CLARTMU064 - Impressionistic Music: From Debussy to Stravinsky
Music often seems to have . . . fairly hard edges. You can tap your foot to it. You can sing a melody . . . the moment that Impressionism arrives . . . these clarities begin to be blurred and another kind of clarity comes through. The kind of clarity you would use to describe moonlight on water. —David Robinson
Conductor Carlos Andrés Botero illuminates the artistry, elements and influence of impressionistic classical music. Emphasizing sensations and feelings and harnessing “color” or timbre to evoke mood, impressionistic composers also often drew inspiration from the subjects and themes that fascinated Impressionistic painters. This course has a particular focus on composers active from 1889 to the 1910s including Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie, Gabriel Faure, Marion Bauer, Lili Boulanger, Alexander Scriabin and Igor Stravinsky, the inheritor of Impressionism. With special guest, Rice University art historian Dr. Leo Costello.
You may also be interested the fall 2021 course From Impressionism to Modernism: The Development of European Art taught by Dr. Leo Costello. In addition, you may be interested in Mr. Botero’s pre-recorded/on- demand courses, How Classical Music Is Created and American Sounds: Great Symphonic Music of North and South America.
Course Details
Carlos Andrés Botero, M.M., is an orchestra conductor, music education lecturer and consultant with first-level orchestras in Europe and the Americas, including the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Nashville Symphony, the Xalapa Symphony, Medellin Philharmonic and the Colombian Youth Philharmonic. He is the musical ambassador of the Houston Symphony and artistic director of Sinfónica ISMEV in Mexico. Mr. Botero has a master’s in music degree from the Escuela Soto Mesa in Madrid, Spain, and a second master’s in music in viola performance from Eastern Michigan University. He has taught with the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies since 2016.
Online: Synchronous
This course will be delivered in a synchronous format online. Registered participants will receive login instructions to the course page, which will provide access to the virtual classroom link and other resources.
- “Delightful ambiguity: How color leaped from the canvas into an orchestra” (Monet and Debussy)
- “Claude Debussy: The master of tensionless harmony and the ever-flowing melody”
- “The firmament is a cluster of stars: Lili Boulanger, Marion Bauer and other lesser-known figures”
- “Maurice Ravel: Impressions of a genius refusing to be framed by any stylistic boundaries”
- “Impressionists in Saint Petersburg: The eager ascent of Impressionism in the Northern Venice”
- “Stravinsky’s Russian ballets: A frenzied journey onto the edge of modernity”