As noted in earlier chapters, the musical world in academic circles has been viewed through the lens of the composed work, or the art object, reflecting the influence of the overarching Matrix of Materialism that pre-vails in education at large. Several important limitations extend from this orientation. First is that both improvisation and composition are excluded from the overall core curriculum of musical training, and with jazz and composition majors as notable exceptions, the resultant identity of most students and faculty—and thus the culture—of musical academe. Though at first glance one might think that at least composition, in an artistic paradigm rooted in a composed-music aesthetic, would be an impor-tant part of musical study for all students, the modernist notion of the masterwork as some sacred product that can and ought to be fashioned by a select few runs deep in musical academe, thereby relegating even compositional activity to a distinct minority.
Consistent with this object-mediated aesthetic is a corresponding orientation in music research, where emphasis on the structural facets of works and related historical and cultural contexts far overshadow inquiry into the creative process.3 It is therefore inevitable that, in the occasional investigation of musical creativity that does occur, improvisation is con-sidered an accelerated subspecies of composition. Bruno Nettl for exam-ple, suggests that improvisation and composition might be considered, respectively, “rapid and slow” versions of composition.4 Paul Berliner, in his widely acclaimed book Thinking in Jazz, marvels that “few experiences are more deeply fulfilling for improvisers than the compelling, all-absorb-ing nature of composall-absorb-ing music in performance.”5 David Elliott refers to improvising as “the process of composing a musical work in real time,”
and advises listeners to attend as much to “what is being composed on the spot” as “how it is performed.”6
There appears to be some logic to this thinking and it is important to understand both its underlying rationale yet also why it is misguided.
One reason to define improvisation as sped-up composition might be to counter the idea that the creative flow of style-specific improvisers, jazz musicians in particular, is little more than the regurgitation of stockpiled clichés.7 The improvisation-as-composition perspective may also help dispel notions of improvisation as a haphazard, undisciplined mode of expression that is inherently deficient in terms of sophistication, formal coherence, and aesthetic worth. Instead, the argument goes, the impro-viser in a single creative episode replicates the creative decision making process of the composer, who fashions ideas not in a single, continuous attempt but in a series of discontinuous episodes that may span days, weeks, and months.
The problem, however, with both lines of reasoning is that, in privileging composition as the ideal against which improvisatory musi-cal expression is to be measured, the very concerns being addressed are exacerbated. For example, when Phillip Alperson suggests that the evalu-ation of an improvisevalu-ation—which he defines as “the creevalu-ation of a musical work while it is performed”—take into consideration “what has proven to be possible within the demands of improvisatory musical activity,”8 one senses the presumption of a norm that improvisation is inherently incapable of achieving, at which point our only recourse is to appreciate the noble attempt. As a result, appreciation of the full richness of impro-visation (as well as composition) will be limited. In other words, as long as improvisation is seen as a subspecies of composing, it will be seen at best as a kind of spurious creative endeavor that perhaps occasionally manifests in remarkable feats, while reservations linger that music made up on the spot will never measure up to that which has been thought out over time—in other words, where composers took the time to really get it right. “Improvisation,” according to the composer Luciano Berio, “may be of therapeutic value to uptight performers,” but lacks the capacity inher-ent in composition for “coherinher-ent discourse that develops along multiple levels.”9 As a result, this important, improvisatory expressive stream in the musical world will remain marginalized in research programs, curricular models, arts advocacy initiatives, diversity discourse, and cross-disciplin-ary exploration of creativity and the creativity-consciousness relationship.
An integral look at improvisation and composition reveals a much different picture, where improvisation is understood not as a subspecies of composition, but rather the two processes are seen as underpinned by differing cognitive mechanics that render them contrasting expressive
vehicles and parts-to-whole pathways to transcendence. In essence, there are multiple ways to “get it right.”
