# Can you hear if music is composed or improvised?



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Mainstream classical music is composed. But I’m not sure that’s anything which you can hear. In so far as the listener’s experience matters, I’m suggesting that the distinction between composed music and improvised music is unimportant.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Mainstream classical music is composed. But I'm not sure that's anything which you can hear. In so far as the listener's experience matters, I'm suggesting that the distinction between composed music and improvised music is unimportant.


The planning is almost always obvious to the ear in mainstream classical. Not a chance it could be mistaken for improvised music by anyone with stylistic competence. The exceptions would be works like fantasies and toccatas which are often composed to sound like they are improvised; They sometimes are improvised and then more or less accurately transcribed.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Improvisation is composition - for 18th century music, composers of the period could improvise most any form in period including fugues. There is a modern revival of the practice, for example:


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Here are some improvised fugues


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Improvising works well for one performer. With two, it's much more challenging. Jazz players find jam sessions where everyone improvises invigorating. But imagine a 100 piece orchestra getting together and making it all up as they go. What a cacophonous mess that would be. Kind of like Elliot Carter...


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Mainstream classical music is composed. But I'm not sure that's anything which you can hear. In so far as the listener's experience matters, I'm suggesting that the distinction between composed music and improvised music is unimportant.


Not to the composer or performer.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> Not to the composer or performer.


Correct. That's exactly why I said "in so far as the listener's experience matters"

Of course the listener's experience is only one thing, and I wouldn't want to suggest it is in any way more "important" than the performer's experience (except maybe $$$commercially$$$)


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

mbhaub said:


> Improvising works well for one performer. With two, it's much more challenging. Jazz players find jam sessions where everyone improvises invigorating. But imagine a 100 piece orchestra getting together and making it all up as they go. What a cacophonous mess that would be.


It can work for large ensembles, for example Pauline Oliveros's _Sound Geometries_. But yes, I see your point.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> The planning is almost always obvious to the ear in mainstream classical. Not a chance it could be mistaken for improvised music by anyone with stylistic competence. The exceptions would be works like fantasies and toccatas which are often composed to sound like they are improvised; They sometimes are improvised and then more or less accurately transcribed.


It's interesting that you focus on form rather on the relationship between the performer and the specifics of the instrument he is playing, and the space he is playing in. Those things seem less likely to be composed, though I know that increasingly composers are creating works for specific instruments (e.g. Eleane Radigue, Cassandra Miller)

A more generic approach to the physicality of the instrument seems to me to be plausibly a defeasible criterion of composition.

I'm sceptical about the formal criterion by the way.


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

SanAntone said:


> Not to the composer or performer.


But really, improvised music is "composed" on the spot.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> I'm sceptical about the formal criterion by the way.


Most classical forms incorporate long repeated passages, like sonatas, where whole expositions are repeated verbatim and then repeated in altered form as a recap. Minuets and trios ditto. Rondo finales ditto. Dance movements of every kind ditto. Slow movements, including the standard sonata form without development, ditto. Ternary forms, the most common for small solo compositions in the Romantic era, ditto. These repetitions give away that the music was composed. Fugues can be improvised, mostly because there are few formal requirements, although generally good ones can't (see first example in #4). Fugue isn't really a form in the traditional sense, but a loose procedure.

More generally, and as others have pointed out, classical improvisation before the modern era doesn't work for ensembles, only for solo players.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

progmatist said:


> But really, improvised music is "composed" on the spot.


Correct. The « on the spot » means that the improviser is reacting to his particular physical conditions. Most composed music abstracts from the instrument and the space.

A traditionally notated composition is a bit like a set of rails for the musicians to follow. I wonder whether you can hear that they're on rails.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> Most classical forms incorporate long repeated passages, like sonatas, where whole expositions are repeated verbatim and then repeated in altered form as a recap. Minuets and trios ditto. Rondo finales ditto. Dance movements of every kind ditto. Slow movements, including the standard sonata form without development, ditto. Ternary forms, the most common for small solo compositions in the Romantic era, ditto. These repetitions give away that the music was composed. Fugues can be improvised, mostly because there are few formal requirements, although generally good ones can't (see first example in #4). Fugue isn't really a form in the traditional sense, but a loose procedure.
> 
> More generally, and as others have pointed out, classical improvisation before the modern era doesn't work for ensembles, only for solo players.


I guess you'd expect to find less repetition in an improvisation, I wonder if variation form is amenable to improvisation.

I don't know about pre modern improvisation for ensembles - I need to think. Maricia Molina may have looked into this as part of the research behind his recording Vacilantis. I don't know that early instrumental ensemble music wasn't improvised - in some structured way.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> I wonder whether you can hear that they're on rails.


Can _you_ hear that they're on rails?


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> Mainstream classical music is composed. But I'm not sure that's anything which you can hear. In so far as the listener's experience matters, I'm suggesting that the distinction between composed music and improvised music is unimportant.


Much improvised "neoclassical" music may be confused with talentlessly composed music. And it demands an extraordinary talented musician to improvise music which stands relistening, and they are few. But of course the distinction between composed music and improvised music is unimportant as such, it's the quality which counts. Concerning the three improvised fugues BWV 1080 has posted above, this is clearly music of low quality. Listen to the lack of memorable countersubjects, the perfunctory counterpoint, the general lack of direction and the very obvious all-present dependence upon already composed music. But in theory an expertly improvised fugue might be difficult to distinguish from a composed fugue. But so far I haven't heard anything like that.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> I don't know that early instrumental ensemble music wasn't improvised - in some structured way.


Early instrumental dance music was almost with certainty at least partially improvised. It can be seen from surviving scores (eg.Manuscript du Roi), because the notated music is monodic and most of the items lasts less than a minute if played litterally.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> Can _you_ hear that they're on rails?


