The Field of Musical Improvisation

Front matter

Marcel Cobussen The Field Of Musical Improvisation

The Field of Musical Improvisation

Cover design: Merel van Meurs Publisher: Leiden University Press, www.lup.nl

Contents

Introduction 13 Part 3 - Implementing Introduction 91 Michael Moore, Han Bennink, and Will Holshouser — Human Actants 95 Part 1 - Marking Brian Ferneyhough - The Mistake as Actant 99 Introduction 19 Jean Gilles and Skip Sempé — Authenticity as Actant 105 Beginning 21 Alfred Brendel and W.A. Mozart — The Score as Actant 109 Baltic Suite 23 Paul Craenen — Technology as Actant 113 Context and Justification 27 DJ Spooky — Records and Files as Actants 117 Oligoptica and Prolegomena 29 Fred Frith — The Instrument as Actant 121 The Omnipresence of Improvisation 31 Edwin van der Heide — The Audience as Actant 127 The Fell Clutch 35 Heiner Goebbels — Theater as Actant 131 What is Improvisation (Not)? 37 Keith Jarrett - The Spiritual and the Body as Actants 135 Miles Davis and Teo Macero — The Producer as Actant 141 Alain Renaud — The Internet as Actant 147 Part 2 - Digging Vlatko Stefanovski — The Past as Actant 153 Introduction 43 Steve Coleman - Rhythm and Musicians as Actants 157 Bruno Latour and the Field of Musical Improvisation 45 The Taku Sugimoto Quartet and Johnny Chang - The Space as Actant 163 Field 49 Yo La Tengo — The Audience as Actant 167 Gilles Deleuze and the Field of Musical Improvisation 51 Nomen Nescio 171 Gregory Bateson and the Field of Musical Improvisation 57 Jakob von Uexkiill and the Field of Musical Improvisation 61 Mitchell Waldrop and the Field of Musical Improvisation 67 Part 4 - Exceeding Pierre Lévy and the Field of Musical Improvisation 73 Introduction 175 Revisiting Complexity Theories — Jimmy Giuffre, Paul Bley, Steve Swallow 179 Freedom — Medeski, Martin, and Wood 183 Part 2a - Capsulizing Management — Richard Barrett 189 The FMI Theory 81 Play - John Zorn 193 Politics — John Doe 197 Ending — Frank Zappa 203 Bibliography 209 List of Audio and Video files 221 About the Author 225

Acknowledgements 227

Introduction

Introduction

[1] People tell stories. Whether chatting at a tea party, exchanging itineraries, or analyzing soccer games. Through storytelling, people not only reconstruct, but

also construct, realities. Not that these are disconnected from the realities that can be perceived through the senses (technologically augmented or not); however, in a narrative, fiction and fact are always already intertwined.

Loosely following historian Hayden White’s erudite provocations, I think the same interweaving permeates, mutatis mutandis, the social sciences and humanities; both are, to a certain extent, artistic and creative practices. “Facts” need to be constructed, (re)presented, selected, and interconnected during the researching and writing process. Both are concerned with the making (inventio) rather than with finding (of facts). What they have in common with, for example, fiction, is that they creatively redescribe the world so that hidden patterns and hitherto unexplored meanings can unfold (Kearney 2002: 12).

[2] The Field of Musical Improvisation has approximately the same objective: to reposition improvisation within the world of music and sound, to make unusual connections between music and various scholarly disciplines, to rethink several concrete improvisation practices, and to extend and emphasize the significance of improvisation beyond the domain of music — all this in order to enrich the already existing discourse on musical improvisation.

The Field of Musical Improvisation thus tells stories about a specific field of human culture. It presents proposals to have another /an other look at this field by recombining “facts” and connecting them with “fictional” cement. As such, this book intertwines musical events and scholarly disciplines not generally regarded as related to music.