We have already considered in chapter 2 surface distinctions between the two processes that strongly suggest the need to rethink prevailing notions. Whereas compositions are created over a series of discontinuous creative episodes that can span days, or more often weeks and months, and which take place at times and places separate from those where pieces are presented to audiences, improvisation happens in a single continu-ous episode, where performance occurs in the same time and place of creation. Whereas composers usually create alone, improvisation—which certainly happens in solitude—often happens collectively. Improvisatory collectivity, moreover, brings together not only multiple musicians, but musicians and audiences in the act of performance.
We can thus begin to see how vastly differing surface conditions might give rise to significantly different expressive results that might correlate with different cultural sensibilities. This will be underscored further on when we link the inner-directed, nonlinear conception of improvisatory time with spontaneous, interactive musical cultures and the expanding, linear temporality of composition with work-centered cultures. Prior to going into the interior distinctions that underlie these contrasting paradigms—which come together in jazz—it is important to clarify some points.
First, the claim is not that there are no points at which impro-visation and composition intersect, nor that improvisers cannot invoke compositional strategies or composers improvisatory strategies in their creative activities. Rather, large portions of musical practice are distin-guishable according to these principles and thus support Lacy’s conten-tion that “there is a music that must be composed, another that can only be improvised.” That these principles generally hold even amid the wide range of compositional and improvisatory strategies that might be iden-tified underscores this point. This includes, within the compositional, Beethoven’s extensive reworking of materials, Schubert’s more rapid style, and on through recent methods involving aleatoric or indeterminate strat-egies as well as technologically driven approaches to composition,10 and in the improvisational, free, or open improvisatory formats in which nothing is planned in advance as well as those involving preordained constraints such as jazz chord changes, Arabic maqam, or Hindustani raga and tala structures. While the boundaries between the general process categories may blur at points, they hold up in an overwhelming range of the cre-ative expanse and thus support the proposed distinctions. Even in the
emergent, jazz-driven integral era, where the idiom’s current juxtaposi-tion of the processes opens up to a more complete synthesis, at which point boundaries between them will at times indeed become nebulous, there will still be clear instances of distinctions between improvisatory and compositional creativity that is among the idiom’s salient features.
An understanding of temporality/culture-rooted distinctions will enhance appreciation and understanding of the significance of both improvisatory/
compositional melding and retention of discrete natures.
Second is that while what have emerged as improvisatory and com-positional streams per se may be distinguished from one another, they both may be seen as differentiated aspects of a common improvisatory ancestor. Again we encounter our core integral evolutionary trajectory whereby from undifferentiated or less-differentiated wholeness emerge increasingly differentiated phenomena. This is evident in music both from historical and practical vantage points: Naturally, the earliest forms of musical expression—whether as posited by Ellen Dissanayake, Steven Mithen, and others, this evolved from early mothers cooing their infants, or Darwin’s idea that music originated in mating calls11—had to have been improvised, with composition evolving first in the form of gestures that were repeated and codified, and notation a relatively recent development.
A similar trajectory may be evident on a practical scale in the composition process, where early on composers may improvise to generate ideas prior to seizing one or another and capturing it in notation.
But the moment the composer stops, steps outside the creative flow to reflect upon, capture, and structure as part of a larger work a moment that had just passed, a new kind of temporal consciousness begins to take shape that is the basis for a very different line of creative expression than that whereby the artist sustains a moment-to-moment flow throughout a single creative episode. And while the compositional line has assumed exclusive centrality in the academic world, to the point where an improvi-satory line is either dismissed as inferior or irrelevant, most of the musical world has retained its improvisatory foundations, which with the advent of jazz and the broader realm of contemporary improvised music that it has spawned has evolved to unprecedented heights.12
From their common, undifferentiated improvisatory origins, two contrasting expressive pathways have emerged that inform each other in profound ways. We thus gain a new and expanded perspective on the systematic improvisation principle introduced in chapter 2, in which a broad spectrum of processes are understood as differentiated forms of improvisation. The differentiation of composition at a deep level in this scheme lays groundwork for newfound understanding of the creative and
spiritual diversity of the contemporary musical world in general, and the jazz idiom in particular.