Panagiotis Kanellopoulos explores children's talk about musical thinking through the study of their reflections on their own improvised music. He accepts the possibility that children's discourse on music is the beginning of their philosophizing about music, an idea that is related to the larger issue of how to develop a music education perspective that gives voice to the learners and welcomes experimentation, constantly questioning the assumptions we bring as music educators. Based on particular examples of (...) discussions with eight-year old children he explores the development of their discourse, interpreting the meaning of their thinking, and illustrating how they put forward issues that although they begin from concrete particulars point to issues usually confined to abstract philosophical concerns. Children's reflective potential as well as their particular views has important educational implications. Discussions with the children about their work highlight interpretation and meaning-formation at the center of their experience as artists. And musical improvisation emerges as a source of genuine musical experiences and a core means for the creation of communities of practice, dialogue, and reflection. (shrink)

This book is an important contribution to the philosophy of music. Whereas most books in this field focus on the creation and reproduction of music, Bruce Benson's concern is the phenomenology of music making as an activity. He offers the radical thesis that it is improvisation that is primary in the moment of music making. Succinct and lucid, the book brings together a wide range of musical examples from classical music, jazz, early (...) class='Hi'>music and other genres. It offers a rich tapestry incorporating both analytic and continental philosophy, musicology and performance-practice issues. It will be a provocative read for philosophers of art and musicologists and, because it eschews technicality, should appeal to general readers, especially those who perform. (shrink)

Improvisation is usually either lionized as an ecstatic experience of being in the moment or disparaged as the thoughtless recycling of clichés. Eschewing both of these orthodoxies, _The Philosophy of Improvisation_ ranges across the arts—from music to theater, dance to comedy—and considers the improvised dimension of philosophy itself in order to elaborate an innovative concept of improvisation. Gary Peters turns to many of the major thinkers within continental philosophy—including Heidegger, Nietzsche, Adorno, Kant, Benjamin, and (...) Deleuze—offering readings of their reflections on improvisation and exploring improvisational elements within their thinking. Peters’s wry, humorous style offers an antidote to the frequently overheated celebration of freedom and community that characterizes most writing on the subject. Expanding the field of what counts as improvisation, _The Philosophy of Improvisation_ will be welcomed by anyone striving to comprehend the creative process. (shrink)

Introduction: why an ontology of jazz? -- What does the law hear? James Newton and the Beastie Boys -- Intentions, agency, and improvisation: from machines to the imaginary -- It ain't over till it's over: work completion in improvised music -- Paris, 1969: musical understanding, genres, and aesthetic denseness -- My favorite things: performance, paraphrase, and representation.

(Only begin) A descent -- Free bodies -- Collective subjectivities 1 -- Overture to dawn -- Collective subjectivities 2 -- Into the hot -- Solitary subjectivities -- Troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes -- Collective objectivities -- Imaginary birds said to live in paradise -- Postscript : The ballad of John and Yoko -- Rain falling down on old Gods.

Scrap yard challenge : junkyard wars -- Freedom, origination, and irony -- Mimesis and cruelty -- Improvisation, origination, re-novation -- Conclusion : improvisation, thinking, writing.

This paper explores the ontology of musical improvisation (MI). MI, as process in which creative and performing activities are one and the same generative occurrence, is contrasted with the most widespread conceptual resource used in inquiries about music ontology of the Western tradition: the type/token duality (TtD). TtD, which is used for explaining the relationship between musical works (MWs) and performances, does not fit for MI. Nonetheless MI can be ontologically related to MWs. A MW can ensue from (...) MI and MI can be required for performing a MW faithfully. As performance on a MW, MI can offer versions of a MW, manifest a MW, and, especially, use it as one of its ‘ingredients’. Recordings of MI present special challenges and an unexpected ontological revival. (shrink)

Do psychological perspectives constitute the only way through which the role of musical creativity in education can be addressed, researched and theorised? This essay attempts to offer an alternative view of musical creativity as a deeply social and political form of human praxis, by proposing a perspective rooted in the thought of the political philosopher and activist Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997). This is done in two steps. First, an attempt is made to place the pursuit of the concept of musical creativity (...) within a larger educational and societal context of conflicting trajectories that run through (a) Modernity and (b) Education. Then, I revisit the issue of educational value of improvising and composing through creating conceptual links between the process of music-making through improvisation and composition and the project of political autonomy as conceived by Castoriadis. By foregrounding instituting imaginary over instituted imaginary, improvising and composing become active processes of positing new legitimacies, and of creating a music-making context that searches for its own foundations. It is in and through creative musical praxis that we can think about issues of hierarchies, musical values, social dimensions of different music-making processes, our relationship to past values and to historical dimensions of music. By arguing that improvisation and composition might be seen as ways of positing the issue of political autonomy in musical terms, this paper emphasises the role of improvisation and composition as a mode of potentially transformative educational practice that may foster the development of critical consciousness, linking music education to a larger project of re-discovering and at the same time re-defining democracy. (shrink)