[3] “We choose a performance or recording for study, we decide how to listen to a given passage, and ultimately we determine how to translate our analytical involvement with the music into a compelling narrative to be shared with fellow scholars and musicians,” music theorist Paul Steinbeck writes in a short essay in which he exposes the fictional character of music theory and other discourses around music (Steinbeck 2013: n.p.). Regarded this way, The Field of Musical Improvisation is a “fiction” too,

a carefully constructed story of my (theoretical as well as practical) involvement with improvisation in music, undeniably formed by aesthetic (a narrative strategy), epistemological (an explanatory model), and ethical (an ideological background) choices (White 1978: 69-70). Also, the “facts” that I use do not exist outside the presented discourse but are the results of my storytelling. What counts is, at least partly, an aesthetic pragmatism of the arguments: it is not the question “Is it true?” that should guide your reading of this text, but “Does it work?” or “Does it make sense?”

[4] The story I have woven around musical improvisation circles around two keywords: complexity and singularity. First, improvisation is, in my opinion, a complex event in which many actants, many actors, factors, and vectors, both human and non-human, converge and interact. It is this interaction which will take center stage in this study. Second, I think it is not a good idea to write about improvisation in general, as it encompasses too many and too diverse practices. As an alternative,

I present here a radical empiricism, a focus on particular and individual cases. They are not case studies in the strict sense, not examples subsumable under a more general category; instead they (re)present the absolute distinctive character of

each improvisation, understood here as the unique composition and interaction of various actants. As a consequence, I discuss improvisational qualities from a range of musical genres and movements, thereby also underpinning and supporting my basic assumption that improvisation takes place in all musicking.

In short, the contribution of The Field of Musical Improvisation to the already existing discourses can be summarized as a critical attitude towards forms of reductionism (focusing on not more than one or a few actants) and generalization (“improvisation is ...”). By focusing on concrete improvisational practices and by confronting them with several complexity theories, I hope to be able to open new ways of thinking about and listening to improvisations, although I am very well aware that so-called “new” stories always already and for a large part consist of other, previously told, narrations.

[5] Although it is my explicit wish that readers choose their own route throughout this book, I have subdivided it into four parts and also propose a kind of hierarchical order. Concerning the latter, each part starts with an introduction, which might serve as a kind of road map to the texts belonging to that section of the book. These texts, however, can be read in any order. In addition, hyperlinks can take you from one part of the book to another, thereby offering suggestions to connect texts that are “physically” separated.

Although it is not strictly necessary to read Part 1 before any of the other parts, the texts belonging to this section are designed as a kind of introduction to the rest of the book. It consists of some prolegomena concerning the (im)possibility of defining improvisation, the context and justification of this study, the basic assumption that improvisation is an inextricable aspect of all music making, and the short description of two musics which inspired me to write this book in the first place.

Part 2 contains discussions of the works of several philosophers and other scholars who, in one way or another, can be related to the concept of complexity. Where possible, I have already connected these texts with concrete musical works in order to make the relation between complexity and improvisation more concrete, more tangible. Part 2 thus contains the primarily theoretical backbone of this study.

Part 3 consists exclusively of analyses (readings, interpretations) of various musics. Here, the two main concepts, complexity and singularity, directly unfold from the description of the improvisations themselves. Expressed differently, it has not been my intention to superimpose these concepts upon the music, but to show how

the very specific interactions operative during a concrete musical improvisation necessarily prompt one to consider it as another example of a complex system.

Part 4, finally, investigates and speculates upon the possible contribution of the outcomes of this study on musical improvisation when expanded into other cultural fields, scholarly disciplines, and everyday activities.

[6] The motivation to compose an e-pub is not induced by a desire to be trendy or

to simply deviate from certain rigid academic standards and conventions. Rather, it opens the possibility of providing almost immediate access to the music I discuss. Furthermore, it should be noted that these musical fragments do not function as mere illustrations to make the book look (or sound) more attractive; instead, the music provides arguments and information which is difficult to convey through another medium, e.g. language. In other words, the music forms an inextricable part of the knowledge I want to present here.

Introduction to Part 1 - Marking

[1] The first part of this study offers insights into some notable points of departure as well as a few initial steps which should, in the other sections, lead to a reformulation of certain ideas on improvisation, subsumed under the acronym FMI, The Field of Musical Improvisation.

