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GUIDED LISTENING TOUR |
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 INTRODUCTION PEDAGOGICAL OBJECTIVES |
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COLLECTIVE IMPROVISATION | ||
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In Western music, improvisation has established its importance mainly through the impact of Jazz. That said, improvisation was explored relatively early in European instrumental music. In the Middle Ages notation was approximate and left room for improvisation. In the Baroque era the most essential aspects of the work were notated but performers had a certain amount of liberty in the interpretation of ornaments and in the realization of the basso continuo. As notation standards became more and more standardized throughout the Classical and Romantic periods, these liberties gradually disappeared. Today the only remnants are found amongst organists, who in addition to studies and practice in interpretation also study and practice improvisation, both with and without harmonic or melodic constraints. In the 1960s, following the peak of integral serialism, a resurgence in the interest in improvisation appeared and it was reintegrated into the Western music world. In electroacoustics it was in the 1970s that improvisation was used as a means to escape the weight of compositional and technical procedures common at the time. The 1980s saw the appearance of electronic instruments offering much more flexibility. Some musicians discovered a certain liberty in the new possibilities of “live” performance and would, through their practice, reinforce this tendency. Today improvisation is one means of performance amongst many others but it is still taught only rarely in music schools. The concept of collective improvisation was initially explored by John Cage (1912–1992), who felt that applying this principle to instrumental performance would offer a structuring principle that would allow the development of an unknown musical form, without the intervention of the composer or of the musicians. |
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