Sometimes.

Maybe many times.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Very little of the music in the classical tradition which has proven to be of enduring interest could have been improvised or would be mistaken for improvisation. Even composers who were skilled improvisors would generally have applied stricter criteria for structure when writing music down; they might have based finished works on improvisations, but would have done a lot of tinkering to find the best solutions to structural problems that arose in the course of exploring the material for possibilities.

I improvised ballet music for a living for years, and some of my improvisations made very nice little compositions, but "little" is the important word. Most of them would have been expanded and even greatly transformed had I been sitting at the piano with staff paper rather than providing momentary accompaniment to prescribed dance steps.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Bwv 1080 said:


> Here are some improvised fugues


Just as we would not mistake the finished works of accomplished composers for improvisations, we would not mistake these improvisations for the finished works of accomplished composers.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Just as we would not mistake the finished works of accomplished composers for improvisations, we would not mistake these improvisations for the finished works of accomplished composers.


Is your thought that you can hear whether music is improvised or composed by its quality?

Bear in mind, by the way, that quite a lot of music which is improvised is based on a structure - a text or graphic score, for example.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Very little of the music in the classical tradition which has proven to be of enduring interest could have been improvised or would be mistaken for improvisation. Even composers who were skilled improvisors would generally have applied stricter criteria for structure when writing music down; they might have based finished works on improvisations, but would have done a lot of tinkering to find the best solutions to structural problems that arose in the course of exploring the material for possibilities.
> .


In the past, "the classical tradition" has made money for its stakeholders by promoting the idea of a masterpiece work and by controlling performance of the score of the masterpiece. And I think it's true that many participants in that tradition are trying to hold on to the old model.

Put it like this, you wouldn't get Philip Glass or Brian Ferneyhough in a jazz club! Composers such as Richard Barrett and Anthony Braxton and Pauline Oliveros certainly!

What I'm investigating is whether you can _hear_ the difference.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I just find it surprising that nobody has taken up my suggestion that one audible aspect of improvisation is to do with the musician’s response to the physicality of his instrument. I’m not suggesting it’s a necessary or sufficient condition, just a guide which is on the whole quite reliable, good evidence for improvisation. It may not stand up to scrutiny, but I don’t think it’s a silly idea!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Sometimes.
> 
> Maybe many times.


I'm just listening to a piano recording now - it's Herbert Henck playing Koechlin - and it strikes me that I was a bit too reticent here. I should have said most times! It is obvious that he is on rails - I'm not sure why it's obvious, but it is.

It'll be interesting to liste to some improvised music which was notated and then performed from the score - the Scelsi piano sonatas are an example.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> I just find it surprising that nobody has taken up my suggestion that one audible aspect of improvisation is to do with the musician's response to the physicality of his instrument. It may not stand up to scrutiny, but I don't think it's a silly idea!


It's an idea which can't be maintained at all. Much composed music is made in response to the physicality of the instrument in question. Eg. folkloristic harpsichord sonatas by D. Scarlatti and percussive piano music by Bartok. If you don't agree you have to explain more in depth what you mean with "the physicality" of the instrument.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

premont said:


> It's an idea which can't be maintained at all. Much composed music is made in response to the physicality of the instrument in question. Eg. folkloristic harpsichord sonatas by D. Scarlatti and percussive piano music by Bartok. If you don't agree you have to explain more in depth what you mean with "the physicality" of the instrument.


I mean the specific resonances and overtones and other acoustic properties of the particular instrument being played, and the particular space it is played in. Bartok may have been exploiting the general percussive potential of pianos. An improviser will exploit the percussive potential of this particular piano in this space.

Scarlatti is more complex because he could well have been writing for specific instruments, for all I know.

Premont - do you think that there are examples of baroque organ music really written to exploit the physical properties of a particular organ? I don't mean the tuning, that's more generic. I mean the uniqueness of the instrument. (I've got a vague memory that Joseph Kelemen talks about this somewhere - maybe to do with specific notated registrations in a Weckmann piece - I could be wrong.)


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

A good example of the sort of instrument/performer relation I'm thinking of is in some violin improvisations by Michael Goldstein - the solo piece _Configurations in Darkness_ for example - I can't see it on YouTube, it's on Spotify.

(You can hear he's not on rails!)


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> I mean the specific resonances and overtones and other acoustic properties of the particular instrument being played, and the particular space it is played in. Bartok may have been exploiting the general percussive potential of pianos. An improviser will exploit the percussive potential of this particular piano in this space.
> 
> Scarlatti is more complex because he could well have been writing for specific instruments, for all I know.
> 
> Premont - do you think that there are examples of baroque organ music really written to exploit the physical properties of a particular organ? I don't mean the tuning, that's more generic. I mean the uniqueness of the instrument. (I've got a vague memory that Joseph Kelemen talks about this somewhere - maybe to do with specific notated registrations in a Weckmann piece - I could be wrong.)


Most baroque organ music is written with the composers own organ and its national character (sound) in mind, and the music generally needs to be performed on similar organs. A Basse de trompette by Grigny eg. would loose its supposedly intended character when played on a standard Arp Schnitger organ. And a tiento by Arauxo is clearly intended for a Spanish organs divided keyboard. And the rhapsodic preludes by Buxtehude demand a North German organ with the different rather specific sound of the works (manuals).