Finding the Raga is more than a book that tries to make sense of the raga, of Indian classical music, and of how Indian music challenges Western notions of what music might be. It is a work of self-inquiry, as might be expected from Amit Chaudhuri, a musician who is also a novelist; a novelist who is also a critic and essayist; a trained and recorded performer in the Indian classical vocal tradition who was also, once, a (...) guitarist and songwriter in the American folk music style and is now a composer and recorded performer in experimental music. Each one of these undertakings and selves signifies turns at different points in life, and each turn and change of direction brings a fresh perspective on music, writing, and what it means to take on and do these things. No category-Indian, Western-is a given in this book. Partly a record of one of the most important turns in the author's life, toward North Indian music, and of its long aftermath, Finding the Raga is also part autobiography set in 1970s Bombay, part essay, and part detailed analysis of how we might grasp the conceptual underpinnings as well as the experience of music. It explores the different ways in which music relates to the world-whether it's through representation or evocation, as in Western music, or through the raga being sung at different times of day and in different seasons, as in Indian music-and also tries to understand what the act of listening involves for individuals and cultures. (shrink)

This volume brings together philosophical and interdisciplinary perspectives on improvisation. The contributions connect the theoretical dimensions of improvisation with different viewpoints on its practice in the arts and the classroom. The chapters address the phenomenon of improvisation in two related ways. On the one hand, they attend to the lived practices of improvisation both within and without the arts in order to explain the phenomenon. They also extend the scope of improvisational practices to include the role (...) of improvisation in habit and in planned action, at both individual and collective levels. Drawing on recent work done in the philosophy of mind, they also address questions such as whether improvisation is a single unified phenomenon, or whether it entails different senses that can be discerned theoretically and practically. Finally, they ask after the special kind of improvisational expertise which characterizes musicians, dancers, and other practitioners, an expertise marked by the artist's ability to participate competently in complex situations while deliberately relinquishing control. Philosophy of Improvisation will appeal to researchers working in philosophy, aesthetics, and pedagogy and the arts as well as practitioners involved in different kinds of music, dance, and theater performances. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive book-length introduction to the philosophy of Western music that fully integrates consideration of popular music and hybrid musical forms, especially song. Its author, Andrew Kania, begins by asking whether Bob Dylan should even have been eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature, given that he is a musician. This motivates a discussion of music as an artistic medium, and what philosophy has to contribute to our thinking about music. Chapters (...) 2-5 investigate the most commonly defended sources of musical value: its emotional power, its form, and specifically musical features (such as pitch, rhythm, and harmony). In chapters 6-9, Kania explores issues arising from different musical practices, particularly work-performance (with a focus on classical music), improvisation (with a focus on jazz), and recording (with a focus on rock and pop). Chapter 10 examines the intersection of music and morality. The book ends with a consideration of what, ultimately, music is. (shrink)

The intentionality of improvisation represents surely one of the most pressing and controversial issues in contemporary action theory: how do we find the way to characterize the proper intentionality of improvisation, which is an unplanned yet intentional action? This article will address this question bringing together Merleau-Ponty’s motor intentionality and Bergson’s conception of duration. My argument will unfold in three main stages. First, I will briefly describe the traditional scheme that is used to think of intentional action in (...) contemporary action theory and discuss how the phenomenon of improvisation casts doubts on it. Second, I will outline an initial, and provisional account of improvisation by crossing the descriptions of musical improvisation provided by Jankélévitch with the testimonials of two improvisatory composers—Enrico Pieranunzi and Keith Jarrett—and reports from Charles Rosen, an American pianist and Roger Sessions, an American composer. Finally, I will refine the basic concepts and lay out a phenomenological account of improvisation, by extending and applying the phenomenological notion of motor intentionality to the examples and testimonials gathered from the observation of a specific kind of improvisatory activity—musical composition. This methodology is intended to contrast both with more standard philosophical approaches based on hypothetical examples, and with more standard laboratory-based methodologies in cognitive sciences, psychology, and experimental philosophy. Overall, this approach is intended to redress the balance of action theory—one-sided directed towards planning, as a key aspect of human agency—with an analysis of the bodily and responsive aspect of intentionality. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine how specific aspects of Bakhtin's theoretical perspective might inform our understanding of improvisation. Moreover, it outlines the possible educational implications of such a perspective. Specifically, a sketch of a Bakhtinian conception of improvisation is proposed, a sketch which emphasizes the cultivation of an attitude of consciousness that leads to an understanding of improvised music making as an obligation to explore the unknown, to search for freedom through the responsibility to attend to the (...) uniqueness of irrevocable musical acts. Moreover, emphasis is given to the potential of improvisation to create a music-making context that counters monologic musical discourses, providing a site of resistance to fixity and closure. It is argued that improvisation is dialogic exactly because it creates a very special sense of interaction, which is characterized by unfinalizability and openness. At the same time, improvisation is in need of temporary finalizations which occur through the presence of the audience and the musicians' struggle to raise their minds 'above' their playing, looking at their music from outside and getting 'back in' again. It is hoped that such a perspective might provide the necessary theoretical tools for re-thinking the role of improvisation in music education. A Bakhtinian view on the experience of improvisation would, it is suggested, be educationally valuable exactly because it regards improvisation not as a problem-solving method but a problem-positing approach: as a musical practice that involves children and young people in the experiential pursuit of freedom and the understanding of the "ought" of imagining ways forward, countering monologue by allowing the flourishing of a polyphony of unmerged voices, constituting a distinctive chronotope which provides the possibility of an enactment of everyday living in musical terms. The decision to improvise marks the initiation of a search for a public musical space which is marked by the absence of fear, where exploration of musical freedom is pursued, where everything might happen but not anything goes. (shrink)

