Yes.  Well, most of it. I simply, in my ignorance of this general field, can think of nothing to say at all in response to it.

You'll get no admonishment from me, incre, since I'm really addressing the whole group, but a place of "ignorance" is an ideal place to come from when making a comment -- the expertise I'm interested in is the one that comes from having a lot of listening experience, such as you have, not from having a lot of information about the given music. I am simply hoping for an open floor on which many random observations can come to settle like droplets of punctuation.

-- or did you think my own comments on the matter were particularly erudite?!

Unobjectionable certainly, which is about the highest praise someone of my lofty levels of ignorance can reasonably confer.

To my mind, a lot of those tracks (i.e. all that I can remember at the moment) seemed to be rather timbral more than melodic/harmonic and, as such, the improvisationaly complexity seemed not to be *that* high ... (that is to say, it seemed not terribly virtuosic).  However, I don't know what sorts of kinky talents the production of multiphonics might necessitate.

Richard, I'll rip you a new one (I mean a copy of Arch Duo) - I had no idea it wasn't among your personal effects.

incre, thanks for that, it's a very good start. This stuff is actually on the cusp between melody, harmony and timbre, as if those things could be triangulated. This becomes all the more clear, it seems, when the material is subjected to heavy reverb. That in itself is a crucial reason why I am fascinated; though I've already written it off as something I can't "use" in my own compositions. How does one notate, let alone appropriate, something like that St Gerold passage? Approaching it like a composer (and avoiding all indeterminacy) really means taking an entirely new approach, and probably ending up with unrecognizable results.

As to the multiphonic aspect, I think it's remarkable how many clear, individual pitches come out, and how little noise. The virtuoso aspect comes in purely from the embouchure, I presume the fingers are moving in a rather simple, and usually slow, fashion.

To further underscore my own non-expertise: I do not play a wind instrument, though I have fiddled with them (a metaphor which shows you what I know, eh?). Also, I have never improvised in public, and only on a small handful of occasions in a group. Once I was "improvising" with a friend (CD on piano, friend on baritone sax), and became so absorbed in what I was doing, that it took me several minutes to realize he had given up on me and was practicing his scales.

The original issue in this respect was the claim that improvised music doesn't involve the commodification of music in the form of the production of a score, in response to which I was arguing that a recording occupies an equally if not more important role in the world of improvisation, and such recordings generally have a wider market utility than printed scores. So in this sense, the parallel is between recordings of improvisers, and scores of composers. Now, many composers today self-publish (indeed some would say the world of music publishing is in decline, not least as a result of the relatively easy availability of music-processing software for composers), though of course there are advantages to be attached to a major publisher with a high profile. But surely the same goes for having a contract with ECM, say?

From Derek Bailey's point of view, he had no time for recordings of improvisation. The fact that he made recordings, as a way of earning a living, and that the recording commodifies the music does not change the fact that the score, at the time of the original statement, engendered much more cultural significance than a self published recording by Bailey. To be published by some of the weightier publishing houses opened the door to the BBC, festivals etc, etc with all the trappings that that class activity entailed. The issue was whether you bought into that specific class activity, not simply that it did or didn't imply the commodification of music. We are talking about the UK, at a specific time. Things have changed today for composers as well -> I've heard that musicians hate to read from Finale or Sibelius scores. Is that true? Another barrier is forming?.
Anyway,  I think someone's using a sledge hammer to crack a nut. The comment was historical.
nb-  Sir Harrison Birtwisle - Sir Derek Bailey?

Today, I think working with ECM is a mistake. Sorry, but there it is... some of us remember Keith Jarrett, Manfred Eicher(sp?) and the birth of coffee table music. Also Eicher's pedantic quest for a purity of soundspace, makes me almost shudder today. And as for Jan Garbarek, nuff said. That's where  a lot of the money came from. I can't even address your final question in the way it should be considered. mea culpa.

I don't want to get competitive about this of course but I would like to stake a claim for knowing even less about improvised music than increpatio and having even less to say about it.  

One thing I have found is that, to date anyway, I seem to 'get' more from improvisation when there is more than one performer involved. That turned out to be the case of the four extracts that CD posted as well (for which my thanks too) though I appreciate they were only extracts and it's unfair to judge. It's the business of performer/composers responding to each other's thoughts that I get quite excited about and, for me anyway, that provides a way in. Now it may be that is not the most important aspect of what improvisation is about but it does seem to be an area where there is most obviously a difference of degree between notated music and improvised music. It happens too, of course, in notated chamber music for example (and in all notated music involving more than one player to some extent) but there it's a matter of it ain't what you play, it's the way that you play it.

How central do people feel this 'responding to another musical mind' is in improvisation? And if it is central, where does that leave the solo improviser and what they are doing that differs from instant composition (but without an eraser)? 

And, a possible supplementary question, since the interplay of different musical minds seems so interesting and productive in itself, why don't more 'classical' composers do it with notated works to similarly interesting effect. If Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards why not ... and ... more often?

[P.S. Isn't a ticket at the door on the night just as much a 'commodity' as a CD or a score? (Rnswr is not reqid. Wol) ]