Impressionism in music, often associated with Claude Debussy, sought to capture the fleeting qualities of light and atmosphere through sound. Moving away from the goal-oriented harmonic progressions of the Romantic era, Impressionist works often utilized whole-tone and pentatonic scales to create a sense of 'static' beauty. This approach prioritized timbre and texture over traditional melodic development, resulting in a wash of sound that suggested rather than depicted its subject. Critics initially found this lack of clear form to be aimless, yet this departure from rigorous structuralism opened the door for the radical experiments of the twentieth century.