Words without Discourse: Creative Strategies on Free Improvisation.
Manuel Falleiros
2.1. Construction of the Analysis Model
Creative Process studies seek to understand artistic creation through the trajectory of the work’s construction. These studies emerge as a derivation of Genetic Criticism research and, therefore, inherited some traits of its methodology. However, these two fields of study, Creative Process and Genetic Criticism, maintain a strong relationship with an analytical method known as the Evidential Paradigm, which traces back to deliberate intellectual operations developed throughout human history and was born influenced by medical semiotics. These three aforementioned methods share the belief that through details, sometimes neglected, it is possible to reconstruct a complex reality that was previously intangible. Our proposal to use this methodology, more aligned with Creative Process studies, responds to a concern arising from the common use of certain research methodologies in musical arts related to performance, as in the case of improvised music. As Nettl and Russell (1998, p. 1) explain:
Influenced by the tradition of research in the visual arts and literature, they [researchers] have concentrated on the finished work, analyzed the interrelation of its components, and looked at its history, but they have rarely been concerned with the different kinds of creativity that might lead to the final product. (Nettl & Russell, 1998, p. 1, our translation)
This way of treating the art object takes the final product as the starting point of the work’s manifestation, and then performs a kind of “archaeology” of the creative construction from its “fossils”. This type of approach is common in Genetic Criticism research processes, which focus on literature, and also in Creative Process studies, when dealing with visual works. We believe that this approach could be complemented with a bias based on the Evidential Paradigm, to enable the construction of a narrative of the object of study (the creative process itself), without attributing to the final product, or these “fossils”, the entire responsibility of containing the elucidating clues.
Nettl and Russell highlight the difficulties of research related to improvised music, when it is assumed that musical creativity can be found in the ways of control and prescriptions systematized in a score that would, by itself, present, delegate, and thus guarantee a certain listening:
One factor is the difficulty of discovering the process of musical creativity, and particularly the question of intention. A symphony was intended to be exactly as it is, so it must be listened to in a certain way. An improvisation, however, does not have this control over the intention to play one thing with a single direction of listening. (Nettl & Russell, 1998, p. 4, our translation)
Contemporary improvisation, especially Free Improvisation as we understand it for our studies, also conceives its own listening, but it is no more or less multiple or specific than any other listening. The difference, in this case, is that the improviser’s work lies in dealing with sonic images, that is, with what is expected to be heard in a conceptual way. There is also a sonic intention, which is precisely to create sonic images, if possible, new and unexpected, in a way that surprises even oneself.
Thus, the analysis of Free Improvisation should not only address issues of musical interpretation or performance. Improvisation does not deal merely with mechanics and ways of playing: it encompasses, beyond and for this purpose, the ability to control forms and deal with concepts, with the intent to create. The methodology for analyzing improvised music should be formulated according to its objectives, idiosyncrasies, and intentions.
Therefore, for the study of an object as fleeting as musical creation through contemporary improvisation, we propose the formulation of a methodology based on Creative Process studies, assisted by concepts related to the Evidential Paradigm, which is adequate to our research. Similarly, we believe that by clarifying the operations involved in creation through Free Improvisation, we can collaborate with other research in the same area. We know that research in Creative Processes owes its methodological heritage to Genetic Criticism. To undertake our methodological conceptualization, we will proceed to clarify the origin and use of these forms of understanding.
Genetic Criticism is an heir to Philology and emerged around 1968 in France, as a result of the work of two researchers, Louis Hay and Almuth Grésillon. According to Grésillon, the term has its baptismal certificate in 1979, “when it appeared in the title of a collection published by Louis Hay” (Grésillon, 1991, p. 7). The work that later became known as Genetic Criticism was carried out by researchers tasked with organizing a team at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS/Paris) to receive, classify, explore, and edit important manuscripts by Heinrich Heine that had been purchased by the National Library of France.
This study, which arose from the demand to identify and protect historical documents, initially did not present the pretensions of an intellectual project, and begins when a team of Germanists is assembled to decipher Gothic scripts, date, transcribe, and edit the work. This is the first moment, among three, of Genetic Criticism, and was denominated by Grésillon as “Germanic-ascetic” (1968–1975), and carries with it a certain connection with Philology due to the tradition of the more or less profound knowledge these researchers had, which supported them in their work of analyzing the manuscripts (Salles, 2008, p. 11).
