Impressionism, in music, a style initiated by French composer Claude Debussy at the end of the 19th century. The term, which is somewhat vague in reference to music, was introduced by analogy with contemporaneous French painting; it was disliked by Debussy himself. Elements often termed impressionistic include static harmony, emphasis on instrumental timbres that creates a shimmering interplay of “colours,” melodies that lack directed motion, surface ornamentation that obscures or substitutes for melody, and an avoidance of traditional musical form. Impressionism can be seen as a reaction against the rhetoric of Romanticism, disrupting the forward motion of standard harmonic progressions. The other composer most often associated with Impressionism is Maurice Ravel. Impressionistic passages are common in earlier music by Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Richard Wagner, and in music by later composers such as Charles Ives, Béla Bartók, and George
Musicians create polychords by placing two or more traditional three-tone chords (or triads) on top of each other.
A polychord in music and in the theory of music is considering two or more chords. They are placed one on top of the other which means that musicians are writing the polychords with the top chord above a line and with another chord at the bottom below.
