Words without Discourse: Creative Strategies on Free Improvisation.
Manuel Falleiros
3.1 Creative Acts: Foundational Bases of the Atelier
In our work, we seek to analyze the role of a specific component, the word, as a catalyzing element in the creative process within the environment of Free Improvisation. As we have seen previously in our methodological adaptation, the improvisation to which we refer is the embodiment of joint creative activity, in which the musical biographical experiences of the participants enter a state of interaction through musical action.
We understand action, within the creativity involved in improvisation, as follows: given a field of conditions, the emergence and involvement between desire and certain coordinated movements that result in sounds that carry meaning. This is because, in improvised musical realization, mere belief or intention may not be considered an action, but rather a condition that is only mentally idealized, yet not realized. If the desire and the coordinated movements together do not result sonically with intention and meaning, it is also unlikely that the fact will be recognized as a creative action.
It is in the character of this event, which is simultaneous and interinfluenciable, that is improvisation, that we notice the emergence of a set of creative acts on the part of those involved, which occur when they embark on the work of erecting a bloc of sensations, according to the philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s definition of art (Deleuze, 1992). For Deleuze, the artist’s work would be to create affects and percepts. Affects and percepts, or the bloc of sensations, are what is preserved after the original model or the initial form of the work of producing art fades away (Deleuze, 1992, p. 213). This idea of conservation points to the self-sufficiency of the product of artistic creation, in the sense that the materials must be sufficiently organized, or made organic in their internal dialogue by the artist, so that artistic creation may therefore exist.
For Deleuze, it is not a matter of direct sensation or the faithful representation of a sensation, but of its qualities: “this blue that is not a blue of water but ‘a blue of liquid paint’” (Deleuze, 1992, p. 216). Thus, according to Deleuze, “All matter becomes expressive” (1992, p. 217), because it will retain in the universe of the artistic product the properties of percepts and affects. In the creation involved in Free Improvisation, sounds present qualities and properties that can be organized among themselves into blocs of sensations, through listening and the discovery of qualities that make matter expressive. The creative process suggests how such sonic percepts will be realized, so we will first focus on what this creative process means for action in Free Improvisation.
Finding the nature of creativity is a subject still lacking in the scientific field and treated under the most diverse areas of human understanding: psychology, neuroscience, history, sociology, literary studies, among many others. Bahia and Nogueira (2005) gather ideas related to etymology that help outline a concept of creativity:
In Ancient Rome, the term creativity possessed various meanings. Its etymological roots originate from the Latin term creare, which meant to give existence to, create, form, procreate, found, produce. Some synonymous terms included generare, used to express the idea of generating, creating, producing, composing; gignere, in the sense of generating, creating, giving birth to, producing, causing; and also facere, that is, to make, execute, elect, provide. Creare was used in diverse senses. One of these senses is evident in the use we still give it today: to invent, to idealize. Parere meant to appear, to be present, to show oneself, to fulfill, to execute; efficere means to make, execute, conclude, fulfill; edere, to announce, publish, declare, order, determine. The closely related terms were: excogitare—to think, reflect, imagine, invent; invenire—to find, discover, invent, obtain; reperire—to find, discover, acquire, recognize, imagine, invent, show oneself; machinari—to invent, construct, machinate, plan; comminisci—to imagine, feign, invent. Another sense denoted the idea of creating in the imagination. It was associated with cogitare, which meant to think, meditate, consider; fingere, to model, form, represent, create, produce, compose, feign, dissimulate. To idealize and to imagine were two ideas associated with it, both in the sense of representing in the spirit (again cogitare and fingere, and also cogitatione—thought, reflection, resolution, project; and the expressions mente complecti—comprehensive mind and cogitare assequi—achieved thought). Current theorizations about creativity assume many of these original meanings. Although the questions that were debated for over a century still remain, creativity is now seen as a multidimensional process, where the context in which it occurs must also be considered. (Bahia & Nogueira, 2005)
Considering that the environment in which the creative act takes place is intrinsically linked to the created or adopted definition, it will be necessary to understand how creativity has been studied and conceptualized. Thus, we will be able to establish an approximation with the field of music and Free Improvisation, thereby seeking a concept that meets our propositions.
