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Motor intentionality and the intentionality of improvisation: a contribution to a phenomenology of musical improvisation

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Abstract

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.

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Notes

  1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence’ in T. Toadvine & L. Lawlor (eds.) The Merleau-Ponty Reader (Northwestern: University Press, 2007b), 247.

  2. To be sure, this paradox is familiar and has been recently addressed by a few authors belonging to the aesthetic field, including Alessandro Bertinetto, ‘Mind the Gap. L’improvvisazione come azione intenzionale’, Itinera, n° 10, (2015), 175–188; ‘Performing Imagination. The Aesthetics of Improvisation’, Klesis, 28, (2013), 62–96; ‘Performing the Unexpected. Improvisation and Artistic Creativity’. Daimon, 57, (2012), 117–135; Clément Canonne (2014). ‘Sur l’Ontologie de l’Improvisation’, in A. Arbo, and M. Ruta (eds.), Ontologie Musicale : Perspectives et Débat (Paris: Hermann), 279–320 ; Mathias Rousselot, 2012. Étude sur l’improvisation musicale. Le témoin de l’instant (Paris: L’Harmattan 2012). On this topic, I refer also to my own work, and specifically to Lucia Angelino, ‘Le movement vécu dans l’improvisation musicale’, in her Quand le geste fait sens, (Milan-Paris: Mimesis-Vrin 2015), 53–73 and Lucia Angelino, Entre voir et tracer. Merleau-Ponty et le mouvement vécu dans l’expérience esthétique, (Milan-Paris : Mimesis-Vrin 2014).

  3. Bratman, Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency, Cambridge, (UK: Cambridge University Press 1999), 5.

  4. Ibidem.

  5. Ibid., 1.

  6. Michael Bratman, Intentions, Plans and Practical Reason. Reprinted in the David Hume Series of Philosophy and Cognitive Science Reissues, (Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications 1999). Originally published by Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

  7. Ibid., 8.

  8. Vladimir Jankélévitch, Liszt Rhapsodie et Improvisation, (Paris, Flammarion 1998). My translation.

  9. Ibid., 121. (my translation).

  10. Vladimir Jankélévitch, Liszt Rhapsodie et Improvisation, 133. (my translation).

  11. We might say, echoing Luigi Pareyson’s analysis of the dynamics of form: “To form means to “make,” but in the sense that you create the way of making, until the process of making. This is making not in a predetermined and imposed way, but in a way that is discovered “in the making.” In this sense, we can say that to form means both “to make” and to ‘know how to make’”, Luigi Pareyson, Esthétique théorie de la formativité, (Paris: Editions Rue D’Ulm/Presses de L’Ecole normale supérieure, 2007) 73. And a few pages later: “The act of forming is essentially an act of trying, since it consists in an inventiveness that creates many different possibilities and is able to find the most suitable one, which is required for the success of the operation itself […],” Ibid. (my translation).

  12. Vladimir Jankélévitch, Liszt Rhapsodie et Improvisation, 123. (my translation).

  13. Ibid, 125. (my translation).

  14. We find expressed here one of the essential concepts of Luigi Pareyson’s aesthetics, the notion of spunto. The spunto is the starting point of a form or thought. It is the guide that follows the form while trying to fulfil itself because it anticipates its accomplishment. It is always born from the meeting between the material and the formative intention of the artist (intentionality), which transforms even the resistance of material into new possibilities and suggestions. As these few lines clearly state: “[…] material resists more so as to suggest and invoke than to hinder and impede, since by becoming material of art, formative intention transforms these moments of resistance into productive starting points (spunti) and happy occasions; the better the artist knows that he has to handle the material he adopts, the more he manages to give it the ductility his purpose requires,” Luigi Pareyson, Esthétique théorie de la formativité, 62. (my translation).

  15. Interview with Enrico Pieranunzi (published online: 30 June 2010) accessible at the following address: http://www.pianosolo.it/intervista-ad-enrico-pieranunzi/.

  16. Vladimir Jankélévitch, Liszt Rhapsodie et Improvisation, 117.

  17. I adopt here H. Bergson’s definition of intellection: “An intellection ‘in search’ of meaning which follows a succession of perceived words to reach their general meaning would be forever confused and wandering. Intellection cannot be honest and certain unless we start from the supposed meaning […] and go in the direction that intelligence must follow,” Henri Bergson, ‘L’effort intellectueli, Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, LIII, (January–June 1902), 14. (my translation).

