Music

[woodelf]

We know the Impressionists in painting, etc but who would be the Impressionists in music?...Debussy, Satie?...or who? Ta Muchly.

[saxy_jag]

Richard Strauss and his contemporaries were composing tone poems at about the same time as the impressionist movement was in full swing. Not sure whether were part of the same cultural movement, though.

[woodelf]

I wouldn't have thought so either, Saxy.

[jno]

I'm not sure there was a cultural movement, just one among painters who were working on new ways of representing on canvas what the eye sees. Given their commoon practice of working outdoors in nature you might find their roots in romantic poetry by the likes of Wordsworth; but their technique with paint was what marked them out. I don't know if you can really propose an aural equivalent of this.

[swedeheart]

I realise you may already be familiar with synesthesia, woodelf, but if you're not, I think this Wikipedia article will interest you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

Not that one would have to be a synesthete to understand your question, I'm not, and I still see what you're getting at, it just doesn't really evoke anything in me. My mother was a synesthete but nobody knew it until quite late in her life, including her - she thought it was the same for everyone and so never mentioned it until one day she said something casual about Tuesdays being yellow... with a hint of red in the middle... that sort of thing.

I discovered she was really talking about the word Tuesday, the word Wednesday, and so on, not the days themselves. I wrote down her descriptions, then asked her again six months later and guess what, the colours had changed, which I found even more interesting than the phenomenon as such. But I digress.

[seadogg]

Debussy has been described as an impressionist in music.
"La Mer" is to me, the musical equivalent of playing with light and shade on the sea's surface. He also seems to have a detachment from the self ( unlike Richard Strauss, much of who's music is autobiographical).

You have to remember that the big influence was Dickie Wagner and what he was god alone knows!

Forget it ,, its all marvellous!

[andy-hughes]

Oasis?