Ginger Cat

[ted]

About time I posted an improvisation. Yesterday's has formed an association in my mind with the personality of the plucky little stray who adopted us last month. Here is a short section of it.

[furtwaengler]

My sister Ginger always resented so many people naming their cats Ginger. This includes our parents who had a Ginger cat before she was born making it seem as if she was actually named after a cat.

I'd say it gets especially cat like after about 7 minutes, but as for the rest its a stream of ever changing surprises.

[ted]

Thanks for listening, Dave. The cat is just an association which I acquired afterwards and the music does not attempt to actually depict a cat.

....a stream of ever changing surprises.

Excellent turn of phrase Dave. Yes, that is a very important quality of music for me, not necessarily for others, of course. Some improvisers, my teacher was one, assert they are fully aware in advance of everything which is going to happen; every note is calculated. Personally, this would be a pointless exercise for me, surprise, imprecision of form and serendipity are properties I could not easily sacrifice. To me they are the life blood of my improvisation, both in the moment of creation and in later listening.

Having said that though, I concede music is much bigger than I am, and there is room for an infinity of approaches to improvisation.  

[nickc]

"Some improvisers, my teacher was one, assert they are fully aware in advance of everything which is going to happen; every note is calculated. Personally, this would be a pointless exercise for me, surprise, imprecision of form and serendipity are properties I could not easily sacrifice. To me they are the life blood of my improvisation, both in the moment of creation and in later listening." -Ted

I think it's time we open pandoras box into the "definition" of improvisation...

A revolution is brewing.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Some improvisers, my teacher was one, assert they are fully aware in advance of everything which is going to happen; every note is calculated.

I also read this earlier and thought that was a very odd definition of improvisation. No room for spontaneity then?

[furtwaengler]

From the previously linked selections of William Harris

https://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/classical.improv.html

Speaking of scholarly collections of data, I find that the word Improvisation is relatively new in the English language. Here is an overview from the vast collections of the historically based Oxford English Dictionary, 2 ed.:

A. adv. Without preparation or premeditation; off-hand, on the spur of the moment; extempore.
1669 LADY CHAWORTH in 12th Rep. Hist. MSS. Comm. App. v. 11 Mr. Elliot..desired Mr. Titus to make some verses..which he did thus, impromptu [etc.]. 1788 BURNS Let. to Mrs. Dunlop 16 Aug., She sometimes hits on a couplet or two impromptu. 1791 BOSWELL Johnson (1816) I. 31 note, This was made almost impromptu. 1882 FARRAR Early Chr. II. 375 note, This was afterwards improved into the story that he [John] wrote the whole Gospel impromptu.
B. n. Something composed or uttered without preparation or premeditation; an extemporaneous composition or performance; an improvisation. Also, a musical composition having the character of an improvisation.
1683 D. A. Art Converse 44 We must deal plainly and seriously with such men, waving all in promptu's and subtilities. 1693 DRYDEN Juvenal Introd. (1697) 37 They were made extempore, and were, as the French call them, Impromptus. 1776 JOHNSON Poem (title), To Mrs. Thrale, on her completing her thirty-fifth year, an impromptu. 1847 DISRAELI Tancred II. ix, Lady Constance..had a variety of conclusions on all social topics, which she threw forth..with the well-arranged air of an impromptu. 1880 GROVE Dict. Mus. I. 768/2 The two sets of pieces by Schubert known as Impromptus..were..not so entitled by him.
C. adj.
1. Composed or uttered without preparation or premeditation; improvised; invented, produced, etc. on the spur of the moment and without previous thought.
1789 MRS. PIOZZI Journ. France I. 240 Who would risque the making impromptu poems at Paris? 1830 D"ISRAELI Chas. I, III. Pref. 4, I am not fortunate in impromptu replies. 1849 THACKERAY Lett. Apr., I daresay I shall have to make an impromptu speech.

2. Made or done on the spur of the moment; hastily made for the occasion, or converted to use in an emergency; extemporized, makeshift.
1764 MRS. HARRIS in Priv. Lett. Ld. Malmesbury I. 118 Lord North took an impromptu dinner with us yesterday. 1800 E. HERVEY Mourtray Fam. I. 67 They had a little impromptu ball. 1856 MISS MULOCK J. Halifax xxii. (1865) 215 My daughter encouraged me to pay this impromptu visit. 1872 BAKER Nile Tribut. viii. 128 We prepared an impromptu raft.

