[Smt-talk] Pieces with improvisatory openings

[Eliot Handelman]

On 26/10/2011 11:24 AM, Arnie Cox wrote:
>  On this view, "improvisatory" passages are distinguished not merely 
> as patterns of sounds but as patterns of either imagined or performed 
> actions.  One might want to say *of course* this is the case, but I'm 
> not sure to what extent this is reflected in the vocabulary and 
> rhetoric of our discipline.
>
Is the opening of Beethoven 5 improvisatory? The disciples all know what 
the composer said.
What about the Mozart joke, which depicts the actions of lesser 
Musikanten? etc. Again, I will
suggest that the term can only point to a defect of some sort in the 
music that distinguishes it
from finished music.

-- eliot
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Eliot Handelman
CIRMMT