Impressionist Music - Impressionist Composers

Impressionist Composers

Some composers who have been labeled impressionists are Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, André Caplet, Frederick Delius, Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, Erik Satie, Albert Roussel, Alexander Scriabin, Lili Boulanger, Federico Mompou, Charles Tomlinson Griffes and Karol Szymanowski.

Ernest Fanelli was claimed to have innovated the style, though his works were unperformed before 1912. Some important precursors of musical impressionism include works by Chopin, Liszt, Mussorgsky, Chabrier, and Grieg.

The French composer Maurice Duruflé is sometimes said to be "the Ravel of the organ" and is clearly inspired by both Ravel and Debussy in several of his compositions, most notably perhaps the Sicilliene of the Suite pour orgue, op. 5. A Duruflé biography edited by Ronald Ebrecht is even titled "The last Impressionist".

Impressionism has also influenced at least some of the music of Manuel de Falla, Paul Dukas, Jean Sibelius, George Butterworth, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, John Ireland, Cyril Scott, Zoltán Kodály, Ottorino Respighi, Jacques Ibert, Bohuslav Martinu, Olivier Messiaen, Alan Hovhaness, Ned Rorem, György Ligeti, Selim Palmgren, and Toru Takemitsu, among others, as well as jazz musicians such as Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, Claude Thornhill, Bud Powell, Dave Brubeck, Gil Evans, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Frank Kimbrough, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Shirley Horn and Esperanza Spalding, progressive rock musicians such as King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, and Yes, the entire genre of post-rock, and electronic artists like Tangerine Dream and Popol Vuh, as well as Aphex Twin and Autechre.