The intentionality of improvisation represents surely one of the most pressing and controversial issues in contemporary action theory: how do we find the way to characterize the proper intentionality of improvisation, which is an unplanned yet intentional action? This article will address this question bringing together Merleau-Ponty’s motor intentionality and Bergson’s conception of duration. My argument will unfold in three main stages. First, I will briefly describe the traditional scheme that is used to think of intentional action in (...) contemporary action theory and discuss how the phenomenon of improvisation casts doubts on it. Second, I will outline an initial, and provisional account of improvisation by crossing the descriptions of musical improvisation provided by Jankélévitch with the testimonials of two improvisatory composers—Enrico Pieranunzi and Keith Jarrett—and reports from Charles Rosen, an American pianist and Roger Sessions, an American composer. Finally, I will refine the basic concepts and lay out a phenomenological account of improvisation, by extending and applying the phenomenological notion of motor intentionality to the examples and testimonials gathered from the observation of a specific kind of improvisatory activity—musical composition. This methodology is intended to contrast both with more standard philosophical approaches based on hypothetical examples, and with more standard laboratory-based methodologies in cognitive sciences, psychology, and experimental philosophy. Overall, this approach is intended to redress the balance of action theory—one-sided directed towards planning, as a key aspect of human agency—with an analysis of the bodily and responsive aspect of intentionality. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine how specific aspects of Bakhtin's theoretical perspective might inform our understanding of improvisation. Moreover, it outlines the possible educational implications of such a perspective. Specifically, a sketch of a Bakhtinian conception of improvisation is proposed, a sketch which emphasizes the cultivation of an attitude of consciousness that leads to an understanding of improvised music making as an obligation to explore the unknown, to search for freedom through the responsibility to attend to the (...) uniqueness of irrevocable musical acts. Moreover, emphasis is given to the potential of improvisation to create a music-making context that counters monologic musical discourses, providing a site of resistance to fixity and closure. It is argued that improvisation is dialogic exactly because it creates a very special sense of interaction, which is characterized by unfinalizability and openness. At the same time, improvisation is in need of temporary finalizations which occur through the presence of the audience and the musicians' struggle to raise their minds 'above' their playing, looking at their music from outside and getting 'back in' again. It is hoped that such a perspective might provide the necessary theoretical tools for re-thinking the role of improvisation in music education. A Bakhtinian view on the experience of improvisation would, it is suggested, be educationally valuable exactly because it regards improvisation not as a problem-solving method but a problem-positing approach: as a musical practice that involves children and young people in the experiential pursuit of freedom and the understanding of the "ought" of imagining ways forward, countering monologue by allowing the flourishing of a polyphony of unmerged voices, constituting a distinctive chronotope which provides the possibility of an enactment of everyday living in musical terms. The decision to improvise marks the initiation of a search for a public musical space which is marked by the absence of fear, where exploration of musical freedom is pursued, where everything might happen but not anything goes. (shrink)

Part I. Ireland and beyond. SacrumProfanum : mapping cultural damage through music ; Second glance at Ted Hughes's Crow : transcendence interrupted ; Joycean aesthetics and mythic imagination in the music of Frank Corcoran ; 'In exile anyway' : Jonathan Creasy interviews Benjamin Dwyer ; ...eleven reflections on Beckett, music and silence ; 'Insight - deeper' : Benjamin Dwyer interviews Kevin Volans ; Umbilical : the story of Oedipus, the story of Jocasta -- Part II. Beyond Ireland. (...) 'O master of secret configurations' : reflections on the Adorno-Berg correspondence ; Laughing at the chaos : György Ligeti (1923-2006) ; Teleology or transcendence? : perspectives on Ligeti's collusion with automatism ; '...a gentle kind of political' : Benjamin Dwyer interviews George Crumb and David Starobin ; Leonard Bernstein : reflections on a centenary ; 'Dios los cría' : Barry Guy and Maya Homburger ; Barry Guy's Time passing ; 'We are using who we are' : Benjamin Dwyer interviews Mats Gustafsson ; Toward a transcendental philosophy of improvisation. (shrink)

This essay presents an approach to understanding improvised music, finding in the work of certain outstanding jazz musicians an emblem of Ralph Waldo Emerson's notion of self-trust and of Stanley Cavell's notion of moral perfectionism. The essay critiques standard efforts to interpret improvised solos as though they were composed, contrasting that approach to one that treats the procedures of improvisation as derived from our everyday actions. It notes several levels of correspondence between our interest in jazz improvisations and (...) the particular demands of Emerson's writing, and ends by considering how exemplary moments of instruction in jazz are expressive of Emersonian self-trust. (shrink)

In diesem Buch werden die wichtigsten musikphilosophischen Grundbegriffe neu definiert. Der Autor entwickelt ein kohärentes Begriffssystem, das die präzise Beschreibung musikalischer Phänomene ermöglicht. Die Untersuchung kulminiert in einer ausdifferenzierten Theorie der musikalischen Improvisation, die deren Erscheinungsformen zum ersten Mal in ihrer Vielgestaltigkeit umfassend charakterisiert und in ihrem systematischen Zusammenhang erläutert.

