Impressionism in music is the parallel to the paintings of Monet, Renoir, and Degas. Instead of dramatic melodic lines — sonic “patches”; instead of clear harmonic logic — coloristic chords (including parallel fifths and thirds, non-tertian stacks, whole-tone scales).
Claude Debussy is the founder of the genre (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, La Mer, the Preludes). Maurice Ravel brought Impressionism to the highest formal precision (Boléro, Rapsodie espagnole). Impressionism influenced Respighi, Manuel de Falla, and American jazzmen (Bill Evans). Its Ukrainian echo is heard in the music of Stanyslav Liudkevych and the early Borys Lyatoshynsky.
