This is the abbreviated summary - for a more detailed study of this musical style, click here.

This musical style was associated with the work of French paint artists who produced soft, blurry, sensual images based on the relationships between the canvas, color and the reflection of light. Although composers may have disagreed with the comparison between their music and the fine art movement called impressionism, the musicologists and art historians made the comparison anyway. Sympathetic to the poetry of the symbolists, Claude Debussy wrote music that was freely-expressive and individual with a tip of the hat to French tradition. Musically, Maurice Ravel was a formal craftsman, stating that he "followed a direction opposed to that of the symbolism of Debussy." There was no apparent malice between the composers - to the contrary, their music was performed on the same bill and they acknowledged one another's work publicly and privately. Ravel was considering revisions to his String Quartet because he thought some of it was too spontaneously written. After hearing it, Debussy supposedly told Ravel not to change a thing about it. Ravel, a master orchestrator who performed piano works of Debussy in concert, supposedly said that he would re-orchestrate Debussy's La mer, if he had the time.

Hollywood composers have always reflected the French impressionists. Debussy was fascinated with Spanish music and some of his work reveals Spanish melodic, harmonic and rhythmic influence.

While on the subject, the Spanish impressionist composers Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909) and Enrique Granados (1867-1916) left their mark on the period with a body of work that included works for solo piano and guitar.

Iberia, Book 2-1, Rondena, is a favorite. Its A B A' form is worked to perfection by Albeniz. The rhythmic vitality and harmonic complexity of this piece is astonishing. Albeniz often avoids the expected melodic or harmonic direction. His chords are rich with added tones and often not the usual ones. There's even a chord near the end that can be heard in a Manhattan Transfer tune and other jazz works.

Claude Debussy is listed as one of the Grand Masters of the real or imagined Priory of Sion. The self-penned poetry from some of his songs features telling lines that speak of the fleur de lis, knights seeking the Holy Grail and an affinity for darkness. The opera that made him famous - Pelleas et Melisande - was based on a Merovingian play. Or, perhaps, he just played along with those who believed the blasphemous, non-historical folk tales suggesting that Jesus had actually married Mary Magdalene and that the bloodline of their children led to French kings. According to some historians, his interests included the occult, alchemy and his social contacts included some who shared his interests. The poetry that he set to music was often dark or obscure. A late work for piano, the Épigraphes antiques, begins with the words "to invoke Pan, god of the summer wind." Obviously, Debussy's attraction for the pagan, the sensual and the satanic was more than just a rumor. The words of his songs and the structure of his music reveals his intent. According to historians, Debussy dealt with frequent depression and may have smoked opium. His personal life is marked with failed love affairs and scandal. Some of his music is sensual and quite beautiful while some is tense and sinister. Often there is an interplay between the two in the same work.
According to various music historians, Maurice Ravel was an atheist due to the influence of his mother. He never married but rumors include one or two long-lasting liaisons with married women, the possibility of a secretive homosexual life or, at times, visitations to Parisian bordellos. His personal life may have been mostly one of excessive dedication to his work.
Perhaps, the revelation of some of the darker aspects of their personalities will shed some light on the darkness of some of their music.
Debussy is often considered the most influential composer of the late 19th and early 20th century. According to many music historians, Debussy led the way for the experimentation and departure from traditional musical concepts and gave the modern composers the license and freedom to write anything they wanted. Debussy led the assault on traditional music with an attitude of, "do what you will," a motto of those in league with the devil. Passages of alluring sensuality and seductive beauty would lead to passages which, for the time, were considered dark and sinister. According to music historians, at the premiere of En blanc et noir, one of Debussy's later works for 2 pianos, French traditionalist composer Camille Saint-Saens exclaimed, "One must at all costs bar the doors of the Institute to a gentleman capable of such atrocities!"

