We all associate impressionism with the French. That’s hardly surprising, nor is it inappropriate. The French more or less invented the stuff, after all. Those marvelous painters such as Monet and Renoir with their bewitching color combinations, luminous light, and eye-tickling canvases—what’s not to like?
Even if Debussy wasn’t any kind of full-time impressionist, even if the term only fits Ravel’s earlier music, even if there’s something slightly silly about even attempting to yoke such a visual notion to sound, musical impressionism is a real thing. We all recognize it when we hear it, even though we may not be able to put our collective or figurative finger on precisely what it is about a particular piece that justifies the label.
For now I’m not particularly interested in making an attempt, game or futile, at hammering down a list of techniques, elements, or stylistic traits that establish musical impressionism beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yards of articles and piles of books have been written to precisely that end—and their collective track record is a big fat zero.
So nuts to that. My present purpose is no likelier to succeed but at least promises to be reasonably entertaining, if not for the reader, at least for me. And Free Composition is all about me, dammit. My thoughts are turning towards those English composers who are typically described as impressionists, even though in most cases the term fits them as poorly as it does their counterparts across the Channel. But I have no intention of waxing all cerebral or aesthetically taxological. This article is a public service. I want to introduce you to some cool music. Whereas most of the major-league French impressionists are familiar indeed—Debussy’s music is encoded into humanity’s DNA by this point—most of the English practitioners don’t get no respect nowhere, not even on their home turf.
That’s a crying shame. Life’s too short to miss out on Nympholept. So cast off any restricting preconceptions. We’ve all picked up those silly stereotypes about British composers being stuffy, stodgy, stilted, and all that. Or how they write nice pieces about cows gazing over fences but there’s not a decent hanging pair of cojones amongst the lot. At least that’s what some people say. But what do they know? If you want to spend all of your waking hours dozing through the collected chamber works of William Sterndale Bennett, be my guest. But why shut yourself up in some tweedy parlor? Follow me out into the sunshine, where we’ll wander through the fragrant gardens of musical Albion.
The fact is that English music isn’t necessarily placid, and the most vibrant of the English impressionists are anything but staid. They can be downright lurid, in fact, purveyors of stuff so heated that concert-hall management would be well advised to check IDs at the door.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
A sometime impressionist, Vaughan Williams was the most respectable of a mostly libidinous crew. His impressionism, when and where it occurs, tends to be both introverted and pastoral. I hasten to point out that the vast bulk of VW’s work isn’t impressionist in the slightest. Yet he definitely does have his cow-and-fence moments. And when he goes all Sisley on us, the results can be mesmerizing. There are no more evocative works in all music than In the Fen Country or The Lark Ascending, both triumphs of nature portraiture using the full panoply of Debussyian harmonic syntax and tonal materials borrowed from pre-Classical British music.
Arnold Bax
Oh, what a guilty pleasure is Sir Arnold. He just loved to whip up succulent sonorities and majestic sonic tapestries about everything from marshes to moors to eye-popping processionals stuffed with kings and bishops and dignitaries. At his best—and there’s a great big whole lot of Bax at his best—he is a Cinerama-class conjurer of goodies galore. Even when he keeps his knickers buttoned he has a lot to offer. Try the Three Northern Ballads if you’re in the mood for Bax with his kimono open wide to the breezes. Consider his pastel evocation of Celtic mythology, The Garden of Fand, for a haunting Anglo-Saxon take on La Mer. And then there’s November Woods; if you haven’t swooned your way through that frankly erotic toot yet, hie yourself without delay to the nearest Chandos Records outlet—try theclassicalshop.net for full-quality downloads at reasonable prices—and grab yourself the requisite Vernon Handley/BBC Symphony album. Or better yet, treat yourself to the entire Handley/BBC-Chandos series of Bax’s orchestral music. It’s about six some-odd CDs, every one of them brimming over with drop-dead hot stuff. Do it. Do it now. Your ears will thank me.
Cyril Scott
If Arnold Bax is like a weekend in Vegas, then Cyril Scott is like relocating to Sodom & Gomorrah. I’ll be the first to allow that Scott’s opulence spills over the rim of good taste with clockwork regularity. In fact, any Cyril Scott piece worth its salt is bound to blow at least a few fuses, while the best are likely to fry the entire panel. Never mind: there’s fun to be had. Lots and lots of good sizzly fun. If you feel up to giving ol’ C.S. a roll in the hay, I heartily recommend his Symphony No. 3, subtitled The Muses. What a bodacious bevy of Grecian urns they are, all glittering instrumentation and ear-tickling chords and cool melodies. Just when you start thinking he’s gone about as far as he can go C.S. kicks off his finale with a wind machine, and then tops it off with a full-tilt Hollywood woo-woo chorus. Harps! Bells! Xylophones! Glockenspiel! Celesta! Drums! Cymbals! Pianos! Tambourines! Castanets! Pipe Organ! Seventy-Six Trombones! More Woo-Woo!! Somehow he maintains enough control to retain at least some fleeting semblance of class—there’s just no gainsaying the guy’s mastery of the orchestra or his rock-solid formal technique. Nevertheless you don’t do Cyril Scott to savor refined compositional subtlety. You do Cyril Scott to get your sonic rocks off.
Frederick Delius
Although Delius is often trotted out as the English impressionist par excellence, he strikes me as being even more a part-time candidate for the purple than Monsieur Claude de France. To be sure, if On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring isn’t impressionist, then there is no such thing as impressionism and I should pop this article into the trash right now. Yet there is Cuckoo. And there is the Songs of Sunset cycle, and there’s no way in hell that Sunset is even remotely impressionist. Passionate, romantic, even post-romantic, definitely. But those superheated orchestrated songs for mezzo, baritone, and chorus belong in the Berlioz tradition of Les Nuits d’été, and have little to do with, say, La demoiselle elue. Perhaps Delius is so often fingered as a full-time impressionist because a fair amount of his music is ethereal and elusive. But he could boogie a thoroughgoing Macho Macho Man when he felt like it. In the Songs of Sunset the guy is in estrus, he’s panting, he’s practically getting himself arrested for indecent exposure. So have a little Cuckoo as a sip of English Monet, and then crack Songs of Sunset wide open for the thrills. You might want to pull the shades down first, though. Just saying…