In his book Theorien (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2009) Martin Seel presents a philosophical and literary experiment in which he desists from introducing a single grand theory in favour of offering a number of smaller theories. In an aphoristic manner these personal and poetic observations are linked to rigorous reflections on the classical themes of human selfunderstanding: happiness and morality, failure and beauty, sickness and death, sense and understanding, knowledge and freedom, religion and music. Staying clear of disciplinary (...) formations, the author shuffles the cards of epistemology, ethics and aesthetics in order to address philosophy as a whole without extinguishing its fire within the confines of a systematic edifice. This collection of shortcuts can be read from beginning to end, or backwards, or starting in the middle; as a reflection on thinking; a play with the voices of passion; a variation on foundations and pitfalls of action; a defence of the indeterminate in all that is determinate; as a fragment of a prosaic confession. These heterogeneous gestures unfold an improvised text that tracks the uncertainties of life and of writing. This text is an excerpt from the book, published in Die Zeit no. 37, September, 2009. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 11.2 (2003) 200-202 [Access article in PDF] Bennett Reimer, A Philosophy of Music Education:advancing the Vision, Third Edition. (upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice In his third and greatly revised edition of A Philosophy of Music Education, Bennett Reimer fulfills the promise of his subtitle, Advancing the Vision. While incorporating essentials and a few passages of his previous (...) edition, its thrust is to present and argue for a new theory of musical intelligences. Here Reimer is pushing into a theoretical frontier, one that he sees as crucially relevant to the music education concerns that have so long been at the heart of his thinking.So although this is a new edition, third time around, of a classic in the field of philosophy of music education by one of its "elder statespersons," it is in many ways a new book. Reimer has never been a thinker to rest on his past achievements. He demonstrates here his ongoing curiosity about issues he has been wrestling with for decades. He engages in debate (as sympathetically as possible) with others who are also forging new ideas. Interacting with their ideas and his own former ones, he generates new ways of thinking about what is involved in musical composing, performing, listening, and theorizing. He uses all this as ground for challenging students and teachers of music to reflect on their own philosophical or pre-philosophical assumptions, their learning and teaching practices, and their [End Page 200] opportunities to make music even more meaningful in their lives and the lives of others. All this is informed by his evident (without his ever making an overt claim for it) love of music, love of philosophizing about music and music education, and his love of teaching about music. I will comment here on just some of the many notable features of the new edition.Reimer announces his approach as synergistic—that is, looking for areas of agreement beneath the surface of what seem to be radically opposing positions (between absolutism and relativism concerning musical value, for instance). What is especially noteworthy is that he demonstrates this moderation throughout his book. This does not lead to his being uncritical; in fact, he is highly critical of some stances and in Chapter 1 makes a devastating attack on postmodernism in music education. But generally he seeks to find what is worthwhile in the views of others and what he can assimilate from their thinking.While valuing musical performance and especially the successful record on teaching performance in American schools, Reimer believes that music education should have much wider concerns: to provide the groundwork for students interested in composing, conducting, improvising, arranging, reviewing, theorizing, and above all listening. Listening, he persuasively argues, is the core skill for all the other activities or roles, and it is also the skill probably most useful in the long run for the greatest number of students. Few, after all, will go on to become professional performers or music creators in some other role, and not many will even become highly competent performing amateurs. But almost everyone can develop some skills in active listening, and they deserve the attention in music education that has been mostly lacking. In the program Reimer advocates, the largest potential student population will become (in his aptly chosen term) aficionados—intelligent, discriminatory listeners. Some of this is attended to in colleges and universities, but by then the opportunity for many has passed.Building on Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, Reimer points out the limitations of analysis in terms of simply one musical intelligence. The abilities needed for musical activities are not all the same, even though they have the common requirement of listening skill. The notion of multiple musical intelligences (specifically composing, performing, improvising, listening, music theory, musicology, and music teaching) provides a rich basis and suggests new possible methods for broadening music education at all school levels. It also indicates a worthwhile area both for future research and for application beyond the field of music. Education, Reimer says, should be thought of... (shrink)

Over the last few decades, the notion of improvisation has enriched and dynamized research on traditional philosophies of music, theatre, dance, poetry, and even visual art. This Handbook offers readers an authoritative collection of accessible articles on the philosophy of improvisation, synthesizing and explaining various subjects and issues from the growing wave of journal articles and monographs in the field. Its 48 chapters, written specifically for this volume by an international team of scholars, are accessible for (...) students and researchers alike. The volume is organized into four main sections: I. Art and Improvisation: Theoretical Perspectives II. Art and Improvisation: Aesthetic, Ethical, and Political Perspectives III. Improvisation in Musical Practices IV. Improvisation in the Visual, Narrative, Dramatic, and Interactive Arts Key Features: Treats improvisation not only as a stylistic feature, but also as an aesthetic property of artworks and performances as well as a core element of artistic creativity. Spells out multiple aspects of the concept of improvisation, emphasizing its relevance in understanding the nature of art. Covers improvisation in a wide spectrum of artistic domains, including unexpected ones such as literature, visual arts, games, and cooking. Addresses key questions, like: - How can improvisation be defined and what is its role in different art forms? - Can improvisation be perceived as such, and how can it be aesthetically evaluated? - What is the relationship between improvisation and notions such as action, composition, expressivity, and authenticity? - What is the ethical and political significance of improvisation? (shrink)

