1.2 – Antecedents
It is notable how the theme of musical improvisation, and especially Free Improvisation, has increasingly taken up space in academic publications, conferences, and associations as an individual theme, and not just linked to performance or composition. Besides the academic space, cultural centers in the country have been promoting workshops and festivals that involve the general population in activities related to Free Improvisation [5], something that was more common in European countries. Nettl (1974) states that the subject of musical improvisation has gained much more prominence in more recent times, compared to the time when Ernst Ferand’s fundamental book, Die Improvisation in der Musik, of 1938, was written.
The concept of improvisation has become much more prominent in musicology since that time, largely because of the increased attention given to musics that seem to rely much more on improvisation than European classical music. There are now many studies of jazz and of Indian, Indonesian, Middle Eastern, and African music that deal explicitly or, more often, implicitly with improvisation. Practical and academic courses are dedicated to this subject, as well as sessions at academic meetings. (Nettl, 1974, p. 2, )
It is common to find argumentation based on historical facts in academic articles. The argument that improvisation was part of the creative process of European classical composers, or that in the Baroque period there was improvisation through ornamentation, or even that improvisation remained alive in organ technique; in short, an argument that throughout history improvisation has always played a relevant role among musicians. The conclusion to which these statements are directed may point to the suggestion of writing, or the “score” as its representative, as an artificiality that opposes spontaneous creation. But instead of establishing antagonistic fields based on the most patent differences, we can try to understand musical phenomena based on “what” and “how much” they share of certain forms of creative process. It is thus possible to affirm that certain elements of a creative process are more present, giving a tendency to certain configurations such as practices related to improvisation. Thus, it would not be necessary to think of composition as a movement contrary to improvisation, but as modes of making music that share more or less procedures involved in a creative process.
The idea that improvisation does not deal with preparation, that it depends on individual spontaneity, on the personal character of each improviser, is an argument that hardly reflects an analysis based on creative processes. A simple example of this is that there have been books and various pedagogical tools for improvisation, and even for Free Improvisation [6], on the editorial market for at least 50 years. Faced with this fact, one could still argue that traditional cultures, which do not have writing and which base their musical constructions on oral processes, would be closer to spontaneity. A quick search into improvised music in India or Iran reveals the complexity of their systems and the need for a considerable amount of learning time, rendering the argument unsustainable. In this case, the term spontaneity could not be used to represent a music that develops with so much objective work and dedication.
In the same way, for Free Improvisation, we need our references, we need to gather our antecedents. And it is precisely the consciousness of this accumulated experience that forms the improviser that obliges us to replace the term “spontaneity” with “flow,” as we conceptualized in the previous chapter. Spontaneous, in the sense of something that happens as if naturally, is a way of describing flow; while on the other hand, the term “spontaneous” should not suggest an ex nihilo condition, uncommitted in relation to the creative process in Free Improvisation.
The question takes another form if we try to understand for whose benefit such an idea of spontaneity linked to improvisation is of interest. The more an improvisation intends to disentangle itself from organizational structures, or “formulas,” the less room analysis finds to operate, besides being possible to delve into the subjective matter of the individual, into their unconscious. Thus, under this argument, improvisation is carried out through subjective, spontaneous means, tangentially touching the mythical. If less clarity can be obtained from this point of view, it is because spontaneity perhaps does not have that much to reveal to us, once it is nothing more than an instrument to carry out a kind of adjustment with what one intends to believe. When the virtuosity of an instrumentalist becomes admirable, it is because an understanding is made of a state of confluence of various forces: their practice over the years, discipline, effort, accumulation of experience, desire, and dedication. But all of this can also be true for the free improviser; however, it is necessary to establish a relationship between preparation and process. In the same way, the work could be trivialized by the supposed naturalness and spontaneity of the virtuoso soloist: after all, after playing every day for a lifetime, nothing different would be expected.
We must also remember that improvisation, especially Free Improvisation, does not take a main place in music education; it can be considered a deviation, a joke, precisely because of its condition of creative action. It will be carried out in the intimacy of the instrumentalist’s study time amidst their “official” exercises. And so it really should be: a moment to establish intimacies with the functioning of their instrument and extract more refined perceptions for their technique. However, the improvisation pedagogy industry, in which jazz has been showing prominence (but also choro, and more recently Free Improvisation), presents technically interesting learning resources, but creatively questionable ones. In these resources, we encounter Barthes’s concept of “stereotyped speech.” The “McDonaldization” schemes of knowledge separate social experience, disconnecting the individual from history and trivializing tradition. Rarely does an analysis of the musical conceptions and artistic ideals of bebop include the struggle for human rights that deeply involved the musicians and arts of the time. This “sanitizing” condition may claim pretensions of objectivity, but, nevertheless, it is despising one of the most important creative elements: imagination. And it is not formed only by personal, subjective, and inexplicable fantasies, but mainly by the perception of the state of the world in which the individual is immersed.