Organists, whether playing composed music or improvising, have to take the organ they use as well as the acustics of the venue in mind. Everything should at best sound as if it was meant for precisely the organ in question. The situations are similar for composed and improvised music. And while we are at it, classical organists are that kind of musicians, which are most and best trained in improvising, and some do it rather well particularly in Holland, even if the quality doesn't quite stand up to good composed music, both concerning formal disposition and invention. But fortunately improvised music is meant to be listened to only once, and this makes the organist more free of course, but it also often reduces the lasting interest of the music. So one can to some degree judge from the quality if it is composed or improvised music. Composed music just with the quality of most improvised music wouldn't have survived until now.

Another thought is Beethoven who wrote his piano sonatas for the instruments he had at his disposal and as they got more advanced his music also got more complex. The acoustics of his living room probably was unimportant in this context.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Kelemen writes in the booklet to his Weckmann recording, that Weckmann offers some instructions as to stops. These are in the first hand meant for his own organ (Jacobi,Hamburg) but of course also as guidelines to other organists who wanted to play the music on other similar organs. Weckmann's instructions don't essentially differ from the instructions other organist-composers offer, eg. French baroque composers' almost obligatory instructions: Recit de cromhorne, Pleine jeu, Dialogue du cornet et de la tierce - and so on.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"No musical sketches for the Rondo survive. However, this is not surprising, since as Ulrich Konrad has noted, none of the many surviving Mozart sketches are for solo keyboard works; apparently Mozart felt no need to sketch in his native performing medium. Simon Keefe even suggests that the Rondo was not created through ordinary musical composition but rather was improvised on the spot, perhaps before an audience in Prague during his trip there (January-February 1787), or at a Vienna concert on 11 February 1787."


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> Just as we would not mistake the finished works of accomplished composers for improvisations, we would not mistake these improvisations for the finished works of accomplished composers.


I disagree - you cannot tell the difference between these improvs and some modern attempt at pastiche, nor could distinguish improvisation from composition (again they are the same thing) if you had a time machine and went back and heard JS Bach playing an unfamiliar fugue

The reason the 18th century masters could write such a large volume of music relates directly to their improv abilities


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> What I'm investigating is whether you can _hear_ the difference.


I think some music is more clearly 'composed' than others, as in everything fitting neatly together with the air taken out in between that couldn't have been put together spontaneously on the spot. It has the filler moments taken out, when the improvisor is stalling or just throwing in regular sort of prepared blocks.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

premont said:


> But fortunately improvised music is meant to be listened to only once, and this makes the organist more free of course, but it also often reduces the lasting interest of the music. So one can to some degree judge from the quality if it is composed or improvised music. Composed music just with the quality of most improvised music wouldn't have survived until now.
> .


Perhaps the composed music we know from the period (again the distinction is nebulous) are just those improvisations that happened to be written down and preserved.

Also fallacious to think that improv would vary that much - many Jazzers today play very similar material in their solos and have stock patterns they fall back on. Improv in 18th century music was not so much about spontaneous creativity, as exploring the often limited number of permittable figurations over a constraint such as a fixed bass line. If you take some Bach prelude, chances are the written version we have was more or less arbitrarily chosen by the composer over a number of variations he might take improvising it - not necessarily that it was the most 'perfect' version

I find this idea of perfection a real flaw in classical music thinking, sort of a platonic ideal - that somehow there is a 'perfect' finished composition (or a perfect interpretation of it for that matter), when in reality music does not work like that. We think the Waldstein Sonata is perfect, but if Beethoven had chosen some slightly different figurations or modulations in the development and we instead were familiar with that, then we would all think that version 'perfect'.


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

Roscoe Mitchell on whether a listener would be able to tell whether sections are composed or improvised: "I hope not."

And the vast majority of the time, he succeeds.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> I guess you'd expect to find less repetition in an improvisation, I wonder if variation form is amenable to improvisation.


I guess one would, but I was merely addressing the near impossibility of improvising two minutes of music and then repeating it verbatim. The feat of memory this would require makes it practically impossible, so a listener hearing such repetition would know what they're hearing couldn't have been improvised.

Variation form is certainly amenable to it. Most performances of standard jazz tunes are essentially theme and variation form, the "head" being the statement of the theme followed by variations taken by different soloists. Classical keyboard players improvised variations all the time. The form is perfect for improvisation because of the constraints of memory noted above. All one usually need remember to improvise variations is a single sentence of melody or even a simple chord progression. I'd imagine it would have been very difficult to tell if Mozart, Beethoven, or CPE Bach, for example, were playing composed variations or just extemporizing.



Mandryka said:


> I don't know about pre modern improvisation for ensembles - I need to think. Maricia Molina may have looked into this as part of the research behind his recording Vacilantis. I don't know that early instrumental ensemble music wasn't improvised - in some structured way.


Jazz and other ensembles on the "popular" side of modern music (Weather Report, Oregon, King Crimson, etc.) performed ensemble improvisations all the time, some of which sound highly structured and might on occasion be mistaken for composed pieces.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Bwv 1080 said:


> Perhaps the composed music we know from the period (again the distinction is nebulous) are just those improvisations that happened to be written down and preserved.


If so is the case those improvisations were in all probability very much improved before they were written dovn.



Bwv 1080 said:


> If you take some Bach prelude, chances are the written version we have was more or less arbitrarily chosen by the composer over a number of variations he might take improvising it - not necessarily that it was the most 'perfect' version.
> 
> I find this idea of perfection a real flaw in classical music thinking, sort of a platonic ideal - that somehow there is a 'perfect' finished composition (or a perfect interpretation of it for that matter), when in reality music does not work like


This is probably not correct. Bach's idea about a composition was, that it always was "on the way" and always might be bettered. This is apparent from the corrections in his manuscripts and the printed editions (eg. AoF printed contra manuscript version) and from the fact that more works are surviving in more versions, the more imperfect version predating the more perfect. But Bach had probably not much idea beforehand of how he in the distant future would change his compositions, and he probably didn't have any idea of the existence of an ideal final version of the works (Platonic ideal with your words).


