is impressionism in music even possible?

For Impressionism we have, basically, Debussy. Lets count him as one impressionist. Ravel is the other 'impressionist,' but since he was truly a classicist and neoclassicist at heart and through and through, let's count him as just 1/2 of an 'impressionist.'

That leaves us with one and a half composers one could at all really call 'impressionist.' While the term is nothing more than a stylistic label it seems to be perceived by laymen as if it were one of the large music historic eras! That is one laugh: the second is the Impressionist tag in proportion to other eras of all of music history, the other eras having numerous composers working within a spectrum of the style the era is named for, not just one and a half composers.

But we are stuck with it, like Romantic, Classical, and Baroque.

As to your, "at most already (music) gives a representation of an object rather than the object itself." I think that is already pushing it past its capacity. Music cannot represent ANYTHING, unless the composer or someone has directly or indirectly told us so, with means other than 'just notes' , i.e. some textual or pictorial attachment, without which, it is 'just music.'

On its own, music cannot express anything verbal; cannot limn anything pictorial; cannot manifest science, math, philosophy or other imports or truths arrived at using other media or disciplines.

The idea of a musical structure, texture, or 'lay of the land,' i.e. a nature and nature of events, gestures, a shape, can be extracted from about anything else abstract or dynamic, as Analog, but not literal. The second movement of Debussy's La Mer, "Jeux de vagues" could have been taken from an observation of the behavior of light on a sea of light swells: as an analog of hydraulic behavior and the behavior of light, the composer got an idea of how he wanted the music, configuration and motion, to be. That is not anything near 'a picture.'

I am in agreement with the Stravinsky quote, "Music is incapable of expressing anything." - which he later amended by acknowledging that music has a tremendous power to evoke emotion in the listener.

It seems music also evokes entire pictorial or literal scenarios in some. What that demonstrates is that music is likely the universal Aural Rorschach blot for mankind.

Your first statement, "In visual arts impressionism is the representation of the "idea" of an object rather than the object itself." shows how far off-course the entire proposed question is, since music cannot represent objects, it cannot, logically, represent the 'idea of an object' either.

By my aesthetic, any piece of music - quiet and ordered or riotous and less formal -- should have as its primary goal some degree of ecstasis, i.e. its import and vital purpose is to lift the listener outside of their normal stable state (stasis).

I believe any attempt to attach other meaning, literal, philosophic, pictorial, psychological, etc. to the medium of music is a horrid attempt to lessen its power, and that impulse is most often found in those who are overwhelmed by it and are not brave enough to meet music face to face. Instead, they feel an impulse to reduce it in size to something they can handle. .

It is thought that earliest man, not having language, had awe for every boulder he passed when walking about. Once man arrived at calling that boulder 'rock.' the rock was reduced from its full animist presence, made less of, needed to no longer be given full regard.

I then, am an atavistic animist when it comes to art consumption - the naming of things non-musical in relation to music just kills it as an entity with a powerful presence. All verbal intellectual bits of cloth imposed upon it, 'references,' cultural or intellectual, are but a sheath of rags thrown over it to dress it down.

Best regards.

ADD: Claude Monet, when asked why he had chosen the subject of water lilies for so many paintings, answered, "I chose water lilies, but it could have been anything."

A very interesting statement. Impressionism implies that an art work from this style should represent some concrete object or idea of reality in an approximate and vague manner. The first condition that therefore must be fulfilled is that the source object or idea is specific and well-defined. The second condition that hereafter must be met is that the work truly yields an impression of that object or idea It is easily observed that in Debussy's piano preludes as an example both of these conditions are met and are prime examples of an impressionistic style. The fact that all music is relatively abstract since it is lost in time and more fluid-like as compared to a physical painting or art statue does not take away that the impressionistic association between object/idea and art work exists. Furthermore, the fact that our association is formed by the labels Debussy attaches to each of those pieces does not matter too much. 'Le vent dans la pleine' is likely to evoke similar associations even if we did not know the title Debussy attached to it. For music from Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Scriabin, Chopin, Rachmaninoff or Prokofiev and others it is hard to draw similar conclusions if we consider their whole oeuvre. In my opinion it is the definite association between source idea/object and composition that is lacking and does not allow us to speak of impressions for these composers. For me this argument could even be applied to Ravel. In my opinion there is thus room for compatibility and meaningful application in the context of music and I think one has the best chance of finding such style in program music. Maybe film scores rely upon creating impressions in combination with animated images. It is unlikely that music from before the twentieth