Creativity has most commonly been studied starting from fixed forms, considered finished and resultant. On the other hand, recently, studies in creative processes have sought to shift the focus of investigation to the reconstruction of the creative process itself as an object of clarification about creativity. In the case of the study of improvisation, creation is the emergence of the process itself.
Improvisation has been neglected by many fields that study creativity and the arts, including philosophy and psychology. Psychologists, for example, have focused on product creativity: activities that result in an object, in an ostensive product—paintings, sculptures, scores—which appear after the end of the creative act. Product creativity generally involves a long period of creative work directed toward the creative product. In contrast, in improvisation, the creative process is the product […]. (Sawyer, 2000, p. 149)
Creativity in improvisation is found in the moment of musical action; in the case of Free Improvisation, this phenomenon is even more evident. However, one can approach improvisation by disregarding the creative action at the moment it occurs and observe the same phenomenon only through the clues that represent it as a finished product. An example of this occurs when improvisation is fixed in the form of a recording or transcription in score format, that is, assembled for a finalistic planning, and can thus come to be considered as an ideal or particular archetypal scheme.
Thus, the observation of the creative path developed in improvisation will no longer deal with possibilities (or, if closer to the context of idiomatic improvisation, probabilities). This is because improvisation is built from a point we consider as the present (which immediately becomes past at the moment it is cognitively apprehended) and another point, to which the sounds must be led, which we call the future. We consider that the future, in the specific case of improvisation, is an open field whose self-delineation is more or less influenceable due to the norms, procedures, needs, or characteristics of each modality of improvisation. In the case of treating an improvisation from a score or recording, the observation of this future as a field of unforeseeability, which is subject to creative action, would be compromised.
From this relationship of the passage of time that presents itself in the configuration of open space, Deleuze states:
There is, therefore, thirdly, a great difference in space: whereas nomadic space is smooth, marked only by “traces” that are erased and displaced with the trajectory. Even the laminae of the desert slide over one another, producing an inimitable sound. The nomad distributes himself in a smooth space, he occupies, inhabits, and maintains this space, and therein lies his territorial principle. (Deleuze, 1997b, p. 43)
For Deleuze, the quality of a cut and confined space causes each to receive its function, and for this to happen, there is a regulated communication, in order to arouse organization in the shares. Thus, we are compromising the open field, because regulated communication also cuts spaces and arranges functions. The smooth space of the nomad, in which not even the horizon necessarily needs to be a cutting line, extends continuously always forward and does not close cyclically; there is no resumption. Thus, the law is not that of sharing, but that which propels transit.
The nomad appears there, on the land, whenever a smooth space is formed that corrodes and tends to grow in all directions. The nomad inhabits these places, remains in these places, and himself makes them grow, in the sense that it is observed that the nomad creates the desert as much as he is created by it. (Deleuze, 1997b, pp. 44–45)
In this open field, a concept related to Deleuze’s desert, the delineation of its trajectory distances the possibility of constituted idioms (idiomatic improvisation), which are representative of mapped walking. Nomadic transit is provided with an objective, but still, the path is circumstantial. The required freedom, in the case of Free Improvisation, is that which disarticulates the organization of functions and allows transit without previously drawn paths. This does not mean that, mechanically, laws are abolished or procedures that are observed for the occurrence of this transit are deconstructed.
The activity of improvisation has as its characteristic the establishment of this open space without borders and that propels transit, but does not determine it by making use of the path indicated by the map nor by the walls and corridors. Improvisation makes possible, through creative action, the establishment of a proper space that articulates for the definition of what is improvised and what is not.
