(I have made this one free to let you see the kind of thing generally available only with a subscription.)
In the late nineteenth century painters began to employ the new genre of Impressionism, now having to compete with the camera for realism. So, we can see in the works of Van Gogh, Monet, and Manet, paintings that appear to be in motion, wheat fields that are blown somewhat by wind, rain falling and causing a moving reflecting on a city street, and the wild motion of the night sky. But much earlier than the appearance of visual Impressionism, composers had created a feeling of motion and life through sound that has the effect of creating a picture in the mind. We shall look at two examples. One is the Sanctus from Johann Sebastian Bach’s B Minor Mass, and the other is the Sixth Symphony of Ludwig Van Beethoven, “The Pastoral.”
Bach’s Sanctus
Before Bach ever wrote his B Minor Mass in Leipzig, composers had used techniques such as a chromatic descent in music to express mourning and had used a faster kind of descending melody in violins to produce the impression of laughter. Bach took impressions in music in a new direction by using a circular melody sung by a choir to create the idea of incense rising in a smokey cloud. The text to the Sanctus is drawn from the sixth chapter of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah.
In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.
- Isaiah 6:1-4
The Latin text adds “heaven” to the proclamation:
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua. That is, “Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Hosts: Heaven and Earth are full of thy glory.”
The impressionism caused by the sound of the choir creating almost a visual image of the smoke of the incense rising up in the temple to the throne of God, can be heard in this two-part movement. Slowly and stately, it runs through the angelic proclamation: “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth.” Then the same device speeds up to continue its ascension in a fugal development of the words, Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua. 1 In the Book of Revelation the rising smoke is a picture of “the prayers of the saints”
And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand.
- Revelation 8:3,4
Claude Lorrain Landscape with Merchants
Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony
Ludwig Van Beethoven was very much a musical pioneer in his time, opening up new territories, to boldly go [sic] where no composer had gone before. In his Sixth Symphony he used music to take us for a walk through the magnificent and beautiful countryside. Beethoven indicated in the score that his Pastoral Symphony was “More the expression of feeling than Tone Painting…[not] merely a programmatic representation of the experience of being in nature” The entire image of a green paradise is created immediately by the flowing melodies of the first two movements, the second movement giving us a delightful song by a bird before it moves on, making use of a flute. But there is one mistake he made: He forgot to check the weather. Alas, he gets us caught in a thunderstorm at one point, the sound of rain so strongly suggested by the instruments that we feel like we are being thoroughly soaked. The thunder rolls in this storm, rolling most powerfully in the String Basses, then exploding on the timpani. Flashes of lightening terrify us because we can “see” the flashes through the sound of strings and woodwinds. But it is over suddenly, fading into the next sensation created by the moving air as storms often do. We can hear, again almost see, the clouds part as the sun brightens the sky with a majestic melody that tells us that the storm is over, and all is right in our pastoral paradise once again.
Many years ago, I burst out laughing at a headline in one of those silly tabloids that sold in grocery stores: “Boy can see with his ears.” But in these pieces of music those words are not silly at all. You may notice that I have not described these pieces with technical Music Theory language. That is because these two, among the greatest of composers, did not use the standard mathematical formulas of harmony and harmonic progression to give us these musical pictures - indeed, musical sensations, even a smell of incense, of rain, and of air cleansed by the storm and wind. They used something more akin to the colors used by painters. Their creation of Impressionism in music in both of these examples was something new, something completely original that does not come from a musical textbook. It is something so innovative that it cannot be taught or learned, but only created by an ingenious and daring imagination.
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Bach : Sanctus from the B Minor Mass
Beethoven : Symphony Number Six, the Pastoral