Expanding horizons – Improvisational explorations of 20th-century classical music by Peter Knudsen

"Expanding horizons" is an Artistic research project carried out between 2021 (August) and 2024 (November) at NTNU, Trondheim. The objectives were to contribute to knowledge on how different kinds of departure points can be useful for musicians when approaching 20th-century Western classical music through improvisation, an understanding of how one can navigate and negotiate the musical language of this repertoire, and insights into how the tension between different performance values can be navigated in this process. The research questions were: When applying improvisation to works of 20th-century classical music, 1. What role does the choice and preparation of musical representations play? 2. How can we navigate and negotiate musical structures such as melody, harmony and form? 3. How can we navigate the tension between fidelity to the work and creative expression? Based on selected pieces from this repertoire and practical explorations together with participating musicians, various approaches to creating improvisational frameworks were then explored. These included a wide range of scores, including lead sheets and indeterminate notation, as well as ear-based methods. From the perspective of integrating improvisation into the performances, approaches such as repeating elements, working with layers, creating transitions, and introducing open sections were examined. A key point was to use melodic material as a way of building strong connections with the source material, rather than relying on harmonic representations of the music. In terms of balancing respect for the original work with creative freedom, a “healthy dose of disrespect” pervaded much of the explorations, allowing deviations from the originals when they were musically justified. Throughout the work processes, an idea of focal points emerged, as aspects to focus on when reworking a classical work into an improvisational version. These focal points included the score, historical and performative contexts, expressive qualities, and the improviser’s personal voice.

Previous experiences

Impressions of impressionism

My first impulse to combine the two worlds of 20th-century classical music and jazz improvisation goes back all the way to adolescence, when I was introduced to the music of Debussy and Ravel during my piano lessons in the upper secondary school (1996-1999). SSome of the things that fascinated me about their music was the richness of harmonic colors they worked with, often combined with strong melodies, and how beautifully the compositions were crafted. At roughly the same time, I was also getting into the harmonic language of jazz pianist Herbie Hancock. Somehow, it felt natural from the start – even before reading about the cross-pollination of these musical worlds – that these sounds belonged together in a larger view of things. This stayed with me for some years, where I would frequently write out chord analysis into the scores of piano works like Debussy’s Preludes, Children’s corner and Ravel’s Sonatine and Le tombeau de Couperin, among others. Years later, as a music student in Gothenburg, Sweden, I started my own trio with Fredrik Nilsson (bass) and Daniel Olsson (drums), where we would play compositions of mine and also try out new ways of interpreting jazz standards; trying out new harmonizations, new grooves, new time signatures, etc.. It didn’t take long, however, before I suggested that we try out new versions of French piano music, which ended up being a project that lasted several years (mainly in the period 2004-2008) before we ultimately recorded our album Impressions - a tribute to Debussy and Ravel, released 2008 at Found You Recordings.

One of the ambitions – and challenges – with the new arrangements was to really utilize the compositional details in the pieces, instead of just lifting out their melodies and harmonic changes. Also, the improvised sections were generally inserted in such a way that the overall forms of the pieces were largely preserved. Compared with other explorations of similar music that will be presented further on, these interpretations can be seen as rather literal, retaining the general structures and most of the compositional details of the originals.

In retrospect, the feeling is still that the musical encounter works well in numbers like Forlane, The little shepherd and Prelude from Tombeau de Couperin, where there is a balance between the improvised sections and the sections taken from the original compositions. Also, these versions generally have a rhythmic intensity that adds a new dimension to the music. In other pieces, particularly Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un faune, my feeling is that our faithfulness to the original compositions becomes somewhat of a straitjacket, where we are inhibited by all the details of the arrangement, not least from an improvisational standpoint. Although receiving positive reviews in general, one reviewer also pointed this out in the Finnish magazine Jazz-Rytmit; ”the problem with the album in terms of improvisation is that the artists can't really get away from the original compositions.” At the same time, in retrospect, some pieces didn't quite manage to bring out the depth of the original music, so that the new versions ended up in the infamous 'middle ground' between jazz and classical music (see more under historic overview, Third Stream). To be fair, this is no easy task when dealing with an orchestral work like the Faune, with all its nuances and musical details, but I can't help but feel that a different approach would have been more fruitful with some of the pieces. Nevertheless, these experiences were incredibly rewarding and valuable references for further experiments.

Revisiting romanticism

In 2010, a few years after having recorded the Debussy and Ravel album, I got in touch with the regional music organization Estrad Norr, based in Östersund, Jämtland, the place where I spent the first 19 years of my life. My proposal was to organize some concerts based on new versions of music by the National Romantic composer Wilhelm Peterson-Berger (1883-1942), to which they responded positively. The choice of using Peterson-Berger’s music was anything but arbitrary, seen that it is so strongly associated with the region Jämtland and a recurring feature of the local music scene; through chamber music recitals, festivals, music performed in church rituals, etc.. In fact, some of the first piano pieces I ever performed was taken from his collection Frösöblomster, music inspired by the surroundings around the island Frösön where the composer had his summer house Sommarhagen, the place that became his permanent residence in later years.