[2] Two musical examples will be discussed, David Murray’s Baltic Suite and

a specific performance of The Fell Clutch, a trio formed by reed player Ned Rothenberg, here augmented by guitarist Marc Ribot. A concise summary will be given of the most important and inspiring literature that galvanized me to write this book. Of course, a reflection on the (im)possibilities and (un)desirabilities of defining improvisation will not be lacking. Also included is a kind of justification

or legitimization: is it a good idea at all to pay attention to improvisation in

music? Furthermore, Part 1 contains two rather philosophical meditations, one on improvisation as a concept, the other on the problem of beginning — beginning a book as well as beginning a musical improvisation. And finally, to justify the great variety of musics drawn upon in this book, the claim that all music making contains elements of improvisation will be supported. This claim has important consequences for the way the term “improvisation” will be employed in the formulation of the FMI-theory.

Beginning

[1] How might a book on improvisation begin? Where does it start? Where should

it start? What are the options? Are these options in some sense akin to how an improvisation might begin? In theory, a typical free improvisation can have

many different possible beginnings: tentative, e.g. through extended techniques,

or with a firm tone; motorial, e.g. with a riff, or creating space through silences; communicative, questioning and waiting for an answer, or “in the middle”, immediately presenting the music; etc.

Writing around improvisation seems to offer more or less the same possibilities: you could start with a firm statement or more hesitant, by posing questions; by throwing in some overwhelming theories or by commencing modestly, e.g. through some examples or case studies; by leaving space for the readers to form their own opinions or by throwing them in at the deep end, confronting them right away with new ideas.

[2] Be this as it may, each beginning intrinsically affects the sequel; in chaos theories, this principle is known as the butterfly effect, the sensitive dependence on initial conditions. The presence of a butterfly flapping its wings could lead to the creation, acceleration, or alteration of a hurricane. While the butterfly does not “cause” the hurricane in the strict sense of providing the energy for the hurricane, it does “cause” it in the sense that the flap of its wings is an essential part of the initial conditions resulting in that hurricane. In short, a small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in drastic differences at a later state.

In improvisation, too, relatively small details can trigger huge transformations in the music, such that the eventual outcome is disproportionate to any initial causes. A small change in the first performance gesture “can lead to a sudden divergence from the evolution of a system started with nearly identical initial conditions” (Borgo 2005: 68 and 73).

Writing, at least for me, means entering a similar field of tension: the first

sentences of a new, blank document often inadvertently determine the course of

the argumentation, the style, the “grain” of a text, sometimes with unforeseeable consequences. Moderately small interventions — changing a title, shifting a sentence to another paragraph, deleting a phrase — can have far-reaching effects on the (rest

of the) writing process. In short, musical improvisations and writing around those improvisations, activities ostensibly far removed from each other, seem to have some resemblances.

[3] Because of the potentially sweeping consequences, this book has had many beginnings too. Hesitations, doubts, and insecurities permeate all my writings, especially at the start of a new project, and this recurs each and every time. With each new text, as with each new improvisation, one must start again; each text must begin anew.

However, each text, like each improvisation, has also always already begun. A true new beginning is impossible to realize. As David Toop observes with regard to (free) improvised music, “learning, social familiarity, established patterns within the brain, audience expectations, all conspire to defeat the possibility of beginning from the beginning each time, tabula rasa” (Toop 2004: 240).

Improvising regarded as starting from scratch is not possible (cf. What is Improvisation?, section 3). Academic mores, stylistic conventions, traditions of certain discourses, and the simple impossibility of avoiding the reiteration of words, phrases, or grammatical rules, determine each text. So like all other texts, this one, too, rests on many previous texts. A beginning in the absolute sense, resulting in a truly original text, will always be an illusion; a beginning is not an origin.

[4] So, in fact, a beginning can only start in the middle. In the midst of other texts, in the midst of other improvisations, a new text or a new improvisation arises: intertextuality and, if you like, intermusicality. Based on, supported by, borrowing from, and inspired by a countless number of sources — material and immaterial, concrete and vague, direct and indirect, diachronically and synchronically, visible and audible - something “new” comes into existence: a text, an improvisation. Instead of regarding improvisation as a creation ex nihilo, as the presentation of the absolute new, I sympathize with Gary Peters who in The Philosophy of Improvisation “defines” improvisation as a process of “reappropriation,” as the ability to find new ways of inhabiting old forms (Peters 2009: 18). In my opinion it is quite possible to replace the word “improvisation” in the last sentence by the word “writing.”

