Playing Schumann Again for the First Time

Bobby Mitchell

How can one learn to improvise convincingly within the context of the nineteenth-century piano repertoire? And why is it important to improvise on this repertoire in the twenty-first century? Taking the music of Robert Schumann (1810−56) as a departure point, Playing Schumann Again for the First Time proposes an answer to these questions through methods towards a pianistic practice that is driven by experimentation and strives to continually find more layers where improvisation can take place, both in sounding musical practice and in notation. These practice-based methods are contextualized by a discussion of the presence of improvisation in Western classical musical practice in the nineteenth century. They are then substantiated by an argument to use improvisation as a tool for rethinking the current performance practice of nineteenth-century music. Improvisation itself and the concepts driving this term will also be addressed: improvisation in musical performance will be described as a process guided by a feedback loop between mimesis and morphosis with which the practitioner engages using his or her individual cognitive and embodied approach to listening, forgetting, and conceptualizing; the results of which bear his or her own sonic signature. The knowledge gained in this project lies within the realm of what will be described as improvisation as practice, a category of improvisational behavior that circumvents the need to be presented as art and is rather intended for the development of one’s own music-making.

PRELUDE 'VORFREUDE' exhibits Phases A and B activity

On April 21st, 2015, Rudolf Lutz asked me to extemporize a prelude with an affect of expectation, or Vorfreude:

Attempting the music again at a consciously slower tempo, while looking for other, possibly more satisfying, solutions to the musical moment can be heard in the second recording. Before this attempt, I was encouraged not just to enter the flow of piano playing again but explicitly look for other solutions to an already given performance. I consider this process a form of what Derek Bailey describes as "woodshedding:" "the bridge between technical practise and improvisation [... where the improviser] listens to himself in a different way. He might be much more analytical and much less involved in aspects of playing created by the impetus or the tension of performance" (Bailey 1992, 110).

After having discussed the performance that can be heard in the recording above, I was asked to try a couple of passages again – this time in a consciously slower tempo to see whether or not I could achieve different and perhaps better results:

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