Improvised music

[Bryn]

We have broad topic areas on this forum on which to report and discuss composed classical music and jazz. However, where sould one discuss non-jazz, non-classical improvised music characterised by the likes of AMM, much of Evan Parker's work, FURT, et al. London venues such as Cafe OTO and IKELCTIK feature a lot of such music. Perhaps we could have a secion of the forum devoted to such.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I just wish I could do it.

The only time when I improvise is when the music falls off the stand.

[Richard Barrett]

"Opinions about free music are plentiful and differ widely. They range from the view that free playing is the simplest thing in the world requiring no explanation, to the view that it is complicated beyond discussion. There are those for whom it is an activity requiring no instrumental skill, no musical ability and no musical knowledge or experience of any kind, and others who believe it can only be reached by employing a highly sophisticated, personal technique of virtuosic dimensions. Some are attracted to it by its possibilities for musical togetherness, others by its possibilities for individual expression." (Derek Bailey)

Here's one I prepared earlier https://soundcloud.com/r-barrett/zso...-viola-richard

[Serial_Apologist]

For me the "best" improvisation fulfill's Whitney Balliett's definition of "the sound of surprise", as referring to jazz, though, as Dizzy Gillespie and Ronnie Scott once admitted to each other in conversation, in the case of jazz, originality is rarely in evidence. This forum is particularly hamstrung by generic loyalties - partly, maybe, because of the pain and struggle musicians whether they be on-score composers, on-the-spot improvisers, or combiners of both forms of musicking, have encountered in exploiting inherent posibilities for further development they find in particular musical cultures or idioms, thus taking them beyond their time, in the Varesian sense, or beyond the pale for those wanting for purposes of social control to restrict musical change to aspects of production peripheral to the music per se.

This may be one reason improvised music has difficulty in finding a home on a forum such as this, where many (including myself) are hyperconscious of "where we're coming from".

Hopefully this may spark further ideas; one thing that has always struck me is the essential 40 and more years of non-evolution in the language of commerical pop music, such as would have made even Mendelssohn in his "old age" blanche, with global economic hegemonsation now almost as indistinguishable worldwide as shopping malls and airport lounges, when clothing and interior design fashions have gone through so many changes... and repetitions.

Thanks for the link, Richard.

[Richard Barrett]

Some more words for consideration:

"1. Group improvisation involves an attempt to make music that no one player could imagine. It should force the musicians beyond their own conceptions.
2. Each player should equally be able to affect the content, form and direction of the music at any moment.
3. The physicality of sound production is inescapably connected with the creation, not just the execution, of the music.
4. Free improvised music is necessarily spontaneous, but is built on a background of years of study, experiment, thought and experience.
5. There exists the possibility of trying to play a music with no history.
6. Free improvisation shows that complexity is actually very natural.
7. Contemporary music seems to operate within a continuum - from the often refreshing ideas of "sound left to be itself" to the sometimes grotesque extremes of "self expression." Free improvisation can operate anywhere within this. Often, most interestingly, with ambiguity - even at different points simultaneously.
8. The listeners hears the reasoning behind musical choices in real time.
9. Regular improvising means engaging with that Derek Bailey has described as a "search for whatever is endlessly variable."
10. In most of the free improvisation I enjoy, decisions are made and techniques developed for "musical" rather than for "instrumental" reasons.
11. Improvising musicians are continually modifying their intentions in response to each other. This happens at the actual point of creation and execution – sometimes against an individual player's own preferences.
12. Tim Hodgkinson has written “Improvised music grips human beings because it is illuminated by the vivid presence of myriad possibilities that were not taken.”
13. Most performers are aware, moment by moment, of only a few things they can do which will sound "right" compared to hundreds that will sound "wrong." Free improvisation is very constrained and probably shouldn't be called free improvisation.
14. Players intuitively choose the actual music content according to the unique circumstances around each performance. The room's acoustic, the day's travel, the nature of the audience, their last few concerts, what they ate for dinner.
15. In improvisation you can hear the human beings behind the instruments."
(John Butcher)

[Bryn]

A few more words.