Baltic Suite

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JazzBaltica cover

[1] Retrospectively, the occasion of listening to David Murray’s Baltic Suite from 1992 can be considered as one of the instigations for writing this study. From the opening onward, three aspects of the suite, performed by a big band consisting mainly of jazz musicians from North-European countries around the Baltic Sea, fascinated me in particular.

First, the organic, almost logical ways in which musical materials are passed on from one to the next soloist.

Baltic Suite — tuba solo

To give a rough outline, tuba player Stein Erik Tafjord introduces two conspicuous themes in his solo: the opening notes of the main theme of “In the Hall of the Mountain King” from Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite, No. 1 and a very simple rhythmic motif on the tone d.

Side

The rhythmic motif

Toward the end of the solo, piano, drums, and bass take up the rhythmic motif before the next soloist, alto saxophonist Vladimir Chekasin, enters. His use of both themes leads to short dialogues with another alto sax and the electric guitar, bouncing back the same material, and smoothly develops into the development of new sonic motifs. Throughout the entire Baltic Suite, phrases or short themes from previous solos form the point of departure for the next solo or a collective interlude.

The second aspect that caught my immediate attention was the mobile but natural use of various jazz “languages.” Freely following Latour (2007: 177), I would state that no structure acts (un)consciously within each specific musical event. At most, the structure or “language” is related, connected, or associated to all emanant concrete musical utterances. Simon Nabatov’s piano solo, for example, easily flows from ragtime and stride through mainstream be-bop to “free” playing with clusters.

Baltic Suite — piano solo

The third easily-discerned sonic characteristic is the use of citations. Underscoring the Northern European roots of the musicians as well as the suite’s name, references to Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite are sounded by more than just the tuba player. (Perhaps the word “citation” is slightly inappropriate here, as one of the favorites of Romanticism is filtered into some basic material for improvisational explorations.) However, other hors de jazz quotations enter Murray’s composition. One example:

A rather free trombone solo by Jörg Huke with non-harmonic interventions from the other winds suddenly morphs into a tribute to James Brown’s monster hit “Sex Machine.”

Baltic Suite — “Sex Machine”

[2] What is it that fascinates me in this music? Why do I regard this CD as one of

the biggest treasures in my collection? The main reason might be that I hear it as an almost paradigmatic example of one of the cornerstones of improvisation: interaction. Or, actually, interactions, plural, as they take place on many different levels. First

of all, of course, the interaction between the musicians among themselves: the passing on of sonic material requires an attentive engagement on the part of both

the giver and the receiver. As Ingrid Monson rightly remarks, especially improvising musicians need to listen in an active sense, that is, being able to engender and respond to musical opportunities. The response of one’s fellow musicians is crucial as to whether a particular musical idea is picked up on, developed, or ignored (Monson 1996: 84 and 88). Second, alongside this sensitivity toward other musicians, a shared sense of musical styles and repertoire knowledge is indispensable. The entrance

of the drum rhythm followed by the characteristic “Sex Machine” guitar motif is doomed if the other musicians simply don't recognize it. Especially in Baltic Suite,

in this extraordinary example of musical syncretism and versatility, musicians are required to have at their disposal an extensive repertory of musical “languages”

and reproducible pieces in order to be able to react to every potential quotation. In other words, a third type of interaction announces itself in the form of a relation with the musical past. Collectively or individually, the musicians are conversing with previous musics, incorporating them into their “own” stories. Their improvisations are thus built on a network of relations, both human and musical, both social and artistic, both synchronic and diachronic.

[3] Baltic Suite lets me experience the abundant and very specific interactions that can arise during improvisation. The piece lets me explore the complex connections between human(s) and environment, be it a musical instrument, historical backgrounds, or socio-musical agreements and challenges. This comprovisation shows me that an analysis, interpretation, or mere encounter should not be reduced to one or more of the improvisation’s individual constituents, but, on the contrary, should take the collective and interrelated behaviors of these constituents into account.

Context and Justification

[1] Improvisation seems to be a hot topic. Although (perhaps) still found primarily in the margins of the discourses around music, the past decades have brought an increase of publications on improvisation. Although Bruno Nettl’s (1998: 1) first sentence in his book In the Course of Performance from 1998 — “In the history of musicology, improvisation [...] has played a minor role” — might be true, quite a few monographs, edited volumes, journal articles, Internet essays, etc. have more or less recently been published on this subject. The list is already far too long and diverse to be used to provide a decent overview or a reliable enumeration of core publications. And one of the promising aspects of these publications is that many of them are written by improvising musicians themselves, thereby offering an insider’s view on the topic, a phenomenon not always self-evident in the academic world.

