Modern Music: Impressionism, Expressionism, Neoclassicism

Musical Impressionism: Sound and Sensation

Musical Impressionism was a typically French movement. It is related to Impressionist paintings, referring to open spaces with colorful, luminous, and blurred landscapes (the name Impressionism is based on Monet's painting called Impression, Sunrise). It is also associated with the symbolism of poetry that presents mystery and irrationality as something beautiful.

• The main composers were Claude Debussy, who was inspired by the exotic music of the Far East and created chromatic color atmospheres, and Maurice Ravel, often labeled as a Debussy imitator, but with an extraordinary detail and precise compositional technique that represents orchestral color.
• The sound becomes a vehicle for the internal sensations produced by the real world, a personal impression of the world. Composers of this style no longer try to describe something defined, but to reflect the sensations it produces—for example, a landscape, a sunset, or a scene—and to convey new sound combinations and atmospheres.

Expressionism in Music: The Human Soul Unveiled

• With the so-called Second Vienna School, new paths were paved in music that would break with previous musical traditions. Expressionism was a movement that influenced painting, literature, and music, characterized by the expression of the human soul in a very harsh and pessimistic way.
• The most representative composer was Arnold Schoenberg, who created atonalism and the twelve-tone technique, which consists of combining the 12 sounds without repeating any, so that no sound is more important than others (unlike tonal music). We can say that it is the most important musical revolution of the 20th century, as it broke all the rules that existed until then in Western music. With Schoenberg, all established order and organization of sounds disappeared, and musical themes were constructed in a completely different way to produce abstract and sometimes confusing melodies that broke with the music people were used to listening to. He also created a type of recited song called Sprechgesang, which attempted to achieve a violent expression of the text.

Neoclassicism: A Return to Clarity in 20th Century Music

Neoclassicism appeared as a reaction against Post-Romanticism, Impressionism, and Expressionism. It meant a return to formal clarity and turned to the cultivation of forms and genres of Classicism and the Baroque period, to find a new type of simplicity. This style of tonal music manifests itself with simple melodies, trying to be easy and pleasant to listen to, but without giving up the sound resources that the 20th century had provided. Among the most important representatives of Neoclassicism are Igor Stravinsky, who composed in different styles besides the neoclassical, and Sergei Prokofiev with popular compositions such as Peter and the Wolf.