'Impressionism' is a modern art movement that took place in France in the early 20th century. This art movement started from art and influenced literature and music. Impressionist music appeared against German romanticism, and movement preferred light...
'Impressionism' is a modern art movement that took place in France in the early 20th century. This art movement started from art and influenced literature and music. Impressionist music appeared against German romanticism, and movement preferred light, colorful sound, structure, and ambiguous music. Impressionist musicians were interested in Baroque music and used Baroque elements to get inspiration.
A typical Impressionist composer, Claude Achille Debussy(1862-1918), made a musical new attempt to escape the traditional functional harmony. He made original musical phrases with parallel octaves, added chords, whole-tone scale, pentatonic scale, church modes, and irregular rhythms. His work includes the Baroque elements in which he combines a compositional technique with new styles.
Debussy's 「Pour le piano」 is a work in which he used the Baroque elements for the title. It was composed of one suite by combining three pieces of Prélude, Sarabande, and Toccata, and it properly represents the characteristics of the Baroque music. This paper examined the Baroque elements by analyzing its musical form and rhythm in this piece.
Prélude presents a colorful harmony of sound with the use of sixteenth notes of fast tempo, pedal points and continuous whole-tone scales. In addition, it uses glissando and cadenza which represents the impromptu style of Prélude.
Sarabande includes the sarabande rhythm of the slow three-beat. Particularly, the church modes are used to perform rich color of harmony from a wide range of bands.
Toccata has a more impromptu style than Prélude. That is because it uses continuous sixteenth note, irregular division of rhythm, a pedal point, frequent syncopations, broken chords and glissando.
The title of three pieces of 「Pour le piano」 was inspired in the Baroque period. Debussy combined musical elements of the Baroque period with his musical techniques that is regarded as a more progressive style.