appreciate and enjoy music in a historical, social and cultural context." However, in current classrooms at schools, such a goal of music education is not very well realized, and furthermore, the contemporary music that is expressed in the 20th century music grammar, is all the more ignored. Such an imbalance in music education is a huge problem that we face now. Therefore, this researcher took interests in such an issue in order to improve the situation. To that end, this study presented a teaching plan for an effective contemporary music listening class in a way that integrates impressionist music and art. The teaching plan focused on the artworks like "The Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" by Debussy, the composer that represents the impressionist music and "Impression-Sunrise," "Les Coquelicots" and "Nympheas" by Monet, the impressionist painter.
The result of study on the relation between the "impressionist" music and art from the late 19th century to the early 20th century in an integrative manner in detail is as follows. More than anything, the impressionist painting cared the most about the color expression technique, in order to show the changes of light and the internal impression of a moment in the Nature, while the impressionist music used daring concord in order to express a new kind of composition of tones. Fine arts used the way of partition of colors and raised the purity of colors. Also, the art presented mysterious as well as subtle atmosphere, and the music used a pentatonic scale, whole tones and mood, in order to describe the atmosphere with the melody, whereas the paintings used hazy colors without clear outlines in order to present vague and fantastic atmosphere. Finally, the characteristics of impressionism were expressed through the series composition method. In order to express how the Nature and objects look different by the different shades of light, the music gave relations among each chapter, took the instruments as the subject matters and composed in a series. Paintings, meanwhile, captured the moment and the scene where things change by the light, and described them in drawings in a series. Such characteristics prove that impressionist music and paintings have relations and correlations, and therefore, it is necessary that the music and painting should be taught to students in an integrative manner.
The teaching plan of this study would be of help for the students to effectively and easily study and understand the contemporary music in an integrative education method with other curriculum, which would motivate them and give new chances to perform music. Also, there is a need for teachers to have better understanding and teaching ability for contemporary music, in order to open a wider scope of music education programs and diverse kind of study aids for the sake of high quality music education. Furthermore, the music education should be performed in an integrative educational method based on the comprehensive understandings of various cultures, in a bid to give high quality education to the students in a more comprehensive way.