[MrGongGong]

It does require investment of time
It can be the most wonderful thing in the world
then in a moment turn into a waste of time
then back again
Improvisation is problematic for many people I think because it has many forms and meanings
It is good to see the music having a following and unlike the old LMC cafe OTO has it's own beer and the power doesn't go off randomly
good things happening in Leeds and elsewhere

It's a shame (with another hat on) that the word IMRPOVISE doesn't appear in the National Plan for Music Education in England

[Beef Oven!]

I just wish I could do it.

The only time when I improvise is when the music falls off the stand.

Noodling until you find the tune again isn't improvisation.

[Bryn]

... It's a shame (with another hat on) that the word IMRPOVISE doesn't appear in the National Plan for Music Education in England

Pretty outrageous, that. Though Menuhin readily admitted he has no great talent for improvisation, he did make sure it (though maybe not perhaps in quite the terms this thread relates to) was part of the syllabus at his school.

[Richard Barrett]

A few more words.

Those are indeed to my mind the most important words so far written on the subject.

[Joseph K]

Here's one I prepared earlier https://soundcloud.com/r-barrett/zso...-viola-richard

Currently enjoying this. Was the trio with Olaf Rupp ever recorded I wonder?

[Richard Barrett]

Was the trio with Olaf Rupp ever recorded I wonder?

It was but IIRC the recording conditions were unfavourable and it didn't come out very well, in technical terms at least.

[Serial_Apologist]

Some more words for consideration:

"1. Group improvisation involves an attempt to make music that no one player could imagine. It should force the musicians beyond their own conceptions.

One would think that the likelihood of creating music beyond the individual contributant's imagination would more probably be realised if the entrant to the session in question had little or no prior knowledge of the others involved. If I've got this right, with Company it was always Derek Bailey's aim to get players involved who had not previously performed together, so as to optimise the "surprise" element. But with a practically limited field of people to draw on, the aims are thereby foredoomed to unsustainability, one would have thought - though by upholding the "pavement art" principle of evanescence outlined in Cardew's document, this might be the "main point".

2. Each player should equally be able to affect the content, form and direction of the music at any moment.

3. The physicality of sound production is inescapably connected with the creation, not just the execution, of the music.

But with improvisation, the creation would consist in the execution.

4. Free improvised music is necessarily spontaneous, but is built on a background of years of study, experiment, thought and experience.
5. There exists the possibility of trying to play a music with no history.

Are not these two statements in mutual contradiction?

6. Free improvisation shows that complexity is actually very natural.

I think what constitutes "complexity" would be viewed differently in different historical periods. My own thought is that if anything is "natural" it is the tendency for complexity, or addition of detail and sub-detail and its ramificatory workout implications, to increase in line with the complexity of information we need to carry out our everyday lives in the "advanced" speeded up world of the past 100 or so years - this applying not just in improvised music but in C20 music of the classical lineage in general. Carter made this observation in relation to his own change of course from the late 1940s, having earlier espoused a kind of neo-classical neue saschlichkeit in common with Copland et al in the 1930s.

7. Contemporary music seems to operate within a continuum - from the often refreshing ideas of "sound left to be itself" to the sometimes grotesque extremes of "self expression." Free improvisation can operate anywhere within this. Often, most interestingly, with ambiguity - even at different points simultaneously.
8. The listeners hears the reasoning behind musical choices in real time.

Including the performers as listeners, of course. However, it is asking "a lot" to expect unprepared or unfamiliar audiences who would be expected to infer such reasoning, without knowing the backgrounds of the respective participants or their work in musical areas in which such "reasoning" is encoded.

