Historically Inspired Improvisation - Improvising on basis of 19th-century music making

Bert Mooiman

The average modern classical musician, the performer of music from the common practice era, tends to perform from scores only, and to treat a score like a text that should be converted into sound as precisely as possible. This is usually a one way process: without a score there will be no music. As a result of this attitude the musical languages of the common practice period have become dead languages, more or less like Latin and Ancient Greek, which are (with very few exceptions) no longer spoken actively but only translated into modern languages. More and more musicians become aware of the artistic limitations of this approach. In order to become, like musicians from the past, creative performers who are able to enter into a living relationship with the music, learning how to improvise seems to be a valuable means. The Royal Conservatoire in The Hague (The Netherlands) invests in ‘classical’ improvisation. An environment has been created which fosters the idea that improvisation is important for classical musicians, and a lot of experience has been gathered in teaching improvisation to those students. But what precisely do we mean with the word improvisation? And how exactly do we argue that improvisation is important for the new generations of conservatoire students? Improvisation by classical musicians is often referred to as ‘classical improvisation’ or ‘improvisation in a classical style’. These terms are not without problems, though. I would like to propose the notion of ‘historically inspired improvisation’ instead, indicating improvisation which uses thorough knowledge about music making in the past as a source of inspiration. ‘H.I.I.’ doesn’t necessarily aim for style imitations; rather, it works the other way around: integrating what we can use from historical music practices into our own creative music making. In this way, improvisation has the potential to fertilize all our ‘musicking’ (Chr. Small) – even when we play from scores. In my essay, a recorded student improvisation will be taken as a starting point. I will analyse and comment upon this recording, developing the idea of musical ‘loci communes’ which enables us to connect improvisation with the interpretation of a score. It is interesting to compare such insights with original treatises on improvisation, especially Carl Czerny’s Anleitung zum Fantasieren auf dem Pianoforte (1829). Czerny turns out to presume skills that are no longer self-evident to musicians of today, while on the other hand issues which are nowadays important are not addressed in his text at all. Drawing upon the theory of loci communes, I will work out an example of how I think Czerny’s book can still be a valuable source of inspiration today.

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The time – fixation - diagram

If improvisation and composition form a continuum, a piece of music (whether improvised, composed or both) can be placed upon an axis with the degree of fixation as a variable. In this way a specific situation of creating (inventing) music can be given a place on this axis, according to the degree of fixation: a very free form of improvisation (like the ‘Freye Phantasie’ described by C.Ph.E. Bach) will be at the lower side of the axis, and a composition which is notated in an extremely precise score will get a high value. Of course, the differences are qualitative: there is no way of measuring the degree of fixation, or of comparing different ways of fixating music.

If the degree of fixation is one parameter, another one, much easier to determine, is the point in history when this specific situation of creating music occurred. For a free improvisation this will be the year when it happened, for a composition the year of composing. If this parameter is represented by a second axis, we are able to make a diagram with situations of creating music, as reported in historical sources. For published scores the amount of examples is obviously so enormous, that only a few instances can be included. For historical reports of improvisations the situation is very different.

This ‘time-fixation-diagram’ makes it possible to attribute to a historical musical event (e.g. Brahms improvising Hungarian Dances together with Reményi) a set of coordinates, the first of them being rather arbitrary (because qualitative), the second one usually precise (except for a phenomenon that lasted for a longer period, like basso continuo). The diagram shows clearly that in one particular time segment several levels of fixation occurred simultaneously. A striking general tendency appears in the 'Western Art Music' composed during the 19^th century and the modernism during the 20^th - a more or less closed repertoire area that featured an increasing amount of notational fixation, shown in the diagram as a movement in the bottom - right direction. Interestingly, the period at issue (the 19^th century) shows a larger variety than the reputation of that century would suggest. Of course, the diagram only can show reported situations, a fact that might influence the general picture.

Freye Phantasie

(C.Ph.E. Bach)

Improvised opera fantasy à la Liszt, Thalberg

Fantasie à la Czerny (chapter xxx), Beethoven (op. 77, introduction Chorfantasie)

Franck, Dupré: improvised sonata (organ)

Franck, Dupré: improvised fugue (organ)

Elgar improvising

Improvised variations à la Czerny, Beethoven

Free improvisation

Cadenza à la Czerny, Hummel

Prelude à la Clara Schumann

More developed prelude à la Czerny (chapter 2), Kalkbrenner

Albéniz improvising

Variations à la Mozart

Improvisation on a ground

Cadenza à la Mozart (instrumental)

Simple prelude à la Czerny (chapter 1)

Fixated composition

Improvised Hungarian Dances (Brahms, Reményi)

Improvised chorale prelude (organ)

Basso continuo

Improvised ornamentation in baroque slow movement (Corelli, Telemann)

Vocal solo cadenza (Händel, Mozart, belcanto)

Prélude non mésuré

Morton Feldman Chamber music

Ornamentations in Chopin, Field

Improvised ornamentation in Mozart sonata slow movement

Bach English Suite

Classical sonata fast movement

Bach Kunst der Fuge

Beethoven sonata

Brahms piano pieces

Brahms chamber music

Beethoven orchestral music

Brahms Symphony

Mahler symphony

Ravel orchestral piece

Strawinsky Symphony in 3 movements

Messiaen organ music

Steve Reich Music for 18 musicians

Boulez Structures

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