Therefore, historical references, composers, their works, their political and artistic positioning are also guiding factors of the creative process in Free Improvisation. The environment, in Free Improvisation, can become totally interinfluenciable, which means that if the improviser is not designated for pre-conceived roles, they manipulate the aspects of creation more in accordance with sonic occurrences, seeking to take advantage of the conditions of the environment and their experiences. The development of a set of references, arising from agglutinating articulations, given by a coherence referenced in the individual, presents itself as part of the construction of an atelier for the improviser. This atelier, in which the improviser will consolidate their processes, establishes an autonomy. To form oneself as an improviser is also to deliberately choose what will surround us.
When I improvise, I start with what is given to me—the musical instrument, my body, my energy, my state of mind, my intentions. And I start making sounds, and then listening and reacting, varying and adjusting, then reacting again and trying something else, continually moving from sound to sound, cluster to cluster, rhythm to rhythm. Once I start, it seems that the process itself leads me forward, not much different from the way my life has its own way of unfolding. (Wigram, 2005, p. 17, our translation)
In the statement above, regarding a Free Improvisation session, the improviser in their creative process gathers a series of elements (such as their instrument, their body, their sound) that are at their disposal to create. But they also dispose of others, such as their ideas, creativity, memory, actions, intentions, in a chain of connections that articulate with each other through the creative action of this improviser. Musical references make explicit a constituent preference; aligning these preferences in a group, to some extent, also aligns the creative procedures.
For this, we sought a condition in which it would be possible to ensure that the improvisers involved in our practical experiments could share the same system of references. One of the tasks consisted of undoing the shallow analysis that provided an idea of “distorted heritage,” as we discussed earlier. Another task was to understand Free Improvisation as a practice of its time, that is, postmodern. And finally, to present artistic conceptions and works of reference figures. The practical part of this work took place through the execution of various exercises, the exploration of the instrument in order to obtain other sonorities, uncommon to traditional technique, and constant sessions to carry out collective improvisations.
The dismantling of the generally aggressive attitude, which we believe is more due to the musical conception of “distorted heritage,” gradually gave way to other perceptions, mainly concerning the interaction between improvisers. This can also be considered a work of distancing from the use of clichés, since using modes of action without understanding the contexts is also a form of cliché. Complementarily, it was equally important to understand the practice of Free Improvisation as an activity related to the condition of postmodernity.
Among the concepts that underpinned our primary research, with the aim of presenting content to the group of improvisers, we found in authors such as Lyotard, Lipovetsky, and Nascimento a correspondence regarding the most significant characteristics of our practice. Lipovetsky points out, throughout his writings, mainly the changes related to behavior. But also, the coexistence of different times and modes, a kind of permeability that agglutinates different ways of doing and distinct procedures related to other eras and places. Free Improvisation admits the coexistence of different musical styles, interaction between musicians from different cultures, and any type of equipment or creative process, such as a computer managed by a sophisticated program together with adapted and low-tech experimental instruments, recreating a kind of sound collage typical of 1950s musique concrète. As well as we can observe anti-regionalization (sometimes commonly referred to as “globalization”), or the standardization of procedures.
The actions of Free Improvisation share, in a way, some characteristics of postmodern societies, such as neophilia, that is, the appreciation for the new at all times, the continuous excitement, which generates an idea of presentism: a precarious and ephemeral time. This unpredictable future proclaims a need for flexibility and continuous adaptation that in Free Improvisation will be directed through listening. In Free Improvisation, at all times, we have to deal with the unpredictable; one cannot act according to a pre-established conduct that guarantees the interaction for the creation of this music in a group. The improviser is always consuming, through the listening of incessant novelties, and having to deal with them creatively. Based on the same idea of ephemerality, Free Improvisation does not only start from what is reserved or conserved, but generally tends continuously towards the new.