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Portamento said:


> Roscoe Mitchell on whether a listener would be able to tell whether sections are composed or improvised: "I hope not."
> 
> And the vast majority of the time, he succeeds.


I don't understand this. My view is that there are potentially audible benefits of improvisation


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

premont said:


> Kelemen writes in the booklet to his Weckmann recording, that Weckmann offers some instructions as to stops. These are in the first hand meant for his own organ (Jacobi,Hamburg) but of course also as guidelines to other organists who wanted to play the music on other similar organs. Weckmann's instructions don't essentially differ from the instructions other organist-composers offer, eg. French baroque composers' almost obligatory instructions: Recit de cromhorne, Pleine jeu, Dialogue du cornet et de la tierce - and so on.


I'm misremembering something -- it will come back.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> In the past, "the classical tradition" has made money for its stakeholders by promoting the idea of a masterpiece work and by controlling performance of the score of the masterpiece. And I think it's true that many participants in that tradition are trying to hold on to the old model.


I don't know what making money has to do with the question at hand.



> Put it like this, you wouldn't get Philip Glass or Brian Ferneyhough in a jazz club! Composers such as Richard Barrett and Anthony Braxton and Pauline Oliveros certainly!


Again...



> What I'm investigating is whether you can _hear_ the difference.


Yes, I can hear the difference, but of course there are exceptions, depending on the style and intention of the music.



> Is your thought that you can hear whether music is improvised or composed by its quality?


That depends on the style. Improvisations can be extraordinarily good and composed works can be lousy, but beyond the simplest pieces most composed works in the classical tradition could not have been improvised. I'm pretty confident in saying that despite the undoubted improvisational prowess of geniuses such as Bach and Mozart. Beethoven was a great improvisor, but we know how hard he worked at finding the right notes in producing his scores. He, and we, have different expectations of the two processes.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> I'm misremembering something -- it will come back.


Re-reading the booklet I wonder if the passus you remembered was about the Rückpositiv of the Jacobi organ which in Weckmann's time had a full octave (so not short octave) in the bass register. This means of course, that music which contains the odd notes only could be played on the Rp. But such things are not unusual, and they had probably no groundbreaking effect upon the composisitions.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> My view is that there are potentially audible benefits of improvisation


Would you mind to put words on these benefits?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Bwv 1080 said:


> I disagree - you cannot tell the difference between these improvs and some modern attempt at pastiche, nor could distinguish improvisation from composition (again they are the same thing) if you had a time machine and went back and heard JS Bach playing an unfamiliar fugue
> 
> The reason the 18th century masters could write such a large volume of music relates directly to their improv abilities


Maybe you can't tell that those are not well-composed fugues by composers accomplished in the style, but I can. As for "modern attempts at pastiche"... Well, that's exactly what they are, and they aren't very good.

As one who made a living improvising and also did a certain amount of composing on paper, I can assure you that the process of writing music is not identical to that of extemporizing, even if the resulting music may in some cases be the same. I agree that skilled improvisors can create some very interesting and satisfying music, but most of the works of the most highly regarded composers could not have been improvised in the form in which we have them. The idea that Mozart just vomited forth symphonies without subjecting his ideas to criticism and revision is a romantic fantasy.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

premont said:


> Would you mind to put words on these benefits?


1. In a group improvisation the music is potentially something which no one individual would ever imagine.
2. The physicality of the sound production is inescapably connected with the creation, not just the execution, of the music.
3. Free improvisation is necessarily spontaneous.
4. There exists the possibility of trying to play music with no history
5. In improvisation you hear the human beings behind the instruments


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

premont said:


> Re-reading the booklet I wonder if the passus you remembered was about the Rückpositiv of the Jacobi organ which in Weckmann's time had a full octave (so not short octave) in the bass register. This means of course, that music which contains the odd notes only could be played on the Rp. But such things are not unusual, and they had probably no groundbreaking effect upon the composisitions.


Annoyingly . . . no . . . not that . . . I will wake up at 3 a.m. and remember.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I don't know what making money has to do with the question at hand.
> 
> .


Because it is in the interests of the classical music system to promote the idea that the music which is most interesting is the notated music -- so they can sell the scores, the performance rights etc.



Woodduck said:


> Again...
> 
> .


My thinking is that performers who are aligned with the classical establishment -- who see themselves as classical musicians -- just don't improvise, ever. Because it is not in their financial interests to encourage the idea that improvisation can result in music which is at least as valuable as fully notated music.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> Because it is in the interests of the classical music system to promote the idea that the music which is most interesting is the notated music -- so they can sell the scores, the performance rights etc.
> 
> My thinking is that performers who are aligned with the classical establishment -- who see themselves as classical musicians -- just don't improvise, ever. Because it is not in their financial interests to encourage the idea that improvisation can result in music which is at least as valuable as fully notated music.


not realy. The real reason is that learning to actually play and perform concert music to a high standard takes many dedicated years of practice.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

mikeh375 said:


> not realy. The real reason is that learning to actually play and perform concert music to a high standard takes many dedicated years of practice.


Well they have to get an ROI after all that commitment.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> Maybe you can't tell that those are not well-composed fugues by composers accomplished in the style, but I can. As for "modern attempts at pastiche"... Well, that's exactly what they are, and they aren't very good.


How can you possible tell whether the deficiencies in the fugue played by some random stranger on youtube stem from whether it is improvised or not? How do you know that it was not fully composed beforehand? And to my earlier point, if you travelled Bach in time to hear Bach play, how would you know whether he was improvising or playing something he wrote down earlier?



