sped up with seamless, key matched transitions.

around the turn of the 20th century, french impressionist art was contemporary to an evolving classical music scene that was centered in paris.

at the heart of parisian classical music, was the paris conservatory. all of the french composers that are featured in this mix, belonged to the conservatory as alumni. camille saint-saëns studied at the school as a young teenager, and eventually he would directly teach gabriel fauré. fauré studied at the conservatory as a student, taught maurice ravel, and would be the dean of the conservatory. on the other hand, clause debussy would be disliked by conservatory staff for composing music that would abandon established, traditional classical music forms. meanwhile, erik satie generally never took his studies seriously, and he ultimately never completed a musical program there.

although the two leading figures of "impressionist" music, debussy and ravel, weren't satisfied with the impressionist label on their music, it seems like french classical composers around this time period were trying to evoke certain imagery with their music that went beyond just musical forms, and i will give a brief "impression" of what the composers were attempting to capture through music.

playlist:

00:00
camille saint-saëns
"le carnaval des animaux: le cygne"
(the carnival of animals: the swan)
features a lush cello solo accompanied by 2 pianos, like a swan swimming gracefully across water.

00:22
gabriel fauré
"pavane"
a pavane is an old, antequated spanish court dance.

02:29
maurice ravel
"pavane pour une infante défunte"
(pavane for a dead princess)
a pavane that's straight out of time that could've been for a princess who lived a long time ago.

03:55
claude debussy
"petite [suite]: en bateau"

04:24
erik satie
"gymnopedie no. 1"
satie named his gymnopedies after the ancient greek gymnopaedia festivals where young men would dance around while being naked. satie envisioned his gymnopedies as background music meant to accompany social settings, which makes me feel like perhaps satie was one of the first "pop" musicians ever, filling a niche between classical and folk musics.

05:31
satie
"je te veux"
(i want you)
features a vocalist with lyrics.

06:55
ravel
"le tombeau de couperin [suite]: prélude"
each movement of this "tombeau" is dedicated to the memories of ravel's friends who died during the 1st world war. furthermore, a tombeau was an old formal arrangement popular with an older generation of baroque french composers, such as françois couperin, the composition's namesake.

08:09
debussy
"arabesque no. 1"
meant to invoke musically the same arch shaped designs commonly found in arabic and islamic architecture.

08:40
fauré
"dolly [suite]: berceuse"

08:57
ravel
"ma mère l'oye: laideronnette, impératrice des pagodes"
(mother goose [suite]: little ugly girl, princess of the pagodas)
based off a folk tale that concerns a girl that reigns over some asian pagodas. ravel creates an oriental sound by heavily featuring pentatonic scale in this movement. he also happened to have originally written the movement in the key of F# major, whose pentatonic scale can be played by pressing all the black keys on the piano.

09:47
debussy
"clair de lune"
(moonlight)

an introductory mixed playlist of french classical piano music from the turn of the 20th century.

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an introductory mixed playlist of french classical piano music from the turn of the 20th century.

DoLe