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.

Musical works

Here, we consider some conceptions of musical works and their role in classical music performance (from the 19th century) vs. their counterpart in the jazz tradition.

The work in classical music performance

The idea of the work holds a special place in the Western classical tradition. In her seminal book The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, music philosopher Lydia Goehr (1994) argues that the idea of the work at the center of musical practice only began to crystalize towards the end of the 18th century. Here, a piece of music is seen as an art object that exists independently of its performances, rather than being perceived in terms of its function.

Before the late eighteenth century, ‘serious’ music was truly a performance art. It was mostly produced in the public arena to perform extra-musical functions. Performances were geared towards the temper and needs of the persons and institutions who determined the functions. Musicians, who were normally in the latter's employ, had little control and power of decision regarding matters of instrumentation, form, length, and text. They obeyed the wishes of their employers. (Goehr, 1994, p. 178)

In this context, music was often written for a given performance. In cases where it was performed on different occasions, numerous changes were often made to the music; musical creations were not ’fixed’ or ’complete’, nor were they expected to have a life of their own after the passing of their creator. Notation in this context was incomplete, omitting, for example, ornamentations and accompaniment parts that performers were expected to realize using thorough bass and improvisation. In effect, composers had limited control over the music when they weren't present for the performance.

The big change at the turn of the century lies in what Goehr calls the ”Beethoven paradigm”. As the social status of composers underwent major changes, effectively liberating them from the traditional power and restraint of ecclesiastical and aristocratic dignitaries, composers enjoyed new levels of freedom where they were gradually seen as independent masters and creators of their art. Allying themselves with creators of fine art, composers began to see their works as ”discrete, perfectly formed, and completed products” (p. 222).

Music soon acquired a kind of untouchability which, translated into concrete terms,meant that persons could no longer tamper with composers' works. The demand that one's works be left alone was rationalized according to the romantic belief that the internal form and content of each such work was inextricably unified, or by the belief that works were specified in toto according to an underlying or transcendent truth. That a work's determining idea was an expression of an individually inspired genius effectively meant that its content was necessarily elusive and not subject, therefore, to mundane description or change. (Goehr, 1994, p. 222)

One of Goehr’s central claims surrounding the work-concept is that it came to operate as a regulative principle for musical activities such as composition, performance, reception, and evaluation of music. This is perhaps most clearly illustrated in the Werktreue ideal, the emerging ideal of being 'true to the work' that encapsulates the changing relationship between work and performance, as well as between performer and composer, that occurred in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, the Werktreue ideal in effect acts out as a Texttreue – being true to the text – since works often get conflated with their scores (Goehr, 1994).

Musical compositions from a jazz perspective

One thing that can be said to characterize improvised music in general is the emphasis on process rather than product. In jazz, although the performance is typically based on a pre-existing composition, the musical sequence of events can never be reduced to something entirely foreseen by the person who put his or her name on the sheet of music; typically, the voice of the improviser is much more prominent than the perceived voice of a composer.

Furthermore, compositions in a jazz context can be open-ended and subject to drastic changes over time. To illustrate this, we can consider how Wayne Shorter's approaches his music-making as work in progress. In a study of how Shorter revisits and reinvents his old compositions –with his quartet formed in the late 1990's – Meehan (2017) presents some of the ways in which the material have been transformed from Shorter's previous recordings:

- Form is malleable (“Angola” is changed from 16 to 22 measures, “Orbits” from 29 to 43 measures).
- Orchestration (and hence overall timbre) is subject to change.
- Harmony and harmonic context (countermelodies replacing “melody and changes” for example) is subject to change.
- Rhythm, meter and tempo are subject to change.
- Melody (in terms of pitches) may be only slightly changed, or may be altered significantly. (p. 58)

As Meehan puts it, there's a provisional nature to some of these 'completed' compositions that suggests that composition can be a more fluid activity for Shorter than for other composers.

Also, the idea of being 'faithful to the work' is also quite remote from a jazz perspective. As Goehr (1994) rightly points out, jazz is an obvious example of a music whose ideals conflict with the ideal of fidelity to the original. As mentioned in the historical overview, the jazz tradition has always worked with adapting music from other musical contexts, whether it's in the form of ragtime pieces, blues songs, spirituals, brass band numbers, Tin Pan Alley songs, Broadway musicals, occasional classical pieces, or – as has become something of a "new standard" trend – taking contemporary pop songs and turning them into jazz numbers. Not to mention the numerous examples of compositions originally written in a jazz context and then adapted by other jazz artists. Of course, these practices may be based on all kinds of attitudes towards the source material, including a sense of being somehow faithful to the music; the point is that, more often than not, playing a tune/song/piece in a jazz context means putting your individual stamp on it.

Furthermore, the idea of staying close to the score is typically not applicable in jazz contexts. Even when sheet music is used, it typically takes the form of a lead sheet, meaning that substantial parts have to be created by the performers themselves, depending on their stylistic knowledge and improvisational vocabulary, that which can be referred to as a knowledge base (Pressing, 1988). In this sense, jazz is still an aural tradition, in that scores are insufficient as a source when it comes to one of the most fundamental tasks; that of learning a language, something that typically involves immersion, imitation, and internalization.

The extent to which we can talk about 'works' in the jazz tradition has also been discussed. Although a closer look at these discussions is beyond the scope of this project, there is a potentially useful distinction put forth by Davies (2001), who distinguishes between thin works and thick works. In a thin work, the work’s determinative properties are relatively few, and ”most of the qualities of a performance are aspects of the performer’s interpretations, not of of the work as such” (p. 20). This means that thinner works give more freedom for the performer to shape the performance. An example is a song like Happy Birthday, where the work only consists of a melody and an implied harmonic structure (and lyrics, when sung). This means that the same song can be played in numerous arrangements with all kinds of instruments. In contrast, a thick work – such as a Mahler symphony – contains a high degree of ”work-constitutive properties” related to aspects like instrumentation, phrasing, dynamics, and so on. A thicker work thus imposes more constraints on the performer to play the work accurately, and leaves fewer parameters open to the performer.

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

The work in classical music performance