> I can assure you that the process of writing music is not identical to that of extemporizing


No one is arguing that, but improvising is composing


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Bwv 1080 said:


> How can you possible tell whether the deficiencies in the fugue played by some random stranger on youtube stem from whether it is improvised or not? How do you know that it was not fully composed beforehand? And to my earlier point, if you travelled Bach in time to hear Bach play, how would you know whether he was improvising or playing something he wrote down earlier?


In many cases we're talking probability, not certainty. Nobody is claiming that we can _always_ tell whether we're listening to someone improvise. In some cases we certainly can, in others not. Obviously a dull, mechanical-sounding piano sonata, with square, trite material, formulaic or arbitrary gestures, illogical continuations, uncertain transitions, or a lack of overall shape and purpose, could be a written-out student exercise, but outside of a classroom we aren't likely to hear it, and no one is likely to play it in public. If we heard such a piece at a concert, it would be reasonable to think that the pianist was either improvising it or had poor musical judgment.

That doesn't imply that improvisations must be inferior music. They merely tend to have different qualities. If we know a piece to be an improv, we may listen differently, enjoying qualities of invention and spontaneity as we follow the performer's journey without expecting the structural features, the interrelatedness of ideas, and the inevitability a composed work in an otherwise similar style would exhibit. As has been pointed out, composed works such as fantasias deliberately eschew certain structures and seek to capture the spontaneous qualities we enjoy in improvisations. Baroque and Classical composers wrote such pieces precisely in recognition of what makes music sound improvisatory.



> No one is arguing that, but improvising is composing


Well, you did say that improvising and composing are "the same thing," and offered no qualifications. I guess by "same" you meant "different."


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

EdwardBast said:


> Most classical forms incorporate long repeated passages, like sonatas, where whole expositions are repeated verbatim and then repeated in altered form as a recap. Minuets and trios ditto. Rondo finales ditto. Dance movements of every kind ditto. Slow movements, including the standard sonata form without development, ditto. Ternary forms, the most common for small solo compositions in the Romantic era, ditto. These repetitions give away that the music was composed. Fugues can be improvised, mostly because there are few formal requirements, although generally good ones can't (see first example in #4). Fugue isn't really a form in the traditional sense, but a loose procedure.
> 
> More generally, and as others have pointed out, classical improvisation before the modern era doesn't work for ensembles, only for solo players.


Repetition if precisely what creates form. Music without repetition is without form.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> 1. In a group improvisation the music is potentially something which no one individual would ever imagine.
> 2. The physicality of the sound production is inescapably connected with the creation, not just the execution, of the music.
> 3. Free improvisation is necessarily spontaneous.
> 4. There exists the possibility of trying to play music with no history
> 5. In improvisation you hear the human beings behind the instruments


Thanks, I shall have to think over this.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> Well, you did say that improvising and composing are "the same thing," and offered no qualifications. I guess by "same" you meant "different."


No, I said improvising is composing, one is a subset of the other.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Bwv 1080 said:


> No, I said improvising is composing, one is a subset of the other.


It was a quote from post #30: "...you cannot tell the difference between these improvs and some modern attempt at pastiche, nor could distinguish improvisation from composition (again *they are the same thing*) if you had a time machine and went back and heard JS Bach playing an unfamiliar fugue."

I agree with your clarification. One is indeed a subset of the other.: improvisation is a kind of composition. It's a kind in which it's impossible to alter and correct what comes before in the light of what comes after, and in which what's already been done controls what's yet to be done to a degree unnecessary in written composition. For the composer this is an enormous difference.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

per the OP, while I am arguing the distinction between composed and improvised music is overdrawn in 18th century music, it does matter - while I doubt one could tell if Chopin was improvising or not if you traveled back in time to hear him play, certainly the difference between Chopin and a contemporary pianist trying to improvise in his style exists (but about to the same degree as a real Chopin Mazurka would be distinguishable from contemporary attempt at imitation). 

So a composer instructing a performer to improvise can deliver potentially very different results than explicitly notating the music - for example, people often argue there is no point for Ferneyhough to employ his complex rhythmic notation as a superficially similar effect could be achieved by improv, but this of course defeats BF's goal of challenging the performer , along with other structural considerations for certain rhythmic figurations. On the other hand, how different would Lutoslawski sound if he had explicitely written out complex rhythms instead of the aleatoric passages?


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> I agree with your clarification. One is indeed a subset of the other.: improvisation is a kind of composition. It's a kind in which it's impossible to alter and correct what comes before in the light of what comes after, and in which what's already been done controls what's yet to be done to a degree unnecessary in written composition. For the composer this is an enormous difference.


Sure but in 18th century practice, nothing is 100% improv, there is an underlying structure and the performer makes rather constrained choices within this framework, so it matters less. On one extreme is figured bass, where one could hardly argue that various permitted choices in voicing a 6 3 chord would make a material difference in the outcome of the music. Also the performer makes choices in ornamentation and rhythm, like overdotting or notes inegales. Then you get to melodic improv of variations on a set theme or a fugue on a given subject all the way to full melodic improv in a partimento realization


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I agree with your clarification. One is indeed a subset of the other.: improvisation is a kind of composition. It's a kind in which it's impossible to alter and correct what comes before in the light of what comes after, and in which what's already been done controls what's yet to be done to a degree unnecessary in written composition. For the composer this is an enormous difference.


Good point. It means that in improvisation there is a risk. That's potentially very good - it stops it being anodyne.

Have you read Michel Leiris on this? De la littérature considérée comme une tauromachie.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

By the way, looking at the discussion, I regret not contrasting improvisation and notated composition - I mean five lines and clef notation. That’s what makes the composition into a straightjacket for the musician.