[2] So, why do I wish to add another book on “the same” subject? Why this drive to create a new story, report, or narrative on the praxis of improvisation, even though I consider myself to be no more than a very modest improviser, making it almost inevitable that I will write from an outsider’s perspective? What is my position with regard to some publications that once were (and, to be sure, still are) an enormous source of inspiration, a thrilling read, and which function now (also) as markers that, in my opinion, need to be supplemented, sometimes even ameliorated? These questions will only be answered for me during the writing process and for you during your reading of this text. Whether what I am hoping to bring forward is to some extent “new” and “useful” (in the sense of delivering some new insights or providing fresh perspectives) can, in the end, only be decided by you, the (future) readers of this book.

[3] Here, to open the narrative, to expose briefly and prematurely the context of this study, and to start revealing my position (whether I could be considered the best source of observations concerning my own position remains indeed a serious question), I will mention a few of the “stopping places” I have visited over the past few years while working on this project.

Derek Bailey’s book Improvisation. Its Nature and Practice in Music from 1993, as well as Bruce Ellis Benson’s The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue from 2003 provided me with the simple but far-reaching insight that improvisation actually is operative in (almost) all music making. The results of this “ear-opener” permeate this entire study as I deliberately chose many different musics to support my ideas on improvisation.

Saying Something by Ingrid Monson, published in 1996, first put me on the track of inquiring into the aspect of interaction in improvisation, an aspect which appears

to be the most central in this study. However, her almost exclusive attention to

jazz music and the human-human, real-time interaction taking place in this music, provided me with the opportunity to investigate different musics as well as different interactions: besides human-human interaction, many other interactions arise within and determine the improvisation process. And what's more, interaction appears to be a far too general term: specifications of various types of interaction are needed.

David Borgo’s Sync or Swarm from 2005 has proven to be perhaps the most determinative book for this project. The book sowed the seeds for regarding musical improvisation as a space in which many actors, factors, and vectors are operative. Borgo’s point of departure that “systems display collective behaviors that are not predictable in terms of the dynamics of their component parts” (Borgo 2005: xvii) also permeates the ideas on improvisation presented here. However, whereas Borgo mainly uses this insight, stemming from complexity and chaos theories, to cast

new light on the ways certain (free) improvisations develop and are constructed musically, my focus here will be more directed towards tracing the main actors and their collective interactions, operative during a specific improvisation.

One could call the approach proposed by people like Borgo and me ecological, thereby referring to the original definition of the term as proposed by German zoologist

and philosopher Ernst Haeckel who conceived of ecology as “the science of the relations between the organisms and the environmental outer world” (Haeckel 1866: 286). Many musical examples used in this book deal with the interactions

that arise between improvisers and their environment, the latter regarded as either material-physical or immaterial-metaphysical. This ecological imprology took me from the notion of Umwelt coined by the Baltic German biologist Jakob von Uexküll to the Actor-Network-Theory of the French sociologist Bruno Latour, and from

the ecological anthropology of Gregory Bateson to the concept of assemblage as developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Together with many others, their voices form the choir that is shifting from back- to foreground and vice versa during the rest of this book.

Oligoptica and Prolegomena

[1] “Every concept always has a history, even though the history zigzags, though

it passes, if need be, through other problems or onto different planes” (Deleuze

and Guattari 1994: 18). Improvisation, documented in audio, visual, and textual materials, but mostly locked up in the inaccessible archives of personal memories

or relinquished to oblivion, has traversed many if not all musical, geographical, and historical planes, abused and adulated, disguised with many different names and displaying itself in many different forms (cf. “The Omnipresence of Improvisation”).

[2] “A concept carries out a new cutting-out, takes on new contours, and must be reactivated or recut” (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 18). In that sense, a concept also has “a becoming.” To rethink the concept of improvisation, to re-address it, to de- and reterritorialize it; to demystify it, to discard from it too many romanticisms, too many prejudices; and also to include in its reconceptualizations enough radical empiricism — those are the aims of this study.

