Authorship and Improvisation: Musical Lost Property

Abstract

This essay discusses the problems of authorship concerning free improvisation. It looks at three areas: collaboration, education, and emerging processes. There has been a recent trend for introducing spontaneous and collaborative elements into contemporary classical music projects. The current essay examines problems concerning how to nurture, present and disseminate new forms within very established formats. Even though free improvisation offers a medium in which to develop complementary crossover skills between composition and performance, this essay will discuss the impossibilities for a composer or performer (working in their respective fields) to claim authorship of a collaborative performance between free improvisation and composition. It identifies the free improvisation performance as an ephemeral, emerging process that does not create a product—that is, it is a process resistant to institutionalised assessment and ownership.

Keywords:

• Art Product
• Emergent Process
• John Dewey
• George E. Lewis
• Inner Repository
• Free Improvisation

Notes

[1] I borrow and extend Ed Sarath's use of the term ‘inner repository’. See Sarath (1996), p. 7.

[2] Sarath (1996, pp. 1–19) writes in detail about the different temporal conceptions of the improviser and composer, providing examples for this essay. For other, sometimes conflicting, accounts of improvisation and composition, see Foss (1962); Kramer (1981); Nettl (1974); and Bailey (1992). For many different contemporary perspectives, from living composers, performers and improvisers, see Uitti and Nelson (2006). This is a collection of interviews, accounts and essays on the subject of improvisation. Similarly, Childs and Hobbs (1982–1983).

[3] Childs and Hobbs' question to interviewee Harold Budd during a discussion about Budd's experience of improvisation that is not from a jazz-derived background.

[4] The sculptor Richard Serra makes a distinction between these two types of work during his account of the destruction of his sculpture, Tilted Arc: ‘As I pointed out, Tilted Arc was conceived from the start as a site-specific sculpture and was not meant to be “site-adjusted” or […] “relocated”. Site-specific works deal with the environmental components of given places … The works become part of the site and restructure both conceptually and perceptually the organization of the site. My works never decorate, illustrate or depict a site’ (Serra, 1994, p. 202). The United States government destroyed Tilted Arc on 15 March 1989—a public sculpture that had been commissioned by one of their agencies ten years earlier.

[5] See Serra (1994) p. 202: ‘The specificity of site-oriented works means that they are conceived for, dependent upon, and inseparable from their location.’

[6] Serra, as cited in Weyer-graf-Serra & Buskirk, 1988, p. 40: ‘I want to make it perfectly clear that Tilted Arc was commissioned and designed for one particular site: Federal Plaza. It is a site-specific work and as such not to be relocated. To remove the work is to destroy the work.’

[7] Barney Childs and Chris Hobbs interviewing Eddie Prevost and Keith Rowe, both members of the group AMM.

[8] Sawyer (2000, p. 154) quotes Collingwood (1958), pp. 15 and 22: ‘[Craft] involves a distinction between planning and execution. The result to be obtained is preconceived or thought out before being arrived at’ and ‘Art as such does not imply the distinction between planning and execution.’ Sawyer (2000, p. 154) quotes Dewey (1934) pp. 138 and 139: ‘A rigid predetermination of an end-product … leads to the turning out of a mechanical or academic product’ and ‘An artwork will only be great if the artist finds a problem during the process of creation.’ These ideas are specifically about the creative process and promote improvisation as a vehicle through which art (as opposed to craft) is created, even when this process will eventually lead to some kind of kind of finished art ‘product’ (the painting, the composition, the play, for example). In this essay, Dewey's and Collingwood's ideas are used as stimulants for further reflection upon how one may apply the concepts of problem solving and problem finding to different types of musical creation.

[9] ‘Then we got, I think, to an optimum period where we would just go and play, and we didn't feel we had to analyse or even discuss—and you know from your own experience that this is completely true, that one would travel to a gig in a vehicle for maybe six hours and not discuss the music once, set up and play, then six hours back and still not discuss the music! And never talk about it again, except that someone might feel happy, and someone else might feel not so happy, and that went on literally for years' (Keith Rowe in conversation with Barney Childs and Christopher Hobbs: Childs & Hobbs, 1982–1983, p. 37).

[10] Sawyer also cites Dewey's comparison of the aesthetic experience to everyday conversation. See Dewey (1934), p. 63.

[11] Sawyer's comments on G. H. Mead's pragmatist theory of emergence are particularly pertinent in this context. Sansom's (2001) comments, which refer to musical improvisation and Abstract Expressionist painting, do not mention this theory explicitly, but they describe its characteristics.

[12] Eddie Prevost (EP) is responding to Childs and Hobbs's questions about intuitive and non-systematic music making in the group AMM, and whether it would be possible to teach people to play music like AMM.