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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

Bwv 1080 said:


> Sure but in 18th century practice, nothing is 100% improv, there is an underlying structure and the performer makes rather constrained choices within this framework, so it matters less. On one extreme is figured bass, where one could hardly argue that various permitted choices in voicing a 6 3 chord would make a material difference in the outcome of the music. Also the performer makes choices in ornamentation and rhythm, like overdotting or notes inegales. Then you get to melodic improv of variations on a set theme or a fugue on a given subject all the way to full melodic improv in a partimento realization


In that sense though nothing is ever 100% improv.


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Mainstream classical music is composed. But I'm not sure that's anything which you can hear. In so far as the listener's experience matters, I'm suggesting that the distinction between composed music and improvised music is unimportant.


I think a big factor is the length of the improvisation. As you get going your ideas seem fresh and then more stale, you hear something that you've been playing - and you go back to it, but not exactly. Sometimes it doesn't work. If you were composing (seeing the logic in all the note changes) and you had a sense of perspective you probably wouldn't be satisfied with it. 
Jazz players do have their favorite seed ideas and twists so that they can always go back to them. Time is unforgiving, so it requires them to make each of them more varied and clever. There's no time to think very much while you're improvising, that was all done in your preparation along with your overall education and experience.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> By the way, looking at the discussion, I regret not contrasting improvisation and notated composition - I mean five lines and clef notation. That's what makes the composition into a straightjacket for the musician.


Seeing as there are thousands of recordings, and counting, of a work like Beethoven's Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, as well as others, I think you are exaggerating this straitjacket syndrome.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> By the way, looking at the discussion, I regret not contrasting improvisation and notated composition - I mean five lines and clef notation. That's what makes the composition into a straightjacket for the musician.


Stravinsky held exactly the opposite view. He considered limitations, accepted at the outset, as creatively stimulating and liberating.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> 1. In a group improvisation the music is potentially something which no one individual would ever imagine.
> 2. The physicality of the sound production is inescapably connected with the creation, not just the execution, of the music.
> 3. Free improvisation is necessarily spontaneous.
> 4. There exists the possibility of trying to play music with no history
> 5. In improvisation you hear the human beings behind the instruments


Well said. Among the most interesting "something which no one individual would ever imagine" are passages in dialogue during group improvisations where fragments of melody and rhythmic figures are passed around among the players, each directly responding to and provoking the others. "Directions" live in Tokyo by early Weather Report is a good example. After the short statement of the head, it's everyone improvising all the time and the dialogue of material tossed among the five players in rapid succession is exciting, totally of the moment, and unlike anything likely to be produced by individual composition:


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Stravinsky held exactly the opposite view. He considered limitations, accepted at the outset, as creatively stimulating and liberating.


I'm sorry, I wasn't clear again. I meant a straightjacket for the performer!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> Seeing as there are thousands of recordings, and counting, of a work like Beethoven's Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, as well as others, I think you are exaggerating this straitjacket syndrome.


No I'm not, you are underplaying it - especially in something like that sonata. There are challenges certainly, like moving the first movement on a modern metal framed piano, but that's a different thing.

By the way, I don't mean to judge negatively or positively either notated music or different types of improvisation. There's no reason to get defensive. I just want to identify their consequences, my focus is primarily on the listener. I am sure many listeners love music which is audibly on rails, and feel uncomfortable with freer forms of music making.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Mandryka said:


> Mainstream classical music is composed. But I'm not sure that's anything which you can hear. In so far as the listener's experience matters, I'm suggesting that the distinction between composed music and improvised music is unimportant.


I see improvisation as a skill which can enhance the finished product. The latter need not be noted down, and in the standard Western classical repertoire cadenzas are a good example. In other words, improvisation can also be the product itself.

Whether or not musicians choose to notate their cadenza, they put some thought into what they will play. Here, a musician talks about how he approaches improvisation in Nielsen's Symphony #5:






In Western classical music, improvisation developed from mere embellishments to the most complex display of invention and technical skill. Handel, for example, left whole passages in his organ concertos to be improvised during performance. At concerts, listener requests where common. Virtuosos like Liszt hardly got to play their own music, apart from improvisations or transcriptions requested by the audience. Improvisation was an integral part of gaining skills as a musician, particularly for organists and pianists, right up until the early 20th century.

Its interesting to note that some of the most skilled improvisers left almost no notated music for their instrument. Bruckner was considered among the greatest organists of his time, but his output for that instrument is negligible. The same can be said of Janacek, whose only existing organ piece is the solo at the end of the Glagolitic Mass. At parties, Gershwin played many preludes he composed in his head. He memorised all of them but only wrote down three of them.

Extemporisation on the original score was less frowned upon compared to today. Rachmaninov reminisced how Anton Rubinstein added his own extemporisations when he played the Beethoven sonatas. Percy Grainger's performance of Grieg's Piano Concerto was the composer's favourite, but the piano roll recording shows that it was a much more liberal interpretation compared to what generations since have become accustomed to.

In the 20th century, jazz opened up new avenues for improvisation, as did the aleatoric procedures of Cage. The interest in authentic performance added to the mix too (e.g. Robert Levin).