The second moment, called “associative-expansive” (1975–1985), begins when other researchers interested in manuscripts by Proust, Zola, Valéry, and Flaubert encounter the same methodological difficulties in dealing with this material as the Germanists had. This approximation with the methodology of the Germanists, in search of an analytical model for these manuscripts, resulted in an expansion of a particular theme toward more general questions about the manuscript. This second moment is represented by the inauguration of a laboratory within the CNRS itself: the ITEM (Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes) is born.
At this moment, other countries, including Brazil, come into contact with this type of research. In Brazil, Genetic Criticism arrives through Professor Philippe Willemart, who was responsible for organizing the I Colóquio de Crítica Textual: o Manuscrito Moderno e as Edições [1st Colloquium on Textual Criticism: The Modern Manuscript and Editions] at the University of São Paulo in 1985.
The third moment of “Genetic Criticism”, which begins in 1985 and extends to the present day, was called the “justificatory-reflexive moment”, and is marked by the expansion of its scope, bringing together theories from other areas. It is from this transdisciplinarity of the third moment that studies related to the creative process in other arts, beyond literature, emerge. Boundaries are broadened, and what is considered a “manuscript”, that object upon which the researcher will pore, now takes on diverse forms, and admits any draft or vestige that an art may leave.
Genetic Criticism directs its studies toward the process of constructing a work of art. Its starting point may be the finished work, without, however, disregarding the importance of the stages involved in the process of its construction. The study is concerned with unraveling, beyond the artist’s repertoire of techniques, how their desires and influences are ordered at the moment of creative realization.
Therefore, these studies are interested in constructing hypotheses about the trajectory of the construction of an artistic work. In defining Genetic Criticism, Grésillon states:
Its object: literary manuscripts, insofar as they bear the trace of a dynamic, that of the text in progress. Its method: the stripping of the body and course of the writing and the construction of a series of hypotheses about the writing operations. Its aim: literature as a doing, as an activity, as movement. (Grésillon, 2002, p. 174, our translation)
It is from this final statement, regarding how the work is treated, that we find the pertinence of its method in serving heuristically for poetics of becoming, as is improvisation in its most particular characteristic.
The principle of Genetic Criticism lies in analysis that relies heavily on manuscripts and drafts; they are the basis for the path that leads to the final writing, and in them, the author’s creativity is revealed. From these documents, everything is observed: a particular way of drawing the writing, the dating of the paper, erasures, cuts, notes, and drafts that apparently have no direct connection with the production of the work, so that from the analysis of these documents, hypotheses could be constructed about the creation process the author would use. However, for a more comprehensive theoretical formulation that would also serve genetic study for other art forms, some adjustments in definitions and methodology would be necessary.
Cecília Salles [8] takes an important step toward expanding Genetic Criticism studies by constructing references between literature and the visual arts to deal with this methodology. However, it will still be necessary to transpose the concepts once again to music, and again to improvised music. We will see later, however, the concepts upon which we will build the methodology of this work.
At the moment when the research methodology of Genetic Criticism begins to be applied to the analysis of creation in the field of other arts, in this case, involving more the visual arts, we begin to find the term “Creative Process” to refer particularly to the study of the path taken by the artist in their process of artistic conception.
For Genetic Criticism, it is very important to have specific documents, such as drafts and manuscripts, that expose the creative process. In a more current sense, when we refer to manuscripts, we are not indicating only their property of being handwritten, but any document sketched by the artist that refers to the process of constructing the work. In the exercise of transferring the methodology to the field of visual arts, it was necessary to broaden this concept and include those documents that share the property that gives them the condition of becoming records.
A process document can record a certain point of development of the work. In its most traditional modality, process documents appear in the form of manuscripts, general notes, diaries, drafts, etc. With them, the genetic scientist has the advantage of applying a certain approach to launch hypotheses and seek explanations and conclusions. However, these documents do not necessarily occur in the case of a musical work; especially in the case of improvised music, these documents may simply not exist. Since the process document is a fundamental element in the type of research conducted by the genetic scientist, we must seek a parallel in improvised music that allows us a correct adaptation of this theory. Therefore, it is necessary, initially, to understand well the characteristics and objectives of using the process document, for a consequent analysis of this object.