Tone color (the arrangement of notes for a particular sound or effect,) harmony (including 9th chords) and rhythm (the beat) replaced melody and the traditional practice of changing and developing melody in music. A chord with two whole steps above the root, the augmented triad, adds a sinister, dark or dreamy quality. Every tone of the whole tone scale which Debussy invented produces an augmented triad with a raised 5th. Many of his compositions were symbolic of ideas, concepts or feelings. He used veiled or fragmented associations of melody, harmony, rhythm and tone color, often in a dream-like manner. Subtlety of shading, texture, tone color and a musical construction based on the flow and communication style of the French language were hallmarks of his work.

The flute melody, playing a whole tone scale, dominates the quiet, colorful pan-pipe atmosphere of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Fawn, an early work for orchestra. The Nocturnes call for a large orchestra that is often quiet and subdued in the 1st and 3rd movements - Nuages (clouds) and Sirenes (sirens), the latter featuring a wordless female chorus floating on the whole tone scale. Fetes (festivals or parties) begins calmly, in a sinister tone, but gradually grows in intensity until the end which dissolves chaotically as does drunken revelry. Another ponderous and calm work for a large orchestra is La Mer (The Sea.)
Although Debussy composed for orchestra, opera and chamber ensemble, his most significant and popular contributions are found in the literature for the piano and French chanson (song.)

Ravel is perhaps best known for the orchestral Bolero, but his piano works reveal a modern musical vocabulary. The form of his music was more traditional - neo-classical when compared with that of Debussy. His melodies are more traditional - a long, developing line of melody. Ravel's music can be calmly intense and hypnotic, attracting the listener with its melancholy beauty. It can be deep and complicated with a fascinating beauty of sound and construction. Ravel often wrote brief passages of harsh or dissonant melody and chords that would return to a gentler, more pleasing sound. At times, it has a clockwork, mechanical quality to it. According to friend and composer Stravinsky, that was due to Ravel's Swiss heritage. For certain, one of many things that Debussy and Ravel shared in common was a tendency to compose piano music of great difficulty - some of which is considered among the most difficult in the repertoire to perform.

Debussy became a composer after beginning his studies as a pianist. Influenced by Chabrier and Faure, the music of Wagner had a major impact on his mature style. Many of his compositional projects were left unfinished including an opera based on Edgar Allen Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." At the Paris exhibition, Debussy discovered the calming and transcendent music of the Javanese gamelan. Oriental scales and Spanish themes would also influence his music. Among the best piano works of Debussy - Clair de Lune (Moonlight) from the Suite Bergamasque, Reflets dans l'eau (reflections on the water) from Images for piano and Prelude Les collines d'Anacapri (The Hills of Anacapri.)

Maurice Ravel was younger than Debussy and sometimes labeled the "copycat." Debussy and Ravel fans had endless debates over who discovered or wrote what first or better. Ravel, who did not marry, is said to have led a quiet life, living and visiting regularly with family and close single and married friends, a number of them Jewish, in times when anti-Semitism was rising in Europe. An accomplished pianist, he accompanied singers on European tours. Ravel's Swiss father was an automotive engineer and accomplished amateur musician and his mother was Basque.

The French style of painting known as pointillism is reflected the music of Ravel. This musical style is composed of many points of sound as the paintings are composed of many small points of paint which reflect the light. For an example, listen to #3, Une barque sur l'ocean from Miroirs. Ravel specializes in melodies placed on top of rapidly moving complex chords, rapid arpeggios and runs, complex shifting chordal figurations accented by notes which are prominent due to their volume, length or placement in the chord, a wide dynamic range and extremes of range (particularly in the lower register of the piano where he likes to employ soft dynamics.)

The exploration of ninth chords figures prominently in the music of Ravel, as does his fascination with extending and exploring waltz form and 3/4 time in Valses nobles et sentimentals, La valse and Bolero. Ravel wrote some absolutely beautiful music in its simplicity and sonority - Prelude (1913), Ma mere l'oye (the Mother Goose Suite No.1 and the Pavane pour une infante defunte. The Mother Goose Suite was written for the children of friends. We hear the momentary flavor of Paris salon jazz style in some of his piano music.


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