To improvise together for the pure curiosity, joy, and beauty of it constitutes a central but often neglected ability of human beings. Integrating pragmatic, practical, and technical skills with conceptual understanding, improvisation is adaptive and collaborative. It seems made to counter the challenges of living in a fleeting present, unconstrained by physical and historical boundaries, and very likely has deep evolutionary roots. I present an account of joint improvisation in the performative arts based in reviews of empirical research (...) in the cognitive sciences, phenomenology, neuroscience, and philosophy, using examples from modern dance and jazz music. The account may be used for generating cross-disciplinary hypotheses about improvisation for investigation within a multitude of fields and is meant to encourage interdisciplinary work and collaboration between practitioners and academic researchers. The major goal is to elucidate the interaction dynamics that underlies joint improvisation by considering the variety of processes that support sensorimotor, experiential, emotional, meta-cognitive, and collaborative forms of interaction and lead to the coordination and synchronization of behavior. I claim that improvisation is an intelligent cognitive skill associated with meta-awareness, open to monitoring and control. It involves both automatized and flexible behavior and can occur without conscious awareness. Improvising in principle is independent of verbal language and higher-order thought, but nevertheless profits from the presence of multiple converging processes. (shrink)

Discussions surrounding music and ethical responsibility bring to mind arguments about legal ownership and purchase. Yet the many ways in which we experience music with others are usually overlooked. Musical experience and practice always involve relationships with other people, which can place limitations on how we listen to and act upon music. In Music and Ethical Responsibility, Jeff Warren challenges current approaches to music and ethics, drawing upon philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's theory that ethics is the (...) responsibilities that arise from our encounters with other people. Warren examines ethical responsibilities in musical experiences including performing other people's music, noise, negotiating musical meaning, and improvisation. Revealing the diverse roles that music plays in the experience of encountering others, Warren argues that musicians, researchers, and listeners should place ethical responsibility at the heart of musical practices. (shrink)

Im Rahmen der folgenden Seiten sollen die Kommunikationsbedingungen im Kontext der Kollektiv-Improvisation genauer analysiert und einem Vergleich mit den Voraussetzungen der idealen Sprechsituation von Habermas unterzogen werden. Hinleitend dazu erfolgt zum Einstieg eine Darstellung jener Ausgangsbedingungen, welche die Methode der kollektiven Improvisation von herkömmlichen musikalischen Verfahren unterscheidet. Zu diesem Zweck werden neben einer kurzen Erläuterung der bereits im vorangegangenen Kapitel ausführlich diskutierten Ausgangsbedingungen u.a. Ansätze aus der Musiktherapie herangezogen, die sowohl soziale als auch politische Faktoren mit einbeziehen. Im (...) Anschluss daran sollen mittels einer systemtheoretisch orientierten Annäherung, wie sie von Borgo und Goguen vorgenommen wurde, jene Aspekte genauer beleuchtet werden, die Aufschluss über die tatsächlichen Kommunikationsstrukturen und geben. (shrink)

Consciousness has been described as one of the most mysterious things in the universe. Scientists, philosophers, and commentators from a whole range of disciplines can't seem to agree on what it is, generating a sizeable field of contemporary research known as consciousness studies. Following its forebear Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological and Cultural Perspectives, this volume argues that music can provide a valuable route to understanding consciousness, and also that consciousness opens up new perspectives for the study of (...) music. It argues that consciousness extends beyond the brain, and is fundamentally related to selves engaged in the world, culture, and society. The book brings together an interdisciplinary line up of authors covering topics as wide ranging as cognitive psychology, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, philosophy and phenomenology, aesthetics, sociology, ethnography, and performance studies and musical styles from classic to rock, trance to Daoism, jazz to tabla, and deep listening to free improvisation. Music and Consciousness 2 will be fasinating reading for those studying or working in the field of musicology, those researching consciousness as well as cultural theorists, psychologists, and philosophers. (shrink)

Music is a universal human activity. Its evolution and its value as a cognitive resource are starting to come into focus. This chapter endeavors to give readers a clearer sense of the adaptive aspects of music, as well as the underlying cognitive and neural structures. Special attention is given to the important emotional dimensions of music, and an evolutionary argument is made for thinking of music as a prelinguistic embodied form of cognition—a form that is still (...) available to us as contemporary music creators and consumers. (shrink)

Introduction : our political present -- Possibilities for a political future -- Respecting resistance -- Aesthetic perspectives -- Aesthetic pitfalls -- Political perspectives -- Political pitfalls -- Improvising communities.

This article examines parallel challenges and avenues for progress I have observed in my efforts to introduce improvisation in classical music studies, and meditation in music and overall academic settings. Though both processes were once central in their respective knowledge traditions—improvisation in earlier eras of European classical music, meditation and contemplative disciplines in Western philosophy—as well as being globally prominent, they nonetheless occupy marginalised roles in the contemporary academy. Other parallels include the challenges and (...) benefits inherent in the interplay between tradition-specific and trans-traditional engagement, where grounding in a musical lineage such as jazz promotes informed trans-idiomatic musical exploration and synthesis, and grounding in a contemplative lineage provides foundations for navigating the often-turbulent waters of the contemporary spiritual smorgasbord. I argue that a more critical look at integrity of practice, consisting in not only methodologies but also views of consciousness and human development, is key to the future progress of the contemplative studies movement and the contributions it may make to education and society at large. (shrink)

Introduction. The law of the extempore -- The rise and reform of the New York City cabaret laws -- Deconstructive legal improvisation -- The 'wildness' of jazz improvisation -- Demystifying improvisation -- The structure-freedom paradox in law -- Justice as improvisation.