The main characteristic, for the genetic scientist, of these process documents is the possibility of them serving as a record. This record comes from the artist’s own need to keep what may serve as a tool at the moment of creation. Therefore, process documents, which hold these records, play an indispensable role in the creative process. This record presents itself in two forms relative to the creative process: the record as storage and experimentation [9].
The storage record reveals what, for the artist, at the moment of gestation of the work, was elected. Relevance imposes the need to find ways to retain and fix this information for later use. The property of permanence inherent to the record can be given to any sort of thing: ideas, images, photos, fragments of poems or newspaper clippings, music, drawings. It is common for artists to have a “sketchbook”, in which this material is kept. It is important to observe that this selection is continuous, and in it, the artist may discard a document already selected. This happens because the selection is made at a certain moment when there is an intuition that such a document could be important in the constitution of the work. That is, from one moment to another, the various stored documents gain and lose their value for the artist. This is the cut of the world that the artist makes for the work, it is the beginning of their aesthetic reading of the world. Even if it is not possible, often not even for the artist themselves, to believe that there is a direct relationship between these records and the created artistic object, they are inductively in search of content that relates to the force they wish to infuse into the work.
Experimentation, on the other hand, is the process of testing hypotheses, possible combinations, or paths, which will later be validated and serve as relevant tools for creation. Rehearsals, abandoned projects, incomplete works are some representatives of this category. These “tests” are fundamental in creation because they function as an exploration of fields, a process in which, at the same time, one learns about certain properties of the material with which the artist works, as well as its behavior and consequently its validity for the artistic conception.
Selections and options are made that generate alterations and that, in turn, materialize into new forms. It is in this moment of “testing”, in which new realities are configured, excluding others, that one can observe the physical and intellectual activity of the artist in carrying out the task they themselves proposed of constructing the work of art. (Salles, 2000, p. 117, our translation)
Another relevant document for the genetic scientist is the interview. Although it is generated outside the moment of creation, but not necessarily after the conclusion of the work, the interview also serves the artist themselves as a possibility of reflection on their methods, since in moments of intense artistic work it is not always possible for the artist to be aware of their own steps. Once aware of their own creative process, the artist can alter the path of construction because they are able to observe their procedures panoramically and review their proposal, which can alter the trajectory that initiated the work. While the interview makes a cut with a pause for reflection in the creative process, diaries delineate its trajectory. Diaries report the phases of the work’s production, the difficulties encountered, and the epiphanies, and are also of great importance for the researcher when seeking to understand the creative process.
There are some materials that are essential for the researcher to proceed with the reconstruction of the path of artistic creation. These materials, which are fundamental for the development of research in Genetic Criticism, can be used with due adaptations in other art forms beyond literature, to which Genetic Criticism was fixed.
Cecília Salles presents [10] a methodology for dealing with the visual arts, based on procedures derived from research in Genetic Criticism. Under the name of Creative Processes, she presents a more expanded way of dealing with the data and documents generated in the creative process in other artistic areas. In literature, as well as in the visual arts, we are more accustomed to easily detecting all these process documents involved in the production of the work, which allowed the same type of research procedure to be used.
However, in the performing arts, in which the execution of the work is not just a presentation or reproduction of it, but is part of the creation itself, these documents cannot always be easily identified or are available to the researcher.
In order to launch a broader model, we will begin a work of methodological adaptation based on Creative Process studies so that it is possible to include the performing arts, especially improvised music, in this type of scientific approach. In this case, there are some observations that need to be considered beforehand.
In the field of music, we can find a series of indices for research both in libraries and directly with the composer themselves, if they are alive. Or even through their descendants or institutions that guard their works and interviews. These indices that subsidize the research (scores, manuscripts, notes, interviews, etc.) hold the same characteristic of a record that allows them to be classified as process documents.
These documents are generally more easily found in the type of music that uses the physical support of the score, and in this case, it is that we can trace, without the need for more complex adjustments, the parallels with the methodological elements of Creative Process studies, with respect to the visual arts, or in Genetic Criticism, with respect to textual production. Literary drafts and sketches, versions, notebooks of notes, diaries sent to patrons indicating the progress of the work, etc.; for each of these documents, we find a parallel in the sphere of musical creation. In this way, in the musical work, we have present the process documents in a form close to the literary: the writing process, the “language” [11], the draft, the “paper” (even if it is virtual, through computer editor programs), tests and experiments, and finally the final product. That is: the musical work that will likewise be presented in printed format, represented by the score, provides us with similar elements that allow us to approximate these theories with the process of constructing the musical work.