While improvisation took a back seat in Western music, it remains an integral part of other traditions, especially of India and the Arab world. I found a couple of pieces by Mohammad Abdel Wahab, probably the most famous composer to come out of the Middle East in the 20th century. Just listen to two versions of the same piece. In this tradition, interpretation is more like it was in Western classical up to the 19th century:













Mandryka said:


> 1. In a group improvisation the music is potentially something which no one individual would ever imagine.
> 2. The physicality of the sound production is inescapably connected with the creation, not just the execution, of the music.
> 3. Free improvisation is necessarily spontaneous.
> 4. There exists the possibility of trying to play music with no history
> 5. In improvisation you hear the human beings behind the instruments


Look up the Splinter Orchestra. Unlike the other examples above - except for the aleatoric and experimental stuff of the 1960's - they have no concrete point of departure for their improvisations (in terms of melody, motif, harmony, etc.).

https://www.corfuhler.com/splinter-orchestra
https://www.splinterorchestra.com/
https://www.facebook.com/thesplinterorchestra/


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Sid James said:


> I see improvisation as a skill which can enhance the finished product. The latter need not be noted down, and in the standard Western classical repertoire cadenzas are a good example. In other words, improvisation can also be the product itself.
> 
> Whether or not musicians choose to notate their cadenza, they put some thought into what they will play. Here, a musician talks about how he approaches improvisation in Nielsen's Symphony #5:
> 
> ...


Thanks, I look forward to exploring The Splinter Orchestra.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> 1. In a group improvisation the music is potentially something which no one individual would ever imagine.
> 2. The physicality of the sound production is inescapably connected with the creation, not just the execution, of the music.
> 3. Free improvisation is necessarily spontaneous.
> 4. There exists the possibility of trying to play music with no history
> 5. In improvisation you hear the human beings behind the instruments


1.In my somewhat conservative mind I always look at such things from the listeners viewpoint. And to become interesting to listen to, a group improvisation must be done by competent musicians, who know each other very well, particularly if this is their first attempt. And they will need some kind of pre-agreed disposition. Otherwise the result rarely will become listenable. That no one would have imagined the result doesn't pr se make it more interesting, maybe rather the contrary. Of course it may be fun to participate in group improvisation (jam-session) but less fun to attend.

I wonder if your point is that more or less unstructured group improvisation at best may lead to unique events, where the listeners loose the sense of time and place and just surrender to the music like what we see at some rock concerts. I that case you may be right. But great art is seldom created casually.

2. I think this distinction is fictive, because in improvisation creation and execution are two different words for the same activity, which would be something like music-making. For conposers with good instrumental knowledge the physicality of the instrument plays a decisive role, not the least if the composer plays the instrument he is composing for, and every time a piece of music is performed, it must be recreated with great observance on the physicality of the instrument. And whether the music was composed for the very instument it is played on or a similar instrument makes no difference.

3. Yes, that is obvious. But whether it is an advantage or not may be casual.

4. With no history? Do you mean free-style music? In my experience rarely successful.

5. In a performance of pre-composed music we also hear the human being behind the instrument. Most of course at recitals, but also often in recordings, what is evident if one compares with midi-versions.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

premont said:


> 1.In my somewhat conservative mind I always look at such things from the listeners viewpoint. And to become interesting to listen to, a group improvisation must be done by competent musicians, who know each other very well, particularly if this is their first attempt. And they will need some kind of pre-agreed disposition. Otherwise the result rarely will become listenable. That no one would have imagined the result doesn't pr se make it more interesting, maybe rather the contrary. Of course it may be fun to participate in group improvisation (jam-session) but less fun to attend.
> 
> I wonder if your point is that more or less unstructured group improvisation at best may lead to unique events, where the listeners loose the sense of time and place and just surrender to the music like what we see at some rock concerts. I that case you may be right. But great art is seldom created casually.


Yes just what you said in the second paragraph. I wasn't thinking of "great art"



premont said:


> 2. I think this distinction is fictive, because in improvisation creation and execution are two different words for the same activity, which would be something like music-making. For conposers with good instrumental knowledge the physicality of the instrument plays a decisive role, not the least if the composer plays the instrument he is composing for, and every time a piece of music is performed, it must be recreated with great observance on the physicality of the instrument. And whether the music was composed for the very instument it is played on or a similar instrument makes no difference.


I think a lot depends on the instrument -- when I wrote that I was thinking of particular string instruments, with a certain bow and strings, particular voices.



premont said:


> 3. Yes, that is obvious. But whether it is an advantage or not may be casual.


A feature which improvisation is conducive towards. Yes.



premont said:


> 4. With no history? Do you mean free-style music? In my experience rarely successful.
> 
> .


All music is rarely successful IMO.



premont said:


> 5. In a performance of pre-composed music we also hear the human being behind the instrument. Most of course at recitals, but also often in recordings, what is evident if one compares with midi-versions.


Not as much as in an improvisation, because in a notated composition the musicians are more constrained.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I'm having a hard time trying to understand this...I usually know what I'm listening to and then also if it's composed or improvised. I like music that seems improvised and chaotic, but also traditional and formal. I know that improvisation is "composing in real-time" and like to hear how musical ideas evolve. I was once at a workshop in group improv and we came up with a cool theme together and kind of "sank into a common creative space".


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I usually know what I'm listening to and then also if it's composed or improvised. .


Do you think you can hear whether it's improvised? Not all of the time, and obviously you may be wrong, but do you think that there are audible things in the performance which on the whole are good evidence for it being improvised?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

One thing we have not discussed at all is the idea of a hybrid between composed music and improvisation. It could be a generalisation of cadenzas in mainstream music, maybe multiple sections for improvisation in a work. Or it may be a text or graphic score, or even something which is very open indeed, like some of Cage's number pieces -- flexible time brackets, modular, unspecified instrumentation.

Without checking, could you tell if this is improvised


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> .
> I wasn't thinking of "great art"


May be I was a bit ironic and should have written "notable art".



Mandryka said:


> .
> I think a lot depends on the instrument -- when I wrote that I was thinking of particular string instruments, with a certain bow and strings, particular voices.