This musical-philosophical study brings something unique to Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of time, interweaving music improvisation, composition, and analysis, plus reformulations of Deleuze's concepts. The author draws on his own work alongside examples from the history of music practice in improvised and experimental musics, ultimately developing a new concept: Rhythmicity.

This essay attempts to address the question, "What makes an improvised jazz solo a maturation of the possibilities of this artform?" It begins by considering the significance of one distinguishable feature of an improvised jazz solo - how it ends - in light of Joseph Kerman's seemingly parallel consideration of the historical development of how classical concertos end. After showing the limits of this comparison, the essay proposes a counter-parallel, between the jazz improviser's attitude toward the solo's end and Ludwig (...) Wittgenstein's attitude toward our (or philosophy's) arriving at the end of justifications. The parallel depends on one's granting that both the improviser and Wittgenstein are, in their distinct ways, doing battle against the recurring human fantasy of the fixity of experience. (shrink)

This is the first volume to mobilize encounters between the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and the rich developments in cultural studies of music and sound. The book takes seriously the intellectual and political challenge that the process philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari poses for previous understandings of music as permanent objects and primarily discursive texts. By elaborating on the concepts of Deleuze and Guattari in innovative ways, the chapters of the book demonstrate how musical (...) and sonic practices and expressions can be reconsidered as instances of becoming, actors in assemblages, and actualizations of virtual tendencies. The collection pushes notions of music and sound beyond such long-term paradigms as identity thinking, the privileging of signification, and the centrality of the human subject. The chapters of the volume bring a range of new topics and methodological approaches in contact with Deleuze and Guattari. These span from movement improvisation, jazz and western art music studies, sound and performance art and reality TV talent shows to deaf musicians and indigenous music. The book also highlights such fresh ways of doing analysis and shaping the methodological tools of music and sound studies that are enabled by Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy. Their philosophy, too, gains renewed capacities and potential when responding to ethnographic, cultural, ethnomusicological, participatory, aesthetic, new materialist, feminist and queer perspectives to music and sound. (shrink)

Over the past two centuries Western culture has largely valorized a particular kind of 'good' music--highly serious, wondrously deep, stylistically authentic, heroically created, and strikingly original--and, at the same time, has marginalized music that does not live up to those ideals. In Good Music, John J. Sheinbaum explores these traditional models for valuing music. By engaging examples such as Handel oratorios, Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, jazz improvisations, Bruce Springsteen, and prog rock, he argues that metaphors of (...) perfection do justice to neither the perceived strengths nor the assumed weaknesses of the music in question. Instead, he proposes an alternative model of appreciation where abstract notions of virtue need not dictate our understanding. Good music can, with pride, be playful rather than serious, diverse rather than unified, engaging to both body and mind, in dialogue with manifold styles and genres, and collaborative to the core. We can widen the scope of what music we value and reconsider the conventional rituals surrounding it, while retaining the joys of making music, listening closely, and caring passionately"-- $c Page [4] of cover. (shrink)

The act of drawing a line or uttering a word is often seen as integral to the process of making art. This is especially obvious in music and the visual arts, but applies to literature, performance, and other arts as well. These collected essays, written by scholars from diverse fields, take a historical view of the richness of creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) in order to draw out debates, sometimes implicit and sometimes formally stated, about the production (...) and reproduction of cultural meaning in a period of great change and novelty, between the beginnings of the medieval intellectual tradition and the imprint of the Enlightenment. The authors pose the following questions: Do tradition and creativity conflict with one another, or are they complementary? What are the tensions between composition and live performance? What is the role of the audience in perceiving the object of art? Are such objects fixed or flexible? What about the status of the event? Is the event part of creation, in the sense that it disturbs the still waters of historical continuity? These and other questions build on the foundation of Roland Barthes' concept of Degree Zero, offering new insights into what it means to create"--Back cover. (shrink)

Nearly all listeners consider the subjective aspects of music, such as its emotional tone, to have primary importance. But contemporary philosophers often downplay, ignore, or even deny such aspects of experience. Moreover, traditional philosophies of music try to decontextualize it. Using music as an example, this paper explores the structure of qualitative experience, demonstrating that it is multi-layer emergent, non-compositional, enacted, and situation dependent, among other non-Cartesian properties. Our explanations draw on recent work in cognitive science, including (...) blending, image schemas, and sensory memory, as well as on phenomenology. A hierarchical structure transformation based complexity theory is applied to obtain a non-linear dynamical systems explanation of qualia and emotion that respects phenomenological insights about time, including retention and protention. The complexity measure provides both a metric structure and a potential function, on spaces of pieces that are constructed using given elements and transformations, with weights that reflect their cognitive difficulty. However, the approach is not reductionist; using improvisation and the evolution of musical notation as data, we argue that situatedness, especially enactment and social context, are key aspects of musical consciousness. (shrink)