century will be really impressionistic since obviously Debussy used non tonal harmony to create impressionistic effects. Non tonal harmony was not explored extensively before 1900 to the purpose of such effects. Despite the foregoing, I do agree that impressionism as a label for Debussy's music is inappropriate since ultimately though his music creates impressions it is evidently real music and not some approximation to it. The label impressionism then seems to indicate a limited scope in his music and rather the opposite is true. It would be better to speak of impressionistic features or style elements and I personally prefer the term 'realism' to describe Debussy's works since they mimic to a high degree the source objects/ideas.

Impressionist Music Definition

In that case, if your argument is valid--all art is impressionistic. A painting is only an artist's impression of reality. That isn't the "Mona Lisa" stuck in the frame. She was a real woman (and many argue that she might have been more than one woman or model). She was artist Leonardo daVinci's impression of Lisa Gheradini, wife of Francisco del Giacondo. DaVinci chose the colors of paint to blend for her skin tone --and since high definition photography didn't exist back then, who is to say the real-life lady didn't have blotchy red complexion? Is that even a real background--actual mountains, rivers, etc? Of course not.

But DaVinci was not an "Impressionist" painter.

I mean, we can get all KINDS of philosophical here and question the whole notion of reality itself. We have sayings like "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" because not everyone can look at the same thing or person and perceive it and react to it in the same way.

Me? I like a lot of music because I find it pretty.I'm simple that way. Maybe that's why I like Impressionist paintings too. Nothing deep. Just a heartfelt emotional reaction.

Edit: I made a rather unfair remark that I found joshuacharlesmorris' question a bit pompous--which was a bit pompous on my part after further reflection. I've gone in and remove the wisecrack which should not have been made in the first place. I thank him for bringing up an interesting and valid point--though I will leave my answer that I don't necessarily see it the same way--but the question was an intelligent one and didn't deserve the putdown. My apology to the poster and anyone else who may have agreed with his position.

I believe so, considering Impressionism in art is similar to that of a musical value

I am one of those who chide the 'impressionist' tag. One needs to remember that the names for nearly all of the styles and periods of music were coined in the early 20th century by musicologists and historians. Bach and Handel did not know they were 'Baroque' composers, not that the contrapuntal masters before them (such as Palestrina and Lassus) were 'Renaissace' composers, just as Mozart and Haydn wouldn't have known what the word 'Classical' was supposed to signify.

The term 'impressionism' is a very unusual exception to this inasmuch as it was applied to Debussy's music during the composer's lifetime. He hated the term. Debussy's music was new in its time - it sounded unlike any other music being composed in the late Romantic period (I always call Debussy a 'late Romantic' composer, much to the chagrin of one or two of my fellow TCs here). This difference in Debussy's music sparked man's obsession with pigeon-holing things and, therefore, they called his music 'impressionist'. We get too hung up on such labels and I agree with you that ALL music can, in its way, be 'impressionistic' (I use the word in its widest, generic sense) to certain listeners.

I don't consider Debussy's musical depiction of the sea in 'La mer' to be any less 'graphic' than Richard Strauss's musical cameos in 'An Alpine Symphony', while Ravel's impression of a Chinese pagoda in 'Mother Goose' is as sepcific as you like - nothing particuarly 'impressionist' about it.

Silly label, means nothing, let's forget it.

I would call Holst's The Planets to be impressionism.