Still in this work, we dealt with gathering concepts and references from works and musicians consistent with our proposal. First, a panorama of the characteristics of Free Improvisation was necessary so that it would be possible to understand the reason for a selection. We know that Free Improvisation has its creative process based on the listening to sounds. This idea begins to develop around the 1950s when Pierre Schaeffer initiates his experiments towards musique concrète. Schaeffer, trained as an electrical engineer, worked as a broadcast technician at the Office de Radiodiffusion Française. He initiated a series of experiments that led him to the manipulation of sounds through tape recording. By superimposing, reversing, speeding up, or slowing down sounds, he created new composition techniques. From these experiments emerged a compositional procedure that became known as musique concrète. Schaeffer, after observing the particularities of a given sound, endeavored to stipulate a system that could understand the significations of sonic matter, thus creating his solfège: a series of denominations for the qualities of sound. In his course of work, Schaeffer came across the difficulty of listening to the sound “in itself,” that is, of disentangling the listening from its primordial reference. This foundation of contemporary music is a guiding legacy for Free Improvisation, since it largely uses this listening to constitute its creative actions.
In his best-known essay, the Traité des objets musicaux (Treatise on Musical Objects), Schaeffer dedicates a chapter to clarifying that it is possible to carry out listening at various levels, based on different intentions. Thus, he presents us with 4 modalities of listening, namely: to listen, to hear, to understand, and to comprehend; each with its intentionality and particularities. This intentionality modulates from a carefree and inattentive listening to one that absorbs meaning. Schaeffer’s theory certainly has fascinating developments in various areas; for our study, however, it was important to present to the improvisers a condition of listening that went beyond the recognition of the source or the meaning; that is, that the sound of a steel plate or an A or E note is often irrelevant information in the creative process of Free Improvisation.
Schaeffer composed several musical works based on the concepts he developed. “Bilude” [7], a work from 1979, despite its ironic tone, constitutes almost a didactic piece; in it, common sounds full of musical gesturality are presented, or all the musical gesturality that can be heard in “concrete” terms. In this composition, Schaeffer contrasts a prelude by Bach with sounds produced by common objects such as what appears to be a saw, a stapler, scissors, maintaining the same musical intention and rhythm. Precisely, he does not intend for us to hear the saw or scissors, but above all the complexity and musical quality of these sounds. Furthermore, Schaeffer states that, unlike traditional music, his compositional process is “inverted”; that is, structures are born from experimentation and manipulation. Similarly, Free Improvisation also shares a constructive procedure: in it, music is only configured in a certain way because it is formed from direct and concrete action, and not from the execution of a plan.
The idea of a sound that was detached from tonal or referential functions is a thought present in contemporary music and shared by various composers. Debussy proposed that the importance of his chords would lie in their “color,” that is, in a specific sonority, and not in their functions within a system.
The chord was considered not as a function, as a link in a harmonic progression, but purely as a sound in itself: sometimes because of a completely free music that floated before Debussy’s eyes, sometimes because of expressiveness carried to the extreme, as in the works of free atonality by Schoenberg and Webern. (Leeuw, 2005, p. 78, )
This kind of “independence” of sounds is also expressed in the works of the composer Edgard Varèse. Varèse’s work, as well as, in a way, we find in the works of György Ligeti, proposes that listening falls upon the delicate changes, or nuances without abrupt cuts, that occur in sonic bodies or masses through organic unfoldings and of a fluid character. This idea of simultaneity of events in opposition to an idea of hierarchical functional layers became fundamental in the formation of our atelier. To de-automate oneself from functions and bring the voice (as personality and will) of the improvisers to collective creation was a strategy established with the aid of knowledge about compositional formulations such as those we referred to above.
The Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi dedicated himself to a rich work around a single sound. His music is based on timbral variations of a single note, on ideas of sonic dismemberments from a single sound. Combining this idea with particularized listening, or reduced listening (a concept related to the work of Pierre Schaeffer), we can think that the particularities of a sound, its timbre, its texture can become elements of articulation and for a creative action.
Timbre presents itself as a significant element in the production of contemporary music. For Costa, Scelsi’s work recovers the notion of “micro-fluctuations” present in timbre.
There, what is sought is a kind of molecularization of sound through a continuous process of micro-perceptions. He proposes to “travel inside the sound.” The concept of molecularization and the consequent intensification is clearly present in the growing importance that timbre assumes in contemporary musical production. (Costa, 2009, p. 41, our translation)
This process of micro-perceptions is taken as a flow procedure for Free Improvisation. The minimal changes perceived in a single sound can be understood as a procedure to generate unfoldings in a Free Improvisation. The improviser can make use of timbral variations, or even affect the timbre of other improvisers as a creative resource.