The aesthetics of imperfection emphasises spontaneity, disruption, process and energy over formal perfection and is often ignored by many commentators or seen only in improvisation. This comprehensive collection is the first time imperfection has been explored across all kinds of musical performance, whether improvisation or interpretation of compositions. Covering music, visual art, dance, comedy, architecture and design, it addresses the meaning, experience, and value of improvisation and spontaneous creation across different artistic media. A distinctive feature of (...) the volume is that it brings together contributions from theoreticians and practitioners, presenting a wider range of perspectives on the issues involved. Contributors look at performance and practice across Western and non-Western musical, artistic and craft forms. Composers and non-performing artists offer a perspective on what is 'imperfect' or improvisatory within their work, contributing further dimensions to the discourse. The Aesthetics of Imperfection in Music and the Arts features 39 chapters organised into eight sections and written by a diverse group of scholars and performers. They consider divergent definitions of aesthetics, employing both 18th-century philosophy and more recent socially and historically situated conceptions making this an essential, up-to-date resource for anyone working on either side of the perfection-imperfection debate. (shrink)

How do our embodied experiences of music shape our analysis, theorizing, and interpretation of musical texts, and our engagement with practices including composing, improvising, listening, and performing? 'Music, Analysis, and the Body: Experiments, Explorations, and Embodiments' is a pioneering essay collection uniting major and emerging scholars to consider how theory and analysis address music's literal and figurative bodies. The essayists offer critical overviews of different theoretical approaches to music analysis and embodiment, then test and demonstrate their (...) ideas in specific repertoires. The range of musics analysed is diverse: Western art music sits alongside non-Western repertoires, folk songs, jazz, sound art, audio-visual improvisations, soundtracks, sing-alongs, live events, popular songs, and the musical analysis of non-musical experiences. Topics examined include affect, agency, energetics, feel, gesture, metaphor, mimesis, rehearsal, subjectivity, and the objects of music analysis--as well as acoustic ecology, alterity, class, distraction, excess, political authority, sensoriality, technology, and transcendence. (shrink)

One hundred years after Luigi Russolo's "The Art of Noises," this book exposes a cross-section of the current motivations, activities, thoughts, and reflections of composers, performers, and artists who work with noise in all of its many forms. The book's focus is the practice of noise and its relationship to music, and in particular the role of noise as musical material--as form, as sound, as notation or interface, as a medium for listening, as provocation, as data. Its contributors are (...) first and foremost practitioners, which inevitably turns attention toward how and why noise is made and its potential role in listening and perceiving. Contributors include Peter Ablinger, Sebastian Berweck, Aaron Cassidy, Marko Ciciliani, Nick Collins, Aaron Einbond, Matthias Haenisch, Alec Hall, Martin Iddon, Bryan Jacobs, Phil Julian, Michael Maierhof, Joan Arnau Pàmies, and James Whitehead (JLIAT). The book also features a collection of short responses to a two-question "interview"--"what is noise (music) to you?" and "why do you make it?"--by some of the leading musicians working with noise today. Their work spans a wide range of artistic practice, including instrumental, vocal, and electronic music; improvisation; notated composition; theater; sound installation; DIY; and software development. Interview subjects include Eryck Abecassis, Franck Bedrossian, Antoine Chessex, Ryan Jordan, Alice Kemp (Germseed), George Lewis, Lasse Marhaug, Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, Diemo Schwarz, Ben Thigpen, Kasper Toeplitz, and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay."--Page 4 of covers. (shrink)

In The Politics of Vibration, cultural theorist Marcus Boon offers both an anthropological and theoretical account of vibrational ontology. Boon focuses on the work of three contemporary musicians-Hindustani classical vocalist Pandit Pran Nath, Swedish drone composer and philosopher Catherine Christer Hennix, and Houston-based hip-hop creator, DJ Screw-each emerging from a different but entangled set of musical traditions or scenes, whose work is ontologically instructive. Written as a series of improvisations on the life and work of these musicians, The Politics of (...) Vibration expands in the direction of considering the vibrational nature of music more generally. Vibration is understood in multiple ways, as a mathematical and a physical concept, as a religious or ontological force, and as a psychological/psychoanalytic determinant of subjectivity. (shrink)

Music is at the centre of what it means to be human – it is the sounds of human bodies and minds moving in creative, story-making ways. We argue that music comes from the way in which knowing bodies (Merleau-Ponty) prospectively explore the environment using habitual 'patterns of action' which we have identified as our innate ‘communicative musicality’. To support our argument, we present short case studies of infant interactions using micro analyses of video and audio recordings to (...) show the timings and shapes of intersubjective vocalisations and body movements of adult and child while they improvise shared narratives of meaning. Following a survey of the history of discoveries of infant abilities, we propose that the gestural narrative structures of voice and body seen as infants communicate with loving caregivers are the building blocks of what become particular cultural instances of the art of music, and of dance, theatre and other temporal arts. Children enter into a musical culture where their innate communicative musicality can be encouraged and strengthened through sensitive, respectful, playful, culturally informed teaching in companionship. The central importance of our abilities for music as part of what sustains our well-being is supported by evidence that communicative musicality strengthens emotions of social resilience to aid recovery from mental stress and illness. Drawing on the experience of the first author as a counsellor, we argue that the strength of one person’s communicative musicality can support the vitality of another’s through the application of skilful techniques that encourage an intimate, supportive, therapeutic, spirited companionship. Turning to brain science, we focus on hemispheric differences and the affective neuroscience of Jaak Panksepp. We emphasise that the psychobiological purpose of our innate musicality grows from the integrated rhythms of energy in the brain for prospective, sensation-seeking affective guidance of vitality of movement. We conclude with a Coda that recalls the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, which built on the work of Heraclitus and Spinoza. This view places the shared experience of sensations of living – our communicative musicality – as inspiration for rules of logic formulated in symbols of language. (shrink)