However, there is a portion of musical creation that resides in the very execution of the work. That is, we consider that the execution of a work would already be another creation in which the raw material of this re-creator artist is the music itself fixed in the score. Proof of this is that different interpreters modify minimal details that end up profoundly altering the intention of the interpretation. Interpretation through execution grants values to the dead drawing of the notes; it is an intention of action. It is as if we imagined a culture in which no one knew how to read and knew with little depth the meaning of words; the few specialists in reading and transmitting texts would keep for themselves a power in the direction and intention of this speech, without it being necessary to alter the original text. This is what, in a certain way, occurs in the type of music fixed on paper that requires highly trained interpreters for it to pass from a record to existence.
The Creative Process methodology finds a fertile field in this type of music, after all, we can count on a large volume of process documents as well as, similarly, with products, or versions of the same work that can serve the researcher in their deduction, because they give the possibility of establishing various comparisons.
However, when dealing with improvised music, we have to deal with the fact that not all process documents exist in their most traditional form; to create a methodological parallel with Genetic Criticism, or even with Creative Processes, we need to understand the functions of each process document and how they manifest in Free Improvisation. This is because the improviser, as a musical inventor who acts within the ephemeral, creates music that does not necessarily present a prior planning directed at a specific construction. Musical composition, which often, and in its most traditional form, uses the resource of the score, manages to freeze the flow of notes and overcome the limits of memory through writing. This allows the composer a certain dominion over the musical discourse in the sense that they have time outside of music to make certain choices, thus selecting the musical material and disposing of this material in the way they deem most appropriate. This procedure tends to generate many drafts and experimentations, documents that are so dear to the type of research we are discussing.
Differently, improvisation does not occur in projecting and reasoned redoing. It generally happens along with the time of creation, because one of its pretensions is to attain a continuous and consistent flow over time without, however, needing a prior plan. Added to this is the fact that some improvisers do not see improvisation as a result, or as a work, but rather as a doing, an event.
In a more particular case, that of contemporary improvisation, this doing is not directly subordinate to the implicit guidelines that involve some ethnic group, region, or specific historical cut of the past, which would considerably help the delimitation of the research. In this way, there are rarely those typical registration documents that would allow us to reconstruct the path of the contemporary improviser in their creative process.
Furthermore, in improvisation, in general, memory and the imaginary are elements of importance and directly involved in creation, but they only become active and directed toward this end when required by the moment of creative action. In this way, it would be expected that relevant data would be lost if one wanted to reduce these two elements to a document in the format expected by the genetic critic. This fundamental difference lies in the fact that the composer, like an engineer-architect, prescribes actions that specialized employees must perform seeking to guarantee that a previously planned final product is reached. These prescriptions produce a series of planning documents and execution orders. The contemporary improviser, however, may foresee a field of possible events, but cannot condition the execution, guarantee, or determine the result in detail of the set of actions that promotes their improvisation; and in this case, no document would necessarily need to be generated.
This methodology of analysis that requires documents encounters a serious problem here: in contemporary improvisation, we have the process documents as the very execution resulting from the creative action, and we have that which provokes the creative action, which is precisely what is lost in the description to make a document. However, by availing ourselves of the process documents, we will be able to trace a first approximation for the description of the creative process. An important contribution of the research methodology in Creative Processes is precisely the focus on the process as an answer to the question of how creation occurs, differently from other models that bet on the heuristic qualities of the final product.
Therefore, in order to continue with our work of methodological adaptation, we must include in the range of traditional documents, that is, the process documents, other forms of record that can be accessed at any time by the researcher. For this, we count on the happy possibility brought by the technologies of capture devices. Tapes, CDs, MDs, MP3s, etc., are media widely disseminated in our culture of capture and storage. The need for constant recording of daily life, the accelerated diffusion of these devices, and the networks of information sharing trigger a culture of capture, storage, and distribution that can promote a valuable contribution in the field of these music researches.