My point was, that in classical music in general the composers relation to the instrument often doesn't differ radically from the performers relation to the instrument. The situation in improvisation is just that the composer and performer is the same person, so to say two in one, and this is a parallel to what you see often in musical history with the many composers who compose for their own instrument. As others pointed out above many compositions particularly in the EM age inclusive baroque probably had their origin in improvisations which were written down and afterwards improved.



Mandryka said:


> .
> A feature which improvisation is conducive towards. Yes.


Maybe. Depends upon the improvising musicians capability and experience.



Mandryka said:


> .
> All music is rarely successful IMO.


Certainly. But improvising in free-style is to challenge fate. Everybody can do that - even I, but only very few will be able to succeed.



Mandryka said:


> .
> Not as much as in an improvisation, because in a notated composition the musicians are more constrained.


Not necessarily. Classical musicians may look so, but most often they are intensely concentrated.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Mandryka said:


> Thanks, I look forward to exploring The Splinter Orchestra.


You're welcome, Mandryka :tiphat:


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

It's interesting to note how the emancipation of harmonic/vertical thinking and linear development in the last 100 years has complicated distinguishing improvised as opposed to written music. 

Because of the atonal freedoms non-traditional composers now have when notating precisely what they want and given how difficult it is to grasp formal qualities in contemporary works, the adoption of no rules in improvised scenarios can readily be justified. If the improvisation is thoughtful, skilled and played with conviction and musicality, then it's bound to hamper the ability of ears used to modernity in distinguishing between intended and accidental fantasy. I think this applies to the linear in music as much as the vertical.

This ambiguity in perception (even for musicians), is obviously a post 1920's phenomenon and is more pertinent in our times I feel given modern trends. It applies especially to music that uses traditional concert hall instruments and is destined to be listened in that environment - an environment that has a safe, comfortable tradition that has been pretty much challenged and even eliminated so far as the average listener is concerned.


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

mikeh375 said:


> It's interesting to note how the emancipation of harmonic/vertical thinking and linear development in the last 100 years has complicated distinguishing improvised as opposed to written music.
> 
> Because of the atonal freedoms non-traditional composers now have when notating precisely what they want and given how difficult it is to grasp formal qualities in contemporary works, the adoption of no rules in improvised scenarios can readily be justified. If the improvisation is thoughtful, skilled and played with conviction and musicality, then it's bound to hamper the ability of ears used to modernity in distinguishing between intended and accidental fantasy. I think this applies to the linear in music as much as the vertical.
> 
> This ambiguity in perception (even for musicians), is obviously a post 1920's phenomenon and is more pertinent in our times I feel given modern trends. It applies especially to music that uses traditional concert hall instruments and is destined to be listened in that environment - an environment that has a safe, comfortable tradition that has been pretty much challenged and even eliminated so far as the average listener is concerned.


Yes, but how can we tell if it's a very! good improvisation?

I can tell when somebody from my combo is improvising, say, if I get there late and have no idea what they've been playing. But this is a different example, and not helpful for applying to world-class extemporizers.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

What are Anthony Braxton's "compositions"? Are they a structure for improvisation? For example


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I can't resist posting this, which is IMO one of the high points of recent American classical music - the whole CD, not just the clip


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## Marc (Jun 15, 2007)

Just to enjoy: Improvisation on "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" by Sietze de Vries, on the Ahrend/Brunzema organ of the Sankt Martini-Kirche in Bremen, Germany.

I can't really 'judge' about De Vries' skills, but I have heard him improvise many many times, and I've always enjoyed it. He mainly excels in baroque-like improvisations.
Of course, with organ improvisations, it's not only important to show your 'genuine' improvisation skills, but also to present all various possibilities that the instrument itself has to offer.


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## Marc (Jun 15, 2007)

To add to my former post: the last dozen years or so, I've attended quite a few organ concerts, and it's nice to see that there are still some organists who are able to give really convincing improvisations (from 'baroque-like' to modern or minimalistic). But the amount of performers who still have those skills is declining, alas. I personally do not mind when an organist delivers a program with 'standard' compositions, but it can be a nice surprise if he/she also adds a personal spontaneous view on a well-known or less well-known (mostly religious) melody/cantus firmus.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Bwv 1080 said:


> Perhaps the composed music we know from the period (again the distinction is nebulous) are just those improvisations that happened to be written down and preserved.
> 
> Also fallacious to think that improv would vary that much - many Jazzers today play very similar material in their solos and have stock patterns they fall back on. Improv in 18th century music was not so much about spontaneous creativity, as exploring the often limited number of permittable figurations over a constraint such as a fixed bass line. If you take some Bach prelude, chances are the written version we have was more or less arbitrarily chosen by the composer over a number of variations he might take improvising it - not necessarily that it was the most 'perfect' version
> 
> I find this idea of perfection a real flaw in classical music thinking, sort of a platonic ideal - that somehow there is a 'perfect' finished composition (or a perfect interpretation of it for that matter), when in reality music does not work like that. *We think the Waldstein Sonata is perfect, but if Beethoven had chosen some slightly different figurations or modulations in the development and we instead were familiar with that, then we would all think that version 'perfect'.*


I wanted to come back and respond to your comments here. What you say makes sense to me, because on jazz albums (particularly reissues) including alternate takes has become quite common for a while now. For example, I have *Duke Ellington's* _Money Jungle_ album, and it contains the originally published and alternate takes of a few songs, including _*Solitude*_:










In classical, we can miss out on the actual piece if its not noted down, let alone an alternative version. *K. A. Hartmann's Piano Sonata "27 April 1945"* is a piece I know where both the published and alternate versions of the last movement have survived. It relates to what you say, since if he would have published the alternative version, we wouldn't really know any better. That might be judged to be perfect, rather than the other one. In any case, they're just different, and among other things provide an insight into the musician's working methods.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Can you hear if


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