Regla y tiempo real son las ineludibles entidades entre las que se genera la creación musical. En contra de ciertas idealizaciones que enturbian la comprensión de lo que hacemos cuando hacemos música, no hay --en un extremo del eje-- improvisación ni interpretación que no dependan en mayor o menor medida de un predeterminado marco normativo. Y, en el otro extremo, hasta el más exhaustivo conjunto de instrucciones se implementa siempre en un irrepetible tiempo real, lo que hace de la música (...) un fenómeno solo parcialmente predecible y, por lo tanto, abierto a la improvisación. En consecuencia, lejos de las inclinaciones excepcionalistas tanto de algunos discursos académicos como de ciertos valedores de lo que solemos llamar músicas improvisadas, esta obra señala una relevante continuidad entre distintos modos de hacer música, una continuidad a menudo oscurecida por la desatención o el humo ideológico. Toda interpretación es, pues, constitutivamente improvisativa y, a la vez, dependiente de un marco normativo. Si, finalmente, y en contra del hegemónico platonismo musical, admitimos que "una obra musical no existe sino en el momento de su interpretación", por decirlo en los términos de Vladimir Jankélévitch, parece que debiéramos contemplar sin reparos la posibilidad --por contraintuitiva que parezca-- de que toda obra musical sea forzosamente improvisativa. Estas páginas fascinantes pretenden, desde disciplinas complementarias como la estética, la musicología o la ontología del arte, esclarecer determinados aspectos básicos de nuestras prácticas musicales y responder a una serie de preguntas sobre la tradición, la naturaleza y la interpretación de la obra musical que no solemos hacernos"--Back cover. (shrink)

Ray Brassier's "Unfree Improvisation/Compulsive Freedom" is a terse but insightful discussion of the notion of freedom in improvisation. He argues that we should view freedom not as the determination of an act from outside the causal order, but as the reflective self-determination by action within the causal order. This requires a system that acts in conformity to rules but can represent and modify these rules with implications for its future behaviour. Brassier does not provide a detailed account of (...) how self-determination works in improvisation. His text implies that the act of improvisation involves an encounter between rule-governed rationality and idiomatic patterns or causes but does not specify how such rules operate in music, what their nature is or how the encounter between rules and more rudimentary “pattern-governed” behaviour occurs. I will argue that, in any case, there are no such rules to be had. Instead, claims about what is permissible or implied in musical processes index highly-context sensitive perceptual and affective responses to musical events. I develop this picture in the light of recent accounts of predictive processing and active inference in cognitive science. This account provides an alternate way of expressing Brassier’s remarks on the relationship between music and history in “Unfree Improvisation” one that eschews normative discourse in favour of an ontology of social and biological assemblages, their affects, and the processes they entrain. This adjustment is of more than aesthetic interest. Brassier’s text suggests that the temporality of the improvising act models an insurgent relation to time: specifically, the remorseless temporality explored in his writings on Prometheanism and Radical Enlightenment. I will conclude by using use this analogy to elaborate the idea of a posthuman agency adapted to a hypermodern milieu of self-augmenting technological change. (shrink)

Improvisation informs a vast array of human activity, from creative practices in art, dance, music, and literature to everyday conversation and the relationships to natural and built environments that surround and sustain us. The two volumes of the Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies gather scholarship on improvisation from an immense range of perspectives, with contributions from more than sixty scholars working in architecture, anthropology, art history, computer science, cognitive science, cultural studies, dance, economics, education, ethnomusicology, (...) film, gender studies, history, linguistics, literary theory, musicology, neuroscience, new media, organizational science, performance studies, philosophy, popular music studies, psychology, science and technology studies, sociology, and sound art, among others. (shrink)

Improvisation informs a vast array of human activity, from creative practices in art, dance, music, and literature to everyday conversation and the relationships to natural and built environments that surround and sustain us. The two volumes of the Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies gather scholarship on improvisation from an immense range of perspectives, with contributions from more than sixty scholars working in architecture, anthropology, art history, computer science, cognitive science, cultural studies, dance, economics, education, ethnomusicology, (...) film, gender studies, history, linguistics, literary theory, musicology, neuroscience, new media, organizational science, performance studies, philosophy, popular music studies, psychology, science and technology studies, sociology, and sound art, among others. (shrink)

In Interstitial Soundings, Cynthia R. Nielsen brings music and philosophy into a fruitful and mutually illuminating dialogue. Topics discussed include the following: music's dynamic ontology, performers and improvisers as co-composers, the communal character of music, jazz as hybrid and socially constructed, the sociopolitical import of bebop, Afro-modernism and its strategic deployments, jazz and racialized practices, continuities between Michel Foucault's discussion of self-making and creating one's musical voice, Alasdair MacIntyre on practice, and how one might harmonize MacIntyre's (...) notion of virtue development with Foucauldian resistance strategies. (shrink)