Musical improvisation:

Musical improvisation is the creative activity of immediate ("in the moment") musical composition, which combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians. ^[1] Thus, musical ideas in improvisation are spontaneous, but may be based on chord changes in Western music ^[2]

Because improvisation is a performative act and depends on instrumental technique, improvisation is a skill. There are musicians who have never improvised and other musicians who have devoted their entire lives to improvisation^[3].

Historical development in Western music

Throughout the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, improvisation was a highly valued skill. Francesco Landini, Adrian Willaert, Diego Ortiz, Frescobaldi, J.S. Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and many other famous composers and musicians were known especially for their improvisational skills. Improvisation might have played an important role in the monophonic period. The earliest treatises on polyphony, such as the Musica enchiriadis (ninth century), make plain that added parts were improvised for centuries before the first notated examples. However, it was only in the fifteenth century that theorists began making a hard distinction between improvised and written music.^[4] Many classical forms contained sections for improvisation, such as the cadenza in concertos, or the preludes to some keyboard suites by Bach and Handel, which consist of elaborations of a progression of chords, which performers are to use as the basis for their improvisation. Handel, Scarlatti, and Bach all belonged to a tradition of solo keyboard improvisation that was not limited to variations, but included the concerto form, typically with moving voices in both hands, occasionally exploring fugue.

Medieval period

Although melodic improvisation was an important factor in European music from the earliest times, the first detailed information on improvisation technique appears in ninth-century treatises instructing singers on how to add another melody to a pre-existent liturgical chant, in a style called organum.^[5] Throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, improvised counterpoint over a cantus firmus (a practice found both in church music and in popular dance music) constituted a part of every musician's education, and is regarded as the most important kind of unwritten music before the Baroque period.^[6]

Renaissance period

Following the invention of music printing at the beginning of the sixteenth century, there is more detailed documentation of improvisational practice, in the form of published instruction manuals, mainly in Italy.^[7] In addition to improvising counterpoint over a cantus firmus, singers and instrumentalists improvised melodies over ostinato chord patterns, made elaborate embellishments of melodic lines, and invented music extemporaneously without any predetermined schemata.^[8] Keyboard players likewise performed extempore, freely formed pieces.^[9]

Baroque period

Melodic instruments

Eighteenth-century manuals make it clear that performers on the flute, oboe, violin, and other melodic instruments were expected not only to ornament previously composed pieces, but also spontaneously to improvise preludes.^[10]

Keyboard, lute, and guitar

The pattern of chords in many baroque preludes, for example, can be played on keyboard and guitar over a pedal tone or repeated bass notes. Such progressions can be used in many other structures and contexts, and are still found in Mozart, but most preludes begin with the treble supported by a simple bass. J.S. Bach, for example, was particularly fond of the sound produced by the dominant seventh harmony played over, i.e., suspended against, the tonic pedal tone.^[11]

There is little or no Alberti bass in baroque keyboard music, and instead the accompanying hand supports the moving lines mostly by contrasting them with longer note values, which themselves have a melodic shape and are mostly placed in consonant harmony. This polarity can be reversed—another useful technique for improvisation—by changing the longer note values to the right hand and playing moving lines in the left at intervals—or with moving lines in both hands, occasionally. This shift of roles between treble and bass is another definitive characteristic. Finally, in keeping with this polarity, the kind of question and answer which appears in baroque music has the appearance of fugue or canon. This method was a favorite in compositions by Scarlatti and Handel especially at the beginning of a piece, even when not forming a fugue.^[12]

Organ improvisation and church music

Improvised accompaniment over a figured bass was a common practice during the Baroque era, and to some extent the following periods. Improvisation remains a feature of organ playing in some church services.

The Classical period

Keyboard improvisation

Classical music departs from baroque style in that sometimes several voices may move together as chords involving both hands, to form brief phrases without any passing tones. Though such motifs were used sparingly by Mozart, they were taken up much more liberally by Beethoven and Schubert. Such chords also appeared to some extent in baroque keyboard music, such as the 3rd movement theme in Bach's Italian Concerto. But at that time such a chord often appeared only in one clef at a time, (or one hand on the keyboard) and did not form the independent phrases found more in later music. Adorno mentions this movement of the Italian Concerto as a more flexible, improvisatory form, in comparison to Mozart, suggesting the gradual diminishment of improvisation well before its decline became obvious.^[13]

The introductory gesture of "tonic, subdominant, dominant, tonic," however, much like its baroque form, continues to appear at the beginning of high-classical and romantic piano pieces (and much other music) as in Haydn's sonata Hob.16/No. 52 and Beethoven's sonata opus 78.