  18. Vladimir Jankélévitch, Liszt Rhapsodie et Improvisation, 123. (my translation).

  19. Roger Sessions, The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, Listener, (Princeton, New Jersy: Princeton University Press 1971), 46.

  20. Luigi Pareyson, Esthétique théorie de la formativité, 88.

  21. Ibid, 90.

  22. Ibidem.

  23. Beth Preston, A Philosophy of Material Cutlure, (New York & London: Routledge, 2013), 54–55.

  24. Henri Bergson, ‘L’effort intellectuel’, 6. (my translation).

  25. Ibid., 18. (my translation).

  26. Ibid., 17. (my translation).

  27. See for example, Mathias Rousselot, Étude sur l’improvisation musicale. Le témoin de l’instant, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012), 56; J.-F. De Raymond, L’improvisation. Contribution à la philosophie de l’action, (Paris : Vrin, 1980), 65–69.

  28. J.J. Gibson, ‘The Theory of Affordance’, in his Perceiving, Acting and Knowing, ed. by R.E. Shaw e J. Bransford, Hillsdale, N.J., Erlbaum (John Wiley & Sons Inc.. 1997).

  29. Henri Bergson, ‘L’effort intellectuel’, 15. (my translation).

  30. Mark Johnson, The Body in The Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1987), XIV.

  31. It would also seem appropriate to refer to Emile Benveniste’s analysis (Problèmes de linguistique générale, vol. 1, Paris, Gallimard, 1996, p. 327), picked up by Henri Maldiney (‘L’esthétique des rythmes’ in his Regard, Parole, Espace, Lausanne, Editions l’Âge d’homme, 1973, 155–156, and 157), on Greek ruthmos, which means precisely form, as does skêma, but with a slightly different meaning. While skêma is fixed, accomplished, still form, ruthmos is form in the instant in which it is taken up by something in movement, mobile, fluid, becoming: improvised, instantaneous, changing form, or as Maldiney would say, form which is not but which exists insofar as it is the rhythm itself of the vibrant matter that it arranges.

  32. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 95.

  33. Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, (Kessinger Publishing 2003).

  34. Ibid., 4–5.

  35. Ibid., 18.

  36. Ibid., 5.

  37. G.E.M, Anscombe, Intention, (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2000) §1, 1 sq.

  38. J. Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

  39. Michael Bratman, Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reason. Reprinted in The David Hume Series of Philosophy and Cognitive Science Reissues. (Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 1999). Originally published by Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

  40. Miles Brand, ‘Intentional Action and Plans’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume 10, (1986) 213–230.

  41. Alfred R. Mele, Springs of Action: Understanding Intentional Behavior. (Oxford: UK: Oxford University Press, 1992).

  42. Mathias Rousselot, Étude sur l’improvisation musicale. Le témoin de l’instant, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012), 40–41.

  43. Elizabeth Pacherie, ‘La dynamiaue des intentions’, Dialogue, XLII, 3, (2003), p. 447–480.

  44. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, (London & New York: Routledge Classics, 2007a, b), 127.

  45. Ibidem.

  46. Ibidem.

  47. Charles Rosen, Piano Notes, (New York: The Free Press, 2002), 17–18.

  48. Keith Jarrett, Il mio desiderio feroce. Conversazioni con Kunihiko Yamashita, (Roma: Edizioni Socrates, 1994), 39. (my translation).

  49. Enrico Pieranunzi, notes de pochette de Trasnoche (sound recording, 2002). (my translation).

  50. Roger Sessions, The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, Listener, Princeton, (New Jersy: Princeton University Press 1971), 58.

  51. Vladimir Vladimir Jankélévitch, De la musique au silence. Tome V. Liszt et la rhapsodie. Essai sur la virtuosité, (Paris: Plon, 1989).

  52. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. (trans: Colin Smith), (London & New York: Routledge, 2007a).

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  1. Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS), Aarhus University, DK-8000, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Lucia Angelino

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Correspondence to Lucia Angelino.

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This paper represents the beginning of