Take expressionism in small doses, morning and night
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
I have no problems with impressionism. It’s what French artists do off the cuff when they can’t be bothered with sketches, what French composers do in a wishy-washy mood. So Debussy, so easily recognised.
Expressionism is another matter. …
Read on here.
And here.
En francais ici.
Actually, Debussy made sketches of his music (the orchestral works), but did not bother to keep them for posterity. Also, there is nothing ‘wishy-washy’ about his scores, they are all meticulously notated and he expected performers to carefully carry-out the instructions, which is hard because the effect is to be as something being improvised on the spot. That effect has been written-out in the notation. It can still be an obstacle with performances today.
It was his many mediocre followers of whose music hardly anything has survived the times, who thought that his music was ‘vague’ and ‘impressionistic’, hence Debussy’s rejection of the term ‘impressionistic’ in relation to his music and his rejection of the idea that he was the ‘leader of a school’.
As for Schoenberg, it is the period of his ‘free atonalism’ that is generally considered ‘expressionistic’, and not the earlier music which is the normal fare of late romanticism. His ‘expressionistic period’ is considered to be the music between late romanticism and 12-tone music of the twenties and beyond.