In addition to involving two of the most skilled and versatile musicians working at Estrad Norr, Lars Ericsson (bass) and Tomas Nyqvist (drums), I also had the opportunity to invite another musician to form a quartet. I then asked saxophonist Joakim Milder – one of my favorite improvisers of the Swedish jazz scene – who, fortunately, accepted my invitation and seemed open to embrace a challenge of this kind. In preparing the quartet arrangements, I wanted to explore the improvisational potential in Peterson-Berger's music – both his well-known pieces and some of the lesser-known parts of his repertoire – in a way that made good use of our musical voices. Besides touring in Jämtland with these new pieces in 2011, we also got the opportunity to record the music in Peterson-Berger’s home Sommarhagen (on the composer’s own grand piano) which resulted in the album Peterson-Berger Revisited, released 2013 on the label Home. This is how I described the project in the album notes:

A major benefit of this project has been to go into Peterson-Berger’s musical treasures in depth, exploring new areas of his repertoire. Frösöblomster was of course well know for me in the past, with famous pieces such as the playful Lawn Tennis, the languishing Till rosorna, the evocative I skymningen and the meditative Vid Frösö kyrka. I even came across the folk music-inspired Gångtrall. During the course of my digging, there came to appear new sides to the Peterson-Berger I thought I knew. A great example of this is Tempelceremoni with its special sound, which caused me to spontaneously associate to composer Nils Lindberg and his way of mixing folk melodies with jazz harmonies. Another pleasant surprise in this context was Flöjtspel på Peneios, which to my knowledge is the closest Peterson-Berger came the French Impressionists’ domains but surprisingly breaks off in the middle of a suggestive crescendo partition, like an ecstatic dance, to then return to it’s meditative basic character. Spelman showed a surprising double nature in its transition from the ”Wagnerian" gloom to the impetuous polska (3/4 dance) section. (Peter Knudsen Kvartett, 2013)

In general, these versions – similar to the Debussy and Ravel arrangements – are quite close to the original compositions in character and detail, although I tried to take it one step further by 1. creating more space for improvisation and 2. having more coexistence between improvised elements and material from the original music; something that was easier to achieve with an additional voice. As hinted at in the liner notes, there were also certain associations that I would get for different pieces – Nils Lindberg, Wagner, French impressionism –, references that I would reinforce in the arrangements, to differentiate the pieces from each other.

Some of the challenges with these were;

1. Improvising over the – at times – idiosyncratic changes.

2. Making all the parts of the compositions ”work” musically in the new configuration. This seemed especially difficult with compositions that were more strongly rooted in a certain idiom. For instance, the march-like rhythms that occurs frequently in a piece like Sommarsång, one of Peterson-Berger’s more well-known pieces, which was ultimately one of the reasons for not including it in the repertoire.

Composing with 20th-century language

Around the same time as I was working with Peterson-Berger’s music, I was also in the middle of composing music for a Master's project at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. In the thesis I describe how I turned to 20th-century classical music as a way of expanding my musical palette through studying:

… composers such as Wagner, Holst, Mahler, Stravinsky, Berg, Schoenberg, but also composers after them, all of whom have created music that has moved away from function-based, traditional tonal approaches to more independent treatments of dissonances and tonal centers. My hope was to partly gain new perspectives on musical creation and to move away from some of the common patterns that in various ways have become part of jazz and improvised music. To a large extent it was about understanding how, from different directions, people have acted to expand tonality and break free from the shackles of tonality. (Knudsen, 2013)

The idea was, thus, that I experienced limitations in my tonal language, and that the study of 20th-century compositions from the Western art sphere would provide new inspiration and ideas. To give an example, this influenced the writing of the mini-suite The emperor of Portugallia, where I used Debussy’s Faune as a reference for how to develop the main theme; ”Unlike my usual, more jazz-oriented composing, I didn't want any repeated sections in the form, but rather to create a musical story where the main melody returns in different forms and mutations, similar to Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune” (Knudsen, 2013). In the same piece, I also took inspiration from Stravinsky’s way of working with fragmentation and permutation of the main melody in his Sacre du printemps.

These experiences stayed with me and spurred me to explore the musical languages of other 20th-century composers, which was a strong motivation for this project. Some of the thoughts I brought with me for future explorations were that it would be valuable to find:

1. Repertoire that would provide new impulses, harmonically and melodically.

2. Music that integrates intricate compositional work with improvisational expression.

3. Working methods that would incorporate the perspectives of other musicians.

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Peter Knudsen - Expanding horizons – Improvisational explorations of 20th-century classical music - 2025