However, improvisation might not be a concept. The set of works, the assemblage

of events it refers to remain open. Halfway between the universal and the singular, simultaneously model and guide, improvisation allows a general discourse, but cannot dispense with singularities. Rather than classifying certain musics in a closed way, it opens the musical field to new investigations, to new configurations, to new encounters and invitations.

[3] This book is not meant to unambiguously categorize, order, and analyze the rampant proliferation of musical improvisations, to escort them to a monotonous finality, or to reduce them to a putative origin or originality. This study is not a quest for a clearly delimitable essence of its subject, a search for its identity, an exploration of its immutable form. Rather, it is the aim of this book to report of events, directions, ramifications, and incidents — in short of the becoming of improvisation; spaces between instead of origins; no arrivals, but departures, perpetually on the way (Kleiner and Szepanski 2003: 7). Many terms here are used provisionally, as “conceptual placeholders,” rather than definitely or categorically. The FMI-theory should not be evaluated as an end in itself, but for how it might change the way we think about improvisation, for how it allows us to reorganize the field, replacing previous insights with new, temporal, spatial, and morphological distinctions, in short, for how it is able to present a new physics of organization (Moretti in Berry 2008: 366).

[4] “Capitalism has no plausible enemy since it is ‘everywhere’, but a given trading room in Wall Street has many competitors in Shanghai, Frankfurt, and London — a computer breakdown, a sneaky movement by a competitor, an unexpected figure, a neglected variable in a pricing formula, a risky accounting procedure — that may shift the balance from an obscene profit to a dramatic loss” (Latour 2007: 178).

Following, interpreting, arrogating Latour here, the subject of this study will not be improvisation in a general sense, as a general principle operative in many, if not all, music making. Instead, it will focus on particular sites, concrete manifestations, and specific articulations. Improvisation hinges on particularities, individual vectors, and singular connections.

The Omnipresence of Improvisation

[1] Improvisation is all over the musical place; it happens in all music making. In that sense, improvisation connects George Clinton to Franz Liszt, John Zorn to Ivo Papasov, Sachiko M to John Coltrane, and Beyoncé to Ustad Fateh Ali Khan.

In The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue, philosopher Bruce Ellis Benson gives an enumerative description of how improvisation is always already operative in the performing and composing of Western classical music. From the most “minimalistic” filling-in of details that are not notated in the score to the modification of a complete musical tradition by sometimes radical compositional transformations, Benson offers a whole list of possibilities, thereby claiming that the difference between various forms of improvisation is quantitative rather than qualitative: “Each instance involves a kind of reworking of something that already exists, so the differences concern the ways and the degrees to which this reworking takes place” (Benson 2003: 30; cf. “Alfred Brendel and W.A. Mozart” and “Vlatko Stefanovski”). Filling in notes required by a score that only supplies figured bass; playing Classical cadenzas; transcribing pieces for different instruments; adding or subtracting measures, passages, or even complete sections; making arrangements; altering the melody

line and/or the chords (so typical for much jazz music); going beyond certain compositional templates — all these situations are subject to improvisation, Benson states (2004: 26-9). Benson’s claim — far from exhaustive, if only because his sole focus is on pitch improvisations — is supported by pianist John Tilbury, who maintains

that any musical performance always depends on the specifics of the situation and the moment. For example, acoustics, venue, and the available keyboard will always influence certain decisions regarding tempo, volume, intonation, and dynamics, which leads Tilbury to the opinion that improvisation is an inextricable and inevitable part of all music making (Tilbury in Hopkins 2009: n.p.). Each performance produces, therefore, a unique sound event, located somewhere on a continuum between iterability and alteration.

“Should we not then speak perhaps of rapid and slow composition rather than of composition juxtaposed to improvisation? And would we not do well to think of composition and improvisation as opposite ends of a continuum [...]?” Bruno Nettl (1974: 6) asks, rather more cautiously than Benson and Tilbury.

The term “rapid composition” resonates with the name of a Dutch improvisation ensemble, The Instant Composers Pool (ICP). “Instant composing” counters notions that improvising is either a lesser order of music-making than composing or an art without a memory, existing only in the moment, unmindful of form. The formulation posits improvisation as formal composition’s equal, something that both the ICP and Nettl seem to pursue.