Through all these supports (tapes, discs, DVD, MP3) it is possible to have access to the study of different performances of a work and conclude, therefore, by comparisons and contrasts, indirectly the general principles that led to that interpretation. (Grésillon, 2008, p. 46, our translation)
The documentation that can be done to aid research on the creative process, with regard to the performing arts, comes from records obtained systematically during a period stipulated by the researcher. Furthermore, the researcher must be attentive to documents that serve as a record, but are left unintentionally by the artist. This seems a well-established scenario for many performing arts, in which the execution of the work is the necessity for its existence and expression.
Still, we must make a caveat if we intend to address a process study on contemporary improvisation. The record made, however meticulous it may be, does not guarantee answers to questions that refer to the interaction between the musicians, for example. Taking into account our object of research, interaction is an event of multiple confluence that often not even the musicians themselves can reconstruct; it is a moment permeated by constant flow in which solutions are employed in a non-mechanical way, a small space of time full of adaptations and minimal adjustments being made continuously. Reconstructing this process involves dealing, in addition to these documents captured systematically in audio or video, with the musical, instrumental, and aesthetic biography of each participant, with their relationship with the group, and also with each performance carried out.
The artist’s work is, almost always, associated with the materiality of the records they left behind; however, we must remember the many moments of mental experimentation that do not come to be recorded. (Salles, 2004, our translation)
Thus, for our research, we created an environment in which it is intended to be possible to observe the creative process. For this environment, which will be called atelier, to be formed, it is necessary that the following elements be present: the physical location of the meeting between the musicians, the regularity of these meetings forming a routine, and the possibility of the confluence of each musician’s biographies in a creative activity. For the artist, the atelier is the place that propitiates their internal constructions and the materialization of artistic creation. For the researcher, the atelier is where they can find the vestiges that indicate the creative movement. For the researcher, it is important that the process documents can be found in the space of artistic work, the atelier.
The concept of atelier, in the same way that occurs with the other concepts already presented, also gains a broader dimension. In a more restricted manner, the atelier is the space in which the artist concentrates many documents that will be in different degrees related to the creative process. In this space are also found the references that the artist systematically collects because they believe them to be important in their future constructions. It is also the space of the project, experimentation, making, and finalization of their art.
In music of various genres, there is also a correlate of the atelier, which is the rehearsal. The rehearsal is the regular meeting devoid of the courtesies of the presentation. In the rehearsal, musicians can disconnect from the time of the music and simulate events, test hypotheses, experiment with strategies, refine execution, and improve their skills. In short, the rehearsal, this time detached from the action of the stage, becomes a kind of training that promotes the accumulation of experiences.
In other models of improvisation, including idiomatic and other equally prescriptive ones, the rehearsal serves to define certain procedures and thus ends up showing which strategies will be used for the creation that will be carried out at a later moment. The rehearsal guarantees that everyone strives to work on building a way of acting in function of a foreseen and agreed-upon sonic image. However, in contemporary improvisation, this construction is not so pre-defined nor does it need to be previously agreed upon; it occurs through a continuous self-adjustment that aims to maintain musical consistency and the level of interest in the creative action among those involved.
The moment of musical realization, which counted on previously planned actions (the rehearsal), may be referring to calculated actions to annul the sonic perception of the moment in which it happens, while linking perception to the ideal outside the time of action. The actions are coordinated by concepts outside the moment of sonic realization, that is, the sonic is adjusted according to style, interpretation, the conductor’s directions, the composer’s proposals, in short, to the sonic image that was formed prior to the sound of that moment.
Verifying this confluence to the sonic image pre-established through rehearsals is to assume that there is a point of greater attraction. This means that the efforts that produce the musical action would be directed toward such points of confluence. Thus, the role of those pre-sonic prescriptions mentioned above would be to conduct the instrumentalist’s action independently and annul the moment. Being prepared to react and listen in a certain way is also part of a rehearsal in its simplest sense. The rehearsal for the musician, therefore, as a correlate of the atelier for the visual artist, is a set of actions directed toward a future realization.
However, for the contemporary improviser, the idea of rehearsal may seem strange once each execution considered a new creation does not need to be prepared or referenced outside its moment of creation. What needs to be clarified is that creations have this pretension to novelty, but their constituent elements are subject to refinement. The storage of techniques provides the improviser with a repertoire of solutions, so it is possible to observe that the same technique can be applied in completely distinct musical situations. With each improvisation, the improviser also stores ideas, experiments with strategies, refines their execution, and improves their skills for the next one. Therefore, we can consider each improvisation as being the rehearsal for the next one.
