in france a movement called impressionism was popular with painters. composers were very interested in these paintings. claude debussy wrote music which is often called “impressionistic”. the ideas of clear tonality (being clear about which key the music is in) are often deliberately blurred. he uses interesting chords just for the sound that they make. he used the whole tone scale and pentatonic scale and was inspired by javanese music. maurice ravel’s music is sometimes similar, although he developed his own style. later french composers include olivier messiaen who used a system of new scales which he called modes of limited transposition. he was also interested in music from around the world, and he also used bird song in his music.