© Sonia Mangiapane
Peer-reviewed audio paper

A fundamental mode of being in the world

Improvisatory paths as a principle creative paradigm
Af
6. april 2021
Fokus: Sounds of Science
  DOI https://doi.org/10.48233/SEISMOGRAF2608

Comprehending improvisation as a principle creative paradigm affects the way we make music, how we understand it, and how we listen to it. By reflecting on my own practice, I discuss the idea that improvisation exists not only in so-called improvised music but also in composition, in interactive computer systems, and in audio mixing. Presenting the case study Strings and Syllables, an album of duet improvisations I released in 2020 (https://ilyaziblat.bandcamp.com/album/strings-and-syllables), I create a discourse between indeterminate, interactive, collaborative, and co-authorial working processes, and the idea of the musical work (Goehr, 1992). Improvisation affords the creation of new knowledge through experimentation and interaction, and, as such, challenges the more traditional view of western art music which separates the work of the composer and the performers. Furthermore, the concept of improvisation is not only quintessential to our understanding of musical processes; it is also a "fundamental mode of being in the world" (Lewis, 2007). In this sense, improvisation is suggested as a creative model which projects beyond music and that carries social and ideological implications.

Bibliography

Benson, B.E. (2003) The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cobussen, M. (2017) The Field of Musical Improvisation. Leiden: Leiden University Press.

Goehr, L. (1992) The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gottschalk, J. (2016) Experimental Music Since 1970. New York: Bloomsbury.

Groth, S.K. (2016) Composers on Stage: Ambiguous Authorship in Contemporary Music Performance, Contemporary Music Review, 35(6), pp. 686-705. DOI: 10.1080/07494467.2016.1282650.

Lewis, G. (2007) Improvising Tomorrow's Bodies: The Politics of Transduction, e-misférica, 4.2. Available from: http://www.hemi.nyu.edu/journal/4.2/eng/en42_pg_lewis.html [Accessed 25 July 2020].

Lochhead, J. I. (1994) Performance Practice in the Indeterminate Works of John Cage, Performance Practice Review, 7(2), pp. 233-241. Available from: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/ppr/vol7/iss2/11/ [Accessed 25 July 2020].

Keywords

improvisation
composition
collaborative
co-authorship
musical work

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