Beethoven and Mozart cultivated mood markings such as con amore, appassionato, cantabile, and expressivo. In fact, it is perhaps because improvisation is spontaneous that it is akin to the communication of love.^[14]

Mozart and Beethoven

Beethoven and Mozart left excellent examples of what their improvisations were like, in the sets of variations and the sonatas which they published, and in their cadenzas. As a keyboard player, Mozart competed at least once with Muzio Clementi.^[15] Beethoven won many tough improvisatory battles over such rivals as Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Joseph Woelfl.^[16]

Romantic period

Instrumental

Extemporization, both in the form of introductions to pieces, and links between pieces, continued to be a feature of keyboard concertising until the early 20th-century. Amongst those who practised such improvisation were Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Anton Rubinstein, Paderewski, Percy Grainger and Pachmann. Improvisation in the area of 'art music' seems to have declined with the growth of recording.^[17]

Opera

After studying something more than 1,200 early Verdi recordings, Will Crutchfield concludes that "the solo cavatina was the most obvious and enduring locus of soloistic discretion in nineteenth-century opera". ^[18] He goes on to identify seven main types of vocal improvisation used by opera singers in this repertory ^[19]:

Modern opinions on improvisation in art music

Theodor Adorno

Toward the end of the section of Aesthetic Theory entitled "Art Beauty" (in the English edition), Theodor Adorno included a brief argument on improvisation's aesthetic value. Claiming that artworks must have a "thing-character" through which their spiritual content breaks, Adorno pointed out that the thing-character is in question in the improvised, yet present.^[20] It may be assumed Adorno meant classical improvisation, not jazz, which he mostly excoriated. He held jazz, for example, to be antithetical to Beethoven.^[21] There is more extensive treatment, essentially about traditional jazz, in Prisms and The Jargon of Authenticity.^[22]

Glenn Gould

Improvisation may be pressed to derive something novel from past material, which becomes outmoded through its limited concepts of tonality, form, and variation. Though his understanding of modern music was itself unorthodox, Glenn Gould appears to have such a view as he clearly thought musical history was a finite exploration of forms and tonal concepts, and exhaustible.^[23]

Despite these beliefs improvisation formed part of Gould's practicing and even recording, in the music of Richard Strauss. The crisis of music theory, however, was one of the primary reasons Gould focused on interpretation as an art in studio recording. In post-baroque music he often found traditional interpretation stale and boring. Gould's technique, which convinced many listeners, became conspicuous in some areas other than Bach and Beethoven. For example, he felt that Mozart could be hackneyed enough, even to cast doubt on the composer's own authority for form and development.^{[citation needed]}

Contemporary improvisation

Jazz improvisation

Improvisation is one of the basic tenets of jazz. Typically in a jazz piece, the "head" (the song's melody along with any backing harmony) is played once by the musicians and often repeated. Improvisation by any of the musicians follows, and this is typically the longest section of a song as each musician improvises their own melody over the harmonic and rhythmic foundation of the head. When the end of the head is reached it is repeated and a solo's length is specified by the number of repetitions of the head necessary. After one musician has finished improvising, another will begin, and no instrument is forbidden from improvising. A repetition of the head will usually end a jazz piece. There are many variations to this pattern; new sections can be added before and after the head, two musicians can alternatively improvise for short amounts of time (known as "trading"), or several musicians can improvise in a group (collective improvisation is common in Dixieland jazz).^{[citation needed]}

Many varied scales and their modes can be used in improvisation. These mainly depend on the nature of the harmonic framework. Against a C Minor seventh chord, for example, an improvisor would usually have a choice of using C Dorian, C Aeolian, C blues, and others, depending on the situation and personal taste. Chord changes are very important in jazz improvisation as well. Whole solos can be built around chord tones.^{[citation needed]}