Hence impromptu v., to compose off-hand; to improvise, extemporize. impromptuary a. = C. 1. impromptuist, one who composes off-hand, an improviser.
1802 H. SWINBURNE in Courts Europe (1841) II. 334 The soldiers sing in the evening an endless German song, and the sailors impromptu in Danish. 1802-12 BENTHAM Ration. Judic. Evid. (1827) II. 2 Answers impromptuary. 1834 MEDWIN Angler in Wales I. 48 In a pelting rain, impromptu"d the following epigram. 1848 Athen�um 5 Aug. 773 Ballast-waggons..impromptued and filled up with seats. 1882 Chamb. Jrnl. 742/2 Theodore Hook..was a most prolific impromptuist. 1897 F. HALL in Nation


The word Improvisation only appears toward the end of the 18th century, but it is equivalent to rthe earlier expression Impromptu, borrowed from French with same meaning. It is commonly used from the middle of the 17th c. on, and is much the same in usage as the Latin ex tempore. It is interesting that the copious OED does not have examples from the vibrant and experimental Elizabethan world, where the master wordsmith Shakespeare actually improvised some 2500 new words into the language. But lack of a term does not mean lack of an idea: Greeks and Romans had no word for our concept of ART, using techné and ars which are craft words, as sufficient for their well developed and artistic Arts.

In the above OED citations, the word Improvisation is variously applied, first to a style of fluent speaking, also to the quick making up of rhymed couplets, further to songs of various sorts, and even to a surprise dinner menu. It is a highly variable word with many meanings, to which we can add more in these following areas:

I resonated with another line in this same selection, "But as we ask questions about what Improvisation is, we get nearer to the idea of intuitive 'Real Time Composition', which is what improvisation is really about." Harris explains some things I think I had arrived at independently (incidentally he also talks of arriving at Schoenberg before hearing Schoenberg), but is also unlocking some things I'd not been able to solve about the value of improvisation and the reason I have found much, much more success in self-expression by that medium than by composition, for which I have considered myself a failure and a quitter of those dreams. Also it's validating some things I've thought about in teaching with regards to someone I know who has some difficulty with score reading and correct learning, but has an unrivaled power, authority and control of the piano sound when improvising.

[ted]

Any sort of unequivocal definition is well beyond my capability. Whatever happens in the brain during improvisation is very complicated, and I tend to assume, varies enormously from one player to another. There is also the tendency of many good improvisers to proffer false explanations of what they do, either by overstatement or understatement, in order to imbue their activity with a mystique it does not possess, and themselves wth abilities they do not have. No one could have higher regard for his teacher than I for mine, but he was a frightful egotist, a show-off of the first water when in the same room with anyone but me. (Because he liked me, I think, not because he thought my music special) There is no doubt he could mentally calculate an improvisation as if it were a rapid composition, but I simply do not believe he actually set about playing that way, or for that matter even desired to or believed in its merit.

I venture to suggest that attempting to formulate a universally constructive definition of improvisation might not be such a good idea, any more than it would be with art in general. The act of spontaneous musical creation goes very deep into the individual soul, psyche or whatever. A definition is a static thing, and music is living, growing and dynamic. There is an inherent contradiction here somewhere. Personal processes of improvisation, however, provided no psychological games such as those I mentioned are at work, can be exchanged and tried with profit by all; that is surely the objective of this board of the forum.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Definition and function of improvisation are clearly going to differ from person to person, but I can't see that organised premeditation is part of it.

For me, at least, improvisation exists somewhere between two polar opposites:

1. where any attempt at structure is purely coincidental; ideas (hopefully!) flow freely but without any conscious organisation; the process is an abstract form of self-expression and the most important facets are the tactile and the aural. The hands are kept free to embark on whatever ideas spontaneously emerge as a response to what has happened in the immediate past.

2. as a precursor to composition; motifs are kept in the mind and potentially developed; attention is paid to structure (even if of a fairly rudimentary level); a level of intellectual control is retained over the whole process, and conscious theoretical / formal decisions are made on the fly whilst playing. Premeditation may exist in the very limited sense of "I'm going to construct variations on a theme", where the theme has been preselected.

In both cases I would suggest that what emerges often gravitates towards a patchwork of figurations and ideas which are the most ingrained part of my keyboard vocabulary.

I've probably expressed myself quite badly, but never mind..

[ted]

......I've probably expressed myself quite badly, but never mind..

On the contrary, that's a pretty good description of what happens. I used to call the second process "stop/start" improvisation, and used it for many years, carrying around many different streams of music in my head for what seemed ages. Most of the heap of compositions I wrote in earlier years crystallised in this way, being committed to paper when a reasonably stable state was reached. In my mid-fifties I switched to the first way for many reasons I have discussed elsewhere. The main ones were:

The availability of cheap, very high quality recording devices, enabling a permanent artistic end product.
The increasingly arduous task (for me, might be okay for others) of finding an approximate notation for the rhythms which move me.
I had started to sound like a watered down version of famous music in idioms I liked.
Exposure to Jarrett's solo concerts, not in the musical detail, but in the overall spirit of what he was doing.
I simply have more fun with the first way, both in playing and listening afterwards; for me it guarantees ecstasy, and at seventy, with thousands of ideas to get out, I need all the ecstasy I can get and the second way is too slow.

Of course, the accusations of selfishness still occur (in person, where I live, not on this forum) but they don't bother me any more

In both cases I would suggest that what emerges often gravitates towards a patchwork of figurations and ideas which are the most ingrained part of my keyboard vocabulary.

I seem to produce new figurations every time I improvise, but I could be kidding myself. I have listened and played so much since my retirement that I'm not entirely sure any longer what is new and what isn't.