A New Look at Improvisation

Abstract

While conventional music analysis has been largely concerned with composed-notated music, very little investigation has been made in the area of improvisation. This disparity is likely due to the challenges in studying an extemporaneous process compared to the accessibility of a finished score. Yet the very spontaneity which renders improvisation an elusive analytical topic may yield unique expressive and aesthetic principles which spawn new angles of musical inquiry. In this article, I shall consider improvisation from the standpoint of temporal perception in seeking to locate such principles. My central premise is that the improviser experiences time in an inner-directed, or vertical manner, where the present is heightened and the past and future are perceptually subordinated.' I contrast innerdirected conception with the expanding temporality of the composer, where temporal projections may be conceived from any moment in a work to past and future time coordinates. I challenge the common notion that improvisation is an instantaneous or accelerated version of the composition process,2 proposing instead that the two processes differ in their contrasting temporal directionalities. This is not to necessarily rule out all possible points where improvisation and composition might intersect, but to identify fundamental distinctions in the directionality of temporal

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