In this way, just as genetic researchers suggest, creation finds its revelatory power more in the space of development than in the final product, which justifies our focus on a study focused on the creative space of the musical atelier that we will call rehearsal. However, the rehearsal in its restricted conception is not necessarily a fundamental prerequisite for the realization of a contemporary improvisation. After all, in this type of art, the execution does not submit to a meticulous preparation in which one aims for an execution without flaws or unforeseen events; contemporary improvisation is precisely the opposite, that is, it is the launching into the unforeseen, assuming that there are no flaws beyond a poorly used sonic material. Considering, therefore, in a broader conception, that a set of sequentially arranged improvisations in a temporal cut may present some relationship of development, we could affirm that this set of activities would possess the necessary characteristics to represent itself as an atelier. The atelier is the space in which the researcher can verify the processes of storage and experimentation carried out by the artist, space in which the process of storage submitted to experimentation realizes the creative moment that demonstrates itself in the format of improvised music.
In the verification of the creative moment, it is in the atelier that the birth of techniques and procedures that formalize the sonic matter occurs, through an action that is both sensitive and intellectual in the construction of this set of practices directed toward a future realization. Furthermore, we can verify that due to the necessity of the activity of constant rehearsal, the musician, just as happens in other classes of artists, undertakes to collect, resume, and store everything they believe may assist them in a future construction. These dispersed fragments are also found in the atelier and are composed of notes, diaries, notebooks, excerpts of music and scores, techniques, sonorities, ways of proceeding.
The character of creation through improvisation may not use any material directly selected for the construction, but all material comes into play at the moment of creation. Thus, it is not the score, but the subject themselves with their inherent complexity that explicates the construction of the work. Improvisation can happen at any moment, dissipate, and not grant us any document that allows us to reconstruct its path of creation. Since a performance artist may not leave us clear clues as to how to construct their improvisation, we will find these indications more securely in the atelier. For interactive artists, who produce in groups, “rehearsals” represent the best form of atelier. We are thus interested in investigating how the interaction that allows the unfolding of the creative process within the atelier-rehearsals is promoted.
According to Cecília Salles (2004), the artist creates the work in an infinite chain of aggregation of ideas that extends throughout their life. The artist never stops for a minute of their day from thinking artistically; the world affects them aesthetically without respite. Therefore, the artist is in constant construction of their reality, and at some moments, this construction, for some reason, materializes into a work. The condition of the work does not define the artist’s work; that is, the work is not the totalizing representation of the convergence of efforts, but rather an indication of the action and artistic thought. In this way, art is observed through its materialization as a work by the one who appreciates it, but this work does not necessarily represent the continuum of the action and artistic thought of the one who makes it. Therefore, we can consider that materialized creation is a presentation of certain confluences in a specific temporal cut, a snapshot of an artistic moment amidst the constant desire to aggregate ideas and develop skills, incessantly fed by the artist’s world.
In this transit, there is a trajectory that the artist traverses, delineated by the constant approximation to what they will create, through the initially obscure process that culminates in the final production and configuration. For certain purposes or demands of the era, this moment in particular began to require a condition represented by the character of irretouchable freezing and a pretension to permanence so that a compound detached from the artist’s time would emerge, which came to be called a work of art.
Notes
[8] Cecília de Almeida Salles is the coordinator of the Center for Genetic Criticism Studies and a full professor in the Postgraduate Program in Communication and Semiotics at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo.
[9] We owe these terms to the work of Cecília Almeida Salles. We can find the definitions about them, especially on page 39 of her book Crítica Genética: Fundamentos dos estudos genéticos sobre o processo de criação artística [Genetic Criticism: Foundations of Genetic Studies on the Artistic Creation Process].
[10] Firstly in Crítica Genética: Fundamentos dos estudos genéticos sobre o processo de criação artística [Genetic Criticism: Foundations of Genetic Studies on the Artistic Creation Process] from 1992 (1st edition), as well as subsequent titles.
[11] We will assume the broad concept that language, in this particular case and only to clarify our example, refers to the organization of signs aimed at understanding.