John Cage, an American composer, has his trajectory based on the concept of chance in music. Although, at first glance, we are prone to relate this concept to improvisation practices, we will see in the following chapters that there are important differences between the concepts. However, Cage also contributed with his proposals and compositions to a “liberation” of sounds, which corroborates Schaeffer’s ideas of non-referentiality.
The composer Karlheinz Stockhausen carried out a relevant experiment with improvised music, and particularly for our work. In May 1968, the composer wrote a series of poetic suggestions to be played in an improvised manner, forming the composition Aus den Sieben Tagen (From the Seven Days). The use of the meaning of words in Free Improvisation in this work is part of musical explorations that the composer called intuitive music. For him, improvisation would be contaminated with formulas, schemes, and clichés; therefore, music should be intuitive. This direction is reinforced by the fantastic character of his texts.
Our research, however, intends to involve other elements in the analysis of the creative processes of Free Improvisation. Precisely, the presentation of our concepts, references, and antecedents intends to demonstrate that improvisation is indeed a widely “contaminated” practice. Another question that is not explicit in Stockhausen’s work is the form of action and interaction of those who will perform the improvisation.
Free jazz was also able to forward a relevant discussion for Free Improvisation: collective creation. Ornette Coleman, a recognized American composer and saxophonist, linked to the free jazz movement, discusses in an interview with the philosopher Jacques Derrida:
[…] the idea is that two or three people can have a conversation with sounds, without trying to dominate or lead. This means that you have to be… intelligent, I suppose that is the word. In improvised music I think musicians are trying to put back together an emotional or intellectual puzzle, in any case, a puzzle in which the instruments set the tone. (Coleman, 2004, p. 322, )
In Free Improvisation, musical creation proposals are given by the sounds produced by the improvisers themselves, in a flow of feedback of stimuli and intentions. Equally relevant to our formulations were the composers Cornelius Cardew and Vinko Globokar, who carried out experiments with groups of improvisers. Their works bequeathed relevant information regarding the modes of interaction between improvisers in a group. With the aim of disentangling themselves from personal clichés and turning to listening to the collective, in order to thus obtain a creative process carried out together, their experiences opened possibilities for creation to start from the collective rather than just from a single proposal, from a single person.
From these references, we intend not only to initiate our investigation but also to formulate our creative strategies. The characteristics of the music of our time, such as the simultaneity of events, complex rhythm, the emergence of timbres, particularized listening (reduced listening), are all present in Free Improvisation. We know that Free Improvisation is far from a simplistic spontaneity that reduces the discussion of its processes to the intimate field of personal desires. It is up to us to investigate how it will be possible to understand this form of collective creation, in which the musician creators themselves are the proposers and executors. From this, we want to propose strategies that contribute to this creative action.
Improvisation thought of as a creative process becomes challenging for musical analysis. Since we will be treating it predominantly as a process that exists by and for itself, and ends in itself, there would be no sense in analyzing its product. Therefore, it would not be coherent to seek results through its product, but to initiate an investigation of its process. Thus, before anything else, it is necessary to take a position regarding how Free Improvisation will be treated from its creative process, since this form of observation can be determinant for the understanding and development of creative strategies.
Notes
[5] As an example, we can cite the recent visits to USP by the improvisers David Borgo, Alexandros Markeas, and Chefa Alonso; the Improvised Music Festival that took place at the end of 2011, promoted by the Centro Cultural São Paulo, which brought several international improvisers. Also, the various association websites on the internet, such as the International Society for Improvised Music, European Free Improvisation, and Critical Studies in Improvisation, which gather articles and information related to Free Improvisation.
[6] Here we refer to the book Free Improvisation: A Practical Guide by Thomas Hall, released in 2009 in Boston. The complete reference can be found in the References section of this work.
[7] Schaeffer’s last work, Bilude for tape and piano, dates from 1979. Its recording can currently be found on the INA-GRM label, in a compilation of Schaeffer’s works (last track of disc 3). It was performed by the Bulgarian pianist Minka Roustcheva. Schaeffer’s work is based on Prelude No. 2 in C minor, from Book 1 of J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier (BWV 847).