Introduction to Claude Debussy ~ Impressionist Composer

Rightio! Welcome all young musicians, who are also taking music, and who have been assigned the 'Music Blog' assignment. I don't really enjoy the Wordpress site, so I've decided to use this domain as a place to start my music blog.

The composer I have chosen to study is Claude Debussy. Debussy was a French composer, he enjoyed impressionism.

You may have heard impressionism in art class once or twice, and this is sort of the same type of thing, at least that's what I identify it as.

Impressionism in music is when you imagine something like sails, for example, and imagine what it would sound like. then you go off and write your little composition that sounds like sails.

The way I've interpreted it is something like Van Gough's work. The way things are in his paintings aren't how they actually how they are in real life.

So the impressionistic music that Debussy composes isn't the literal sounds that the sails make, but what they would sound like if they had a melody. The music is the way Debussy imagines it.

This was new and different in his time, because the music available in this time period was all stable and very to the point. Think of Beethoven and Mozart, they are the grrovy dudes who came up with those melodies that get stuck in your head all the time for no reason, (or is that just me?). Their music is very defined and stays at the same tempo and dynamic markings for most of the composition. Here's a quick example, bet you guys all know this song ! This is 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik' in G major, K.525.

Debussy does the opposite, he brings in many dynamic markings, crescendo and decrescendo.
With impressionism in Debussy's work, in many of his compositions the dynamic marks bring the music loud and soft again, giving the music 'blurred' edges and not really defining the notes. He was a key composer who changed the way future musicians composed, I suppose you can say he helped pioneer the Impressionist evolution of music.
Here's another quick video, this is Voiles, (meaning Sails in English), by Claude Debussy. Notice the looseness of the melody.

Well, that's all for now muso's. I shall blog more in the next coming days, so stay tuned if you want to see some score analysis!
Goodnight all. :)

Tanisha Ivy Pearl x