[Smt-talk] Pieces with improvisatory openings

[Scott Spiegelberg]

Eliot wrote that "Improvised music isn't supposed to sound improvised."  I
remember wrestling with that subject during a Dutch Music Theory conference
on improvisation.  There are improvisations that sound as if they had been
pre-composed.  Yet there are also improvisations that do give the strong
impression of being impromptu, whether purposeful or not.  The impression is
created by a perceived  lack of structure somewhere, whether Mitch's
theorized lack of metric structure, or a lack of hierarchical organization
to the melody, or a lack of exact agreement between melody and harmony.  I
do know that I prefer listening to improvisations that are not too
polished.  I want to know that the performer is in the present act of
creation, otherwise why bother with an improvisation?  As all of us who have
given extemporaneous speeches know, a certain amount of precision and depth
is lost when we forgo exact pre-planning of a performance.  Hopefully that
loss is balanced by an increased excitement engendered in the performer and
the audience because everyone is linked in the spontaneous act of creation.

Scott


-- 
–
Scott Spiegelberg, PhD
Associate Professor of Music
DePauw University School of Music (on Sabbatical 2011-2012)
1106 Green Center for Performing Arts
spiegelberg at depauw.edu
http://musicalperceptions.blogspot.com

Webmaster for the Society for Music Theory (until the SMT Annual Meeting!)
http://societymusictheory.org

On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 2:25 PM, Eliot Handelman <eliot at colba.net> wrote:


> Ok. I don't find the word "improvisatory" very helpful, either.  Improvised
> music isn't supposed to sound
> improvised. "Improvisatory" might then point to a defect in the music,
> "fingers idly wandering over the keys,"
> music doesn't go anywhere.  Second, what these old guys may have considered
> to be improvisation is either
> represented in their music or we don't know what it is. Is *Träumerei *improvisatory?
> By accounts, it seems
> it was so intended, but it's doubtful anyone now hears it this way. Perhaps
> the idea in the opening of the
> Ballade is to evoke a kind of emptiness and doubt -- if one can ever get
> the historical semiotics of this right --
> a trope of the hapless artist awaiting the inspired moment.  There may have
> been that kind of self-reflection in Schumann,
> but in Chopin?
>
> -- eliot
> ----
>
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