... while agreeing with one another, though, I would hope, unless I haven't been as clear as I was hoping to be.

The degree of planning, and the kind of planning, are massively variable depending on the people and the conditions. EP's soprano sax solos, for instance, take place within a "matrix" which is nothing if not prepared, but thinking that this acts to reduce the space within which the imagination can move could be said to be like thinking that a complex and detailed score reduces the corresponding space for the interpreter. A similar observation could be made about Cecil Taylor's solo music. In other words: the improvisational method of composition isn't just a matter of how much of the creative thinking is taking place spontaneously, but it can also involve setting up an initial framework within which that spontaneity can take place. One of the differences between a jazz improvisation and a "free" improvisation is that in the former the framework involves "outside-time" structures regarding style, phrasing, dynamic, and so forth, as well as "in-time" structures like the traditional head-solos-head form, both of which kinds of structure are relatively fixed, while in the latter the framework is itself drawn into the compositional material so that its flexings, ruptures and reconfigurations are an essential element of the structure of the music.

Perhaps this view of things is more idiosyncratic than I think it is, but it's helped me to make sense for myself of the situation. Some time it might be appropriate to put these thoughts in some kind of order instead of "just" improvising with them...

I was reading Ben Watson's book on Derek Bailey, and it struck me that Bailey was political in a more overt class bias way than say, Evan Parker or even some of the later English improvisers. I don't think it's just Watson's influence on the book. In the 70s some improvisers (esp.Dutch) were political, however simplistic that may appear with hindsight. The message of superiority you experience now, I think, has been hard won. The classical attitude towards 'improvising'  was the thing you did when you accompanied silent movies. Anything else was beyond the pale. Yes, of course there were exceptions. Now there are no exceptions. As I sit in one of the premier seats of postmodern Identity (kit) politics, I am reminded how comfortable it must have felt to have the cultural machine on your side.  Anyway, perhaps that's all it was.

I do a great deal more improvising than sightreading, but I would have thought that sightreading could be seen as further away from improvisation than playing a notated piece which one has learned, and in which therefore one might be more concerned with exploring interpretative space than with reading the dots.

They don't come across in the same way, and sometimes they don't come across as perceptually separable "layers" at all. If I know or believe the music I'm hearing to have been improvised I tend to think "in parallel" with the musician(s), sensing the way that the numerous possible pathways constantly "collapse", in the act of being realised, into a single reality, which then blurs once more as it becomes memory/forgetting. In fact I would say that taking up this mode of listening (even if not all the time) is perhaps my way of telling whether or not the music is improvised. (It isn't 100% accurate by any means, of course.)

I think that is probably true about Derek Bailey. Many improvisers, though, are still "political", as their published statements usually make clear: if we're making a comparison here between composers and improvisers, I would imagine (without of course having the figures to hand) that the latter group would contain a higher proportion of people who subscribe to radical (left) points of view, who look at society from that angle, than the former. There would also probably be proportionally more improvisers than composers who would see making the music they make as an activity with a political dimension. I'm not saying that this means improvisation is inherently more "political" than notated composition, because I don't hold that view, though some do, but it is nevertheless a fact that improvised music by its nature doesn't lend itself so much to "masterpiece fetishism" for example.

quote author=Ian Pace link=topic=1605.msg53240#msg53240 date=1187132977]

I believe, for some improvisers, the score is still the problem and that, yes, it's a question of choosing the easiest target.
It's pure lazyness. and a certain lack of knowledge. Then, you have high profile composers/improvisers, such as Fred Frith, who seems to take the opportunity to compare how he composes with Brian Ferneyhough. Here also, I think, you can detect the influence of what
Watson has called the 'Popsicle Academy': Simon Frith, Georgina Born et al. Although, obviously, not a musicologist,
Fred has had influence, in some circles, as have Henry Cow in general. It is still difficult to critique this
band; they rose without trace. It's brave of Ben Watson to attempt to question Born, for example, which
is never addressed by Born, of course.

Again, yes, I'd think that people drawn to Ferneyhough are often drawn to Improvisation. The fact that mainstream
audiences and commercial musics tend not to be so interested in Ferneyhough, surely, has to do with exposure, and
that you won't get, so much now, for a European, white, male composer, here (left coast). If you are John Adams, the fifth
minimalist, I'm sure there'll always be room at the table, so to speak. Robert Fink's book 'Repeating Ourselves',
where he links minimalism to the 1950s rise in mass media and advertising, is definite food for thought.
Here, there is an elephant in the room whenever one wants to discuss certain issues.'The London Review of Books'
has courageously sponsored one of the first debates, in New York, which tries to address those issues. The system is broken
and that must, of course, include the Academy.


If improvisers have achieved prominence over composers, in terms of recordings, it's only because they have
usually created the record labels themselves. I don't know if Richard Barrett has done this,  but most composers
didn't regard that as a priority. But then, things change. As far as the recording industry is concerned, just don't
encourage them ;-)

A lot of solo artists recording new music are used to not being paid, or only being paid a pittance, for recording CDs on smaller labels, as well.

I see in what sense you could say that.  Yet there is some beauty in exploring compositional space as well.  But in another sense it puts the player even closer to the listener, in that she isn't necessarily sure what's going to come next (moreso than when improvisation) and is thinking about what's already been played (or what's currently being played) rather than occupied in what's going to come.  And the on-edgeness and unpredictability that comes from such a thing.  But, there's exploration going on in both cases.

Certainly if it happened that the notation became very vague (or very precise) at a certain point the end result might be improvisatory.

Improvisation in the latter sense might often sound like: "that BLOODY page-turner lost mah sonata!"

Oh yes; I do think there's not much sense in equating the two,  I just thought it worthwhile to have a quick wonder about the relations between them

Derek Bailey also put out his own book on Improvisation. Let me see if I can find the title... ah, yes, it's called Improvisation.

I have found it to be informative, and surprisingly un-ideological, but then it does consist of interviews with improv practitioners about their craft. Only few of these decide to use the opportunity to get on a soapbox. It's worth a read.

Has anyone had a chance to listen to the SendSpace materials from post #20?
http://r3ok.myforum365.com/index.php?topic=1605.msg53052#msg53052
If so, I hope they will comment or perhaps post some of their own... this is after all a music appreciation thread, and not a discourse appreciation thread!

Grump!