A notable example of this fact is the CD Conversations with Bill Evans (Decca, 1997), recorded by the French classical pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who rerecorded, from transcriptions, the improvised solos of the jazz pianist Bill Evans. What Thibaudet provides us that is most important, starting from the improvisation transcribed into a score, does not refer exactly to his interpretation of the notes, nor to the nuances of time, nor to any modification in the character of Evans’s original improvisations. By transforming Evans’s improvisation into a reconstructable encrypted code (which would represent Thibaudet’s interpretation) and not merely a reproducible one (which we would consider as technical reproduction via the CD), Thibaudet also extracts from Evans’s improvised music what it would have as its main characteristic of representation for a momentary creation activity, as improvisation intends to be: the pact of spontaneity.
This pact, which we can observe more clearly when we place ourselves as listeners, is what opens the possibility not only of marveling at the reconstruction of the myth of spontaneous creation (or originality) but also of the excitement that risk causes us when recognizing and participating in this “throwing oneself into the unknown.” This pact is the affirmation in improvised music of the existence of this open field that brings this characteristic as a guiding axis in relation to another modality of musical expression. Thus, Thibaudet ends up relocating Evans’s improvisation, since if it is considered that it would be emptied of its characteristic of spontaneous and unforeseeable creation, it might not even be considered improvisation. His interpretation is undoubtedly an artistic merit, after all, it is part of the universe of art to alter the established functions of things. But, just as for the listener, it is very important for the improviser to establish this pact and throw themselves into the desert.
But if before it was only possible to listen to Thibaudet, without knowledge of Evans’s original, this could lead us to subsequently recognize Evans’s improvisation as a music of previously determined planned creation. By the information we receive, and the ones we accept to constitute this pact, we are led to understand Evans’s creation in a radically different way from Thibaudet’s execution. Regardless of how many times the technical reproduction via CD is played, Evans’s creation will always be an improvisation, and even a live performance by Thibaudet will always be the execution of a previously planned music.
To become nomadic and constitute this smooth space, this open field, the pact with risk is also necessary. And this is dear to the improviser: it means that the territory will be represented by the cut of the area that connects to the unforeseeable future, since the path is of constant expansion. Thus, the improviser is like a filter, or even the node of an hourglass, which digests the open field into a line through the passage of time, but which again, upon reaching the future, dissolves into spaces with expansive borders. But we do not seek with this to argue that the process guarantees the exclusivity of creativity and spontaneity only for musical improvisation, or for Free Improvisation. It is not the amount of risk or spontaneity that suggests the difference between improvised and non-improvised music, but the appearance, or establishment, of this open space that corrodes the closed spaces by their delimitations.
Thus, the unforeseeability, observed as the spontaneity of the improviser, is not only constituted by the listener’s pact and their determination for a listening, but rather by the action of the improviser. In a complementary manner, the flow and the intention of procedural representation of improvisation, which allows in the present moment that the improvising musician conceives this open field that represents their “unforeseeable future”, is constituted within their craftsmanship [18] of the moment, that is, their performance, their live execution. In the case of Evans’s improvised solo, even if it is from the reproduction via CD, it can only be understood as improvisation because it evokes the open field that Thibaudet declaratively undoes.
In Free Improvisation, as is common in other forms of improvisation, there is a broad preparatory chain that allows sonic articulation in favor of musical creation. For each sphere of transit, there are procedures that allow it to occur. The preparation that a performer carries out in order to obtain a result on a musical work of planned and previously determined creation is a distinct procedure from the preparation made for improvised music, as it is for Free Improvisation. Some improvisers gather useful materials and learn techniques and procedures and develop skills regarding the specific nature of the matter they will transform.
The Free Improvisation artist in particular generally does not select the specific “tools” for their craft, nor do they need to worry about adequately using their amount of acquired skills for each situation that the matter demands. This is because they are not only the manipulator but also the creator of this same sonic matter. In Free Improvisation, specifically, everything is useful and useless, because the improviser who disposes themselves to this craft does not know beforehand about the nature of their work or knows little about the nature of the matter, precisely because the product would not determine it. The tool and the craft are formed in the core of the will to make music, because their skill concentrates on favoring also the very emergence of new tools and sonic matters.
