From: ujwb@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Jeff Beer)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Subject: Re: classical training,improv,heart
Date: 16 Oct 92 23:44:41 GMT
Organization: Educational Computing Network

In article <ALLMUSIC%92101612435109@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU> Ken Koester <MAINT2@ERS.BITNET> writes:
>On Fri, 16 Oct 1992 13:10:17 GMT Jeff Beer said:
>>
>>when you are playing something from the score, of course you have to
>>listen to the others in the ensemble.  but you listen off what you
>>expect, if the drummer puts an accent in the wrong place, you won't
>>really play off that.  in improvisation, a drummer many put an accent in
>>a different and unexpected place, and you have to be able to handle
>>that.  not only do you have to be ready for that, to be able to
>>play off that, to make it part of the music.  That is quite a significant
>>difference.
>>
>Not as much as you might think.  It's true you don't have to worry too much
>about someone changing the pitches (barring early music, ornamentation, and
>possibly cadenzas), but any number of other things can change, even for

Changing pitches has to be considered a big thing, and it is a far cry
from ornamentation.  Changing pitches might mean changing keys.
Changing the accents can completely change the phrase structure.
It completely changes the shape of the phrase.  You can
disagree, but that is significant.

>"score readers"--it just *aint* all there in the score, my man.  If one of

I agree, in fact I said that early on.  Most of the stuff that isn't in
the score is governed by tradition.  This doesn't preclude someone
coming in with a completely new interpretation, to the point of making it a 
new style.

>your group has a different idea on the fly about how to do notes inegales,
>or weight-and-release, by gum you better all pick up on it, or you got
>problems.  Tempos can change; ritards aren't signaled if you don't have a
>conductor (ie, a small chamber group); dynamics shift; people can be "hot"
>or "cold" on the beat; notes may be detached, paired, chopped; articulations
>attacks and sustains have to be matched.  It's true you rehearse these things.

Those are all things an improviser has to worry about.  But nobody is
saying that someone (for example) an early music ensemble doesn't have to
respond to what is being played at the moment.  But it is on a more
restricted range of parameters.  I would even say there might be aspects
here that are more subtle than on improvisation, allowing a composer to
be able to make greater distictions between styles.
Nobody is going to play a solo in a romantic style out of the blue in an
early music ensemble.  But I think they become more subtle by being more 
restrictive.  In my next paragraph I will illustrate how.

>But it's also true that performance differs from rehearsal.  Perhaps, though,
>you are considering that the differences are more noticeable in improvising
>traditions.  Probably true:  it's taken me 7 years of doing early music just
>to be able to sense why the group isn't tight when it isn't, and what I as a
>performer can do about it (not much:  I've only been playing 7 years.  But

Yes, and usually that comes from making these variables more
restrictive.  You see, you are saying, this is tight, this is not.
For instance, in an orchestra, you play a Tchaikovsky staccato different
than a Stravinsky staccato, which is like a French staccato.  If you
play a Tchaikovsky staccato on an Igor piece, you have blown it.
The difference between the two stacattos is very subtle.  And it extends
to so many other domains.  Example, there are subtle variations in pulse, beat 1
may be a little longer and stronger on Beethoven than beat 1 on Mozart. 
It is a very subtle thing which can't be taught be the score or learned
in books. It must be learned by experience.

Lot of this is the same in jazz.  In terms of grooves, you got a Blakey fat 
back, the circular triplets of Elvin Jones.  These things are likewise 
governed by tradition.  There might be one night where the drummer plays the
backbeat a little fatter, just as an early music soloist might have some
slight difference in his phrasing.  But I think the first case would
change the music more, even if compared to the nights where the
drummer played the same backbeat.  If you change the early music too
much, it would destroy the music.  But that is good.  That is partly
what gives it distinction.

>you can always talk it out afterwards.).  But I seriously doubt I have to
>work any less harder at it than if I had been playing jazz or R&R for 7 years.
>Which is my ultimate point about all this:  making music well is equally
>difficult no matter what tradition you work in.  If it ever gets *easy*,
>you're probably doing something wrong :-)

No one is saying that it is easier.  I am just pointing out some of the
things you have in improvisation that you don't have in scored music,
which leads to my assertion that there are things which can happen in
improvised music that cannot happen in written music.

Jeff
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU