September 2004 – “New Age” is a term that’s lost a bit of it’s luster over the years. In theology it’s better represented by “New Thought”, but in music the term New Age still holds to describe a genre of instrumental music that is thoughtful, usually instrumental, and a great background for keeping with our own thoughts.
New Age music has it’s roots with the Impressionist music movement around the 1900’s. The Impressionist composers were mostly French and included Francis Poulenc, Claude Debussy and Erik Satie – part of “Les Six”. In the mid to late 1800’s German music ruled. The orchestrations and sheer numbers of performers had gotten so large it was hard to imagine anything larger. The peak of giant productions culminated with Wagner’s “Ring” opera cycle with runs nearly 12 hours and employees hundreds of performers. Impressionist music reacted to this by scaling down, being light and often times it’s purpose was simply as background music. This was a revolutionary idea at the time.
Three famous piano pieces from the original Impressionist “New Age” composers are Trois Gymnopedies by Erik Satie, Perpetual Movements by Francis Poulenc and Claire De Lune by Claude Debussy. The current music movement started by these composers was picked up in the 1970’s by pianist George Winston and later expanded by artists like Kitaro, Yanni and Vangelis; incorporating electronic sound sources.
I use elements of the impressionist styles when I play background music for meditation. If you listen closely you’ll hear slowly evolving tonal centers, triplets in the right hand vs. duplets in the left (Debussy “Arabesque” style), motor rhythms of constant steady movement and simple high melodies (a device from Minimalism). The composer I keep close to heart while playing for meditations is Francis Poulenc.