For this, it is common for the free improviser to carry out diverse explorations as part of their creative process. Thus, they explore not only the possibilities related to their musical materials, such as the sonority of the instrument, but also experiment with what they believe to be important to form their atelier. That is, they establish a kind of “scrapbook” with all sorts of things they believe will be important at the moment of creative action. This exploratory characteristic and the realization of tests is also recurrent in works considered inventive:
A notable characteristic of almost all inventions found—not only contemporary ones, but also the work of the Wright brothers, Edison, and others, seen through the eyes of historians—was the duration of the enterprise. There were no cases of instant victories and prototypes on the table in a matter of weeks. In reality, almost all stories of inventions stretched over several years, with many false starts and various impasses along the way. (Perkins, as cited in Boden, 1999, p. 137)
In a similar way, it is possible to verify this manner of preparation for the free improviser: it is continuous and purposeless, it extends throughout their life and is not specifically directed. The path we can delineate from this process only presents itself once the creation comes into existence, because it becomes, in expressive form, the receptacle and play space of accumulated experiences; just as experiences gain meaning within the creation itself. Domenico De Masi (2003) demonstrates how we can realize the creative process, when in a 1988 exhibition at the Picasso Museum in Paris, the most disparate works were gathered, and the experiences only gain meaning within the artistic works themselves and ritual objects that inspired the creation of Las Demoiselles d’Avignon:
After traversing this long itinerary through the museum rooms and the artist’s creative process, finally, on the last flight of stairs, one reached the definitive canvas; it became evident that a creative work does not represent a starting point, but rather a destination, it is not an instantaneous intuition, but the result of a long and tiring mental itinerary. (De Masi, 2003, p. 230)
Even so, creativity, thought of as a sequence of creative acts, does not reside only in this previous or “preparatory” moment. It remains for us to examine what kind of work this is that unites distant elements in an original creation. Considering the current forms of making-create like Free Improvisation, it would not be right to establish a relationship between the process of improvisation of this type and creativity according to the parameters as we presented previously. Because the way creativity has been approached in general in scientific studies seeks to point out and gather innovative solutions for a problem or realization of a task within a closed and proposed system. But this tells us little about the process, because creative actions do not always need this degree of determinism and objectivity to emerge; they can rely on imaginary and intuitive spaces.
It is possible that, as we have presented, the creative action in Free Improvisation can be observed not only from a progressive sequence [19], but also related to other concomitant and complementary forces. The creative action in Free Improvisation seems to be fed both by musical biographies and by the ideas of the imaginary. Furthermore, it can reveal typical procedures of invention, in addition to those that are considered creative. Also, it is not possible to exclude from this particular creative moment components such as risk (which in a way keeps the flow active) and unforeseeability (which keeps this field of possibilities open). Although these forces present moments of prominence, they appear in parallel in the creative actions of Free Improvisation.
These forces important for the creative formulations in Free Improvisation—creativity, the imaginary, invention, and risk—must be observed in detail so that we can understand their role and how they involve themselves in the creative action in Free Improvisation. Imagination and creativity are often taken as synonyms, or even related to invention; however, for our studies, it is important to understand that there are some significant differences in the operation of these forces in the development of a Free Improvisation.
Notes
[18] The term craftsmanship is used here not in the pejorative sense of a minor art, but with the idea that improvisation is an art that is not only intellectual and conceptual, but that depends on and involves elements of the physicality of those who make it.
[19] Here we are referring to a common idea in creativity theory, in which different authors comparably agree that creativity would be something achievable through a sequence of “steps.” We can cite as an example the ideas of Helmholtz, who formulated the following stages: preparation, incubation, inspiration, and verification (Novaes, 1980, p. 49). However, as we have already demonstrated previously, we believe that in the case of Free Improvisation, this type of model based on a progressive sequence becomes, in a way, incomplete or insufficient in the description of the events involved.