In the bebop era of jazz in the early 1950s there was a common theme of urgency and technical proficiency. The modal era of jazz moved the harmonic framework for a piece from the fast, dynamic chord progressions of bebop to more static, relaxed chords with longer durations. Free jazz performers eschew the explicit harmonic framework for improvisation; the harmony in free jazz is less rigid and less traditional.^{[citation needed]}

Illinois Jacquet, for example, is best known for a single solo on the tune Flying Home, and such solos are often transcribed. They are often not written down in the process, but they help musicians practice the jazz idiom. Charlie Parker's improvisations were distinctive, helping to shape the bebop period. Though it is helpful to transcribe on one's own, Parker's solos are often studied in a published collection known as the Omni Book, and groups such as Supersax arrange his solos with their own harmonic backing.^{[citation needed]} Another example of a musician who improvises on solo piano is Keith Jarrett (see e.g.The Köln Concert).

Improvisors like Say and Montero gravitate towards jazz and a fusion with classical music.^{[citation needed]}

Contemporary classical music

While the first half of the twentieth century is marked by an almost total absence of actual improvisation in art music,^[24] since the 1950s, some contemporary composers have placed fewer restrictions on the improvising performer, using techniques such as vague notation (for example, indicating only that a certain number of notes must sound within a defined period of time). New Music ensembles formed around improvisation were founded, such as the Scratch Orchestra in England; Musica Elettronica Viva in Italy; Lukas Foss's Improvisation Chamber Ensemble at the University of California, Los Angeles; Larry Austin's New Music Ensemble at the University of California, Davis; the ONCE Group at Ann Arbor; the Sonic Arts Group; and Sonics, the latter three funding themselves through concerts, tours, and grants. Significant pieces include Foss's Time Cycles (1960) and Echoi (1963).^[25]

Several pianists also teach classical improvisation and perform, such as David Dolan,^[26] William Goldstein,^[27] Yitzhak Yedid and Eric Barnhill.^[28]

Notes

^ Gorow 2002, 212
^ Gorow 2002, 212.
^ Gorow 2002, 212
^ Horsely 2001.
^ Horsley 2001.
^ Brown 1976, viii; Fuller 2002.
^ E.g., Ganassi 1535; Ortiz 1553; Dalla Casa 1584.
^ Brown 1976, viii–x.
^ Thomas de Sancta Maria 1565.
^ Hotteterre 1719.
^ For example, near the beginning of the Toccata of BWV 565. Bach's Cantata BWV 54 also uses this suspension as the opening chord in E-flat Major.
^ For examples of both 'reversed polarity' and 'question and answer' see, e.g., Scarlatti Sonata in A minor K 54
^ Adorno 1997, 221.
^ It has been suggested that the opening chords of Beethoven's Sonata Opus 78 communicate feelings for a young lady then in Beethoven's life, possibly Josephine von Brunswick. (In Heinrich Schenker's remarks in his edition of Beethoven's Sonatas, vol. 2, Dover Publications.)
^ Abert (2007), 624-5 (
^ See e.g.Solomon ((2001), 78-9
^ Hamilton (2008), 101-138
^ Crutchfield 1983, 7
^ Crutchfield 1983, 5–13
^ Adorno 1997, 99.
^ Adorno 1997, 116.
^ Adorno 1981,^{[citation needed]}, and Adorno 1973,^{[citation needed]}, respectively.
^ While discussing the Art of The Fugue with Bruno Monsaingeon, Gould describes the later Bach not in basic aesthetic terms, but as an endlessly expanding universe of shades of gray, or colorless contrapuntal texture. Gould was quoting Albert Schweitzer on the first fugue, but felt this description apt for the final fugue. In a 1959 filmed interview, either in Glenn Gould: Off the Record or Glenn Gould: On the Record, Gould had also lamented the end of the common practice period. He illustrated his opinion with a thought experiment, arguing that a child raised with only atonal music would eventually show an original interest in tonality. Koenig & Kroitor 1959a or 1959b.^{[citation needed]}
^ Griffiths 2001.
^ Von Gunden 1983, 32.
^ David Dolan, Piano
^ William Goldstein Composer
^ Eric Barnhill on the Web - Music into Movement into Mind

Musical improvisation

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