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.

WIDMUNG exhibits Phase B activity

Widmung exemplifies Phase B piano playing based on a specific model, namely the accompaniment of a diatonic ascending bass line. After spending time studying the characteristics of the model and what gestures the melody and inner voices might be allowed to make within its constraints, this one-minute musical moment followed.

There are indeed many ways to describe such models. Often during coachings with Rudolf Lutz, we spoke about the various terms that Robert Gjerdingen uses in Music in the Galant Style from 2007. The model heard above, according to Gjerdingen, might be a kind of hybrid between the Monte and the Meyer.

recording made on April 21st, 2015:

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