Contemplating the Concept of Improvisation and Its History in Scholarship

Early History[1] In the areas of music research, historical musicology, ethnomusicology, and theory, improvisation has a curious history. The earliest works of historical musicology generally ignored it, but when attention did emerge, it came from two directions. First, improvisation-or as it was often called, extemporization-was seen as a kind of craft, in contrast to the art of composition; and second, it was studied as something that in European music belongs to the realm of performance practice (as in the case of ornamentation), or as a hallmark of the music of the "other."[2] Erich M. von Hornbostel, introducing Indian classical music in 1903, remarked: "There are thus no composers in our sense of the word, since all compositions are variations of an ancient theme. On the other hand, each performer (reproducing musician) is at the same time a composer (producing artist), since the performer never learns a comprehensive composition" (my translation; reprinted in Abraham and Hornbostel 1922, 281). Ernst Ferand (1936), in his first comprehensive history of improvisation, concentrates on performance practice of Baroque and earlier musics. And in their treatment of the creation of music in non-Western and folk cultures, many ethnomusicologists and folklorists tended to equate improvisation with oral transmission and composition.[3] Of course, early scholars-pre-1965, say-of jazz, Indian and Middle Eastern music, and other repertories made inroads into the understanding of improvisation, but they rarely separated it out as a distinct process. For example, it is clear that the development of tune families in European folksong came about through some kind of improvisatory process. It is clear as well, that when Albert Lord (1965) spoke of the creation of versions of South Slavic epics by showing how themes and motifs and cliches are manipulated, he was talking about an improvisatory process. And the many scholars of jazz studying and often comparing the performances of individual artists were involved with improvisation, though they rarely focused on the concept.Areas of Research After Ca. 1970[4] After about 1970, we began to talk and write more about improvisation. There have been many case studies, largely in non-Western societies, but also in European music and New World musics. I will sketch a few of the principal directions and questions that have been asked:1) How do improvisers get from something they know, something we have sometimes called a model, to the improvised performance? What is the relationship between model and performance; between the tune and the solo, the Persian radif as learned and as performed or improvised upon?2) What is the relationship between the various performances that use one model as a point of departure? I believe this has been the paradigmatic musicological project involving improvisation. It has provided studies in a variety of musical cultures-jazz, Middle Eastern music, Indian music, and others-that have made intercultural approaches possible.3) There has been scholarship about music that may have been improvised, or that is supposed to sound improvised, music that is in some sense improvisational, and about improvisational practices that we know only from descriptions or from notations from memory. I'm speaking, for example, of studies of Beethoven, Chopin, and Clara Schumann.4) Further rubrics include improvisation as symbol or metaphor, its relationship to concepts such as freedom, and the value of improvisation for participatory music. There is the importance of improvisation as a symbol in the civil rights movement. And on the other side, the value of improvisation in defining the practices of non-western musics.5) We have studied improvisation in culture. In looking at Western musical culture, there are those-musicians, music lovers, and scholars of Western music-who look at improvisation as the music of a kind of "other. …