It's almost impossible to discuss Jobim's musical development towards an essentially harmonic style without speaking of Claude Debussy. Nevertheless, we can't ignore the fact that he was a songwriter, and that some of the innovations brought to Brazilian music by the bossa nova movement concerned the lyrics as well. With a remarkably visual quality, those lyrics seem to share some curious affinities with the impressionist paintings of Monet. Without focusing on the search for direct influences, this article intends to indicate possible common conceptions shared by those distinct domains, which seem to have offered similar responses to the artistic and human dilemmas of each context and age.
Tom Jobim; Debussy; Monet; Impressionism