Maurice Ravel and the Rise of Expressionism
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) took impressionism in his own sophisticated direction. His music often featured water themes - whether flowing peacefully or raging stormily - and used intricate melodies with complex chord progressions that somehow still sounded elegant and musical.
Expressionism emerged around 1912 as the complete opposite of impressionism. While impressionists captured environmental moods, expressionists revealed the composer's inner psychological state. This movement used atonality and twelve-tone scales to express powerful emotions like anxiety, rage, and alienation.
Expressionist music has three defining characteristics. It conveys strong emotions by distorting reality to express inner feelings rather than objective beauty. Dissonant harmonies dominate the sound, often creating unsettling feelings that can make listeners uncomfortable. The texture constantly changes through varying timbre, harmony, tempo, and rhythms.
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) became famous for developing the twelve-tone system, where all twelve notes relate only to each other without a traditional key center. Though his music was incredibly complex and demanding for listeners, it opened entirely new possibilities for musical expression.
Study Tip: Think of expressionism as music that shows what's happening inside the composer's mind, not the outside world!