9. Regular improvising means engaging with that Derek Bailey has described as a "search for whatever is endlessly variable."
10. In most of the free improvisation I enjoy, decisions are made and techniques developed for "musical" rather than for "instrumental" reasons.
11. Improvising musicians are continually modifying their intentions in response to each other. This happens at the actual point of creation and execution – sometimes against an individual player's own preferences.

I would have no argument with any of the above.

12. Tim Hodgkinson has written “Improvised music grips human beings because it is illuminated by the vivid presence of myriad possibilities that were not taken.”

That remark reminds of one of Boulez's - not by any means an unalloyed supporter of free improvisation - apropos Debussy's Jeux, which in so many words he described as consisting of overtaken thematic elements left in suspension, making one constantly conscious of possibilities consciously not pursued - except that in that instance the decision consciously to change direction at given points have been weighed in the balance of the whole unfolding work, whereas in improvisation the improviser submits his or her intentions to the ostensible needs of the musical situation as it happens.

13. Most performers are aware, moment by moment, of only a few things they can do which will sound "right" compared to hundreds that will sound "wrong." Free improvisation is very constrained and probably shouldn't be called free improvisation.

Well I would have thought any action can be judged "free" as long as it is enacted in full sensitivity to its environment, rather than constricted or imposed by presupposition, prejudice or psychocultural "baggage", but that the "constraint" involved has, in its turn, to be motivated.

14. Players intuitively choose the actual music content according to the unique circumstances around each performance. The room's acoustic, the day's travel, the nature of the audience, their last few concerts, what they ate for dinner.
15. In improvisation you can hear the human beings behind the instruments."
(John Butcher)

One could say that one always hears the people behind the instruments, whatever music or the kind of music is being played; but in pre-composed music a score can become a sort of mask to hide behind? The hiding would in any case be revelatory, assuming one knew what to look out for.

[MrGongGong]

5. There exists the possibility of trying to play a music with no history.

I find this interesting
because when I listen to those who play this music all the time it has as much a sense of history as if I go to hear any other music.
The times when I think this IS true is when people play without realising that they are doing the activity called "improvisation", this happens (in my experience and as an example) usually when i'm working with people on the Autistic spectrum who might not use language at all.

[Richard Barrett]

One would think that the likelihood of creating music beyond the individual contributant's imagination would more probably be realised if the entrant to the session in question had little or no prior knowledge of the others involved. If I've got this right, with Company it was always Derek Bailey's aim to get players involved who had not previously performed together, so as to optimise the "surprise" element. But with a practically limited field of people to draw on, the aims are thereby foredoomed to unsustainability, one would have thought

Not at all. It's a question of this kind of collaboration being able to imagine collectively a music that none of the individuals involved could imagine on their own, rather than being constantly "surprised". My experience (which has led me to the opposite of Derek's view) is that this collective creative imagination is more likely to come into being the more insight the participants have into one another, which is usually but not always the result of long and/or intensive mutual music-making.

Are not these two statements in mutual contradiction?

No. The "background of years of study, experiment, thought and experience" might be exactly what's required in order to create a "music with no history", or at least to attempt to do so. The "study" of an improvising musician crucially consists in developing not (just) the ability to realise their thoughts reliably in sound, but (also) the ability to react spontaneously and creatively (ie. often or always differently), to any unexpected event.

One could say that one always hears the people behind the instruments, whatever music or the kind of music is being played; but in pre-composed music a score can become a sort of mask to hide behind?

I think the difference between say Derek Bailey and Pat Metheny is of a different order to the difference between Julian Bream and John Williams. You hear the people behind the instruments much more vividly when they are inventing the material themselves, based on personal abilities and ergonomic tendencies rather than generalised ones. However:

"As regards my own work, if the word “free improvisation” is replaced by “notated composition” most of these points still hold, particularly numbers 4, 6, 9, 12 and 15. This is perhaps one of the primary distinguishing features of my personal compositional approach, as I hope will be clarified in part 2 of this book." RB, Music of Possibility (2018)