- If Claude Monet is the titan of Impressionist art, his counterpart in music is Claude Debussy. ... Monet's paintings are characterized by distinct, thin brush strokes, soft edges, and changing light. Likewise, Debussy's music blurs the edges and creates new harmonies in ways that give a dreamy characteristic to his music.
What are the similarities of Claude Debussy and Claude Monet?
- The impressionist composers are often linked to painters from the same period and with a similar artistic agenda. The music of Debussy is full of symbolism and uses a variety of scale forms and compositional devices that in some ways get closer to improvisation than composers from lets say the earlier Germanic tradition . Debussy loved to find appropriate ways to develop his works which seemed to be on a path of allowing inspiration to be part of the developmental process and not just a regular means of development technique as found in the classical sonata form ( for example) . To compare and link Debussy with Monet is not an easy task as it requires some generalisation . Monet had a love for painting nature scenes along with portraits and general scenery . The standout feature as it occurs to me would be linked to how an impressionist sees and uses light and shade in their pictures . In traditional painting much like photography , an artist would typically depict how light falls on a subject to be as close to photgraphically accurate as possible . In impressionist art , the artist often exaggerates this effect , as by doing so they give more to the viewers imagination , and therby increasing the artistic effect when done tastefully . I am sure this is not the last point that could be made regarding this but its the one point that stands out for me personally . Detail on a photographic level was not the goal .Now back to Dbeussy , he lived by creating an imaginary landscape , and made comments about this way of viewing the world and composing to meet this inner desire .So for me the process of both great artistes is actually not dissimilar despite their artforms being different . I hope this helps in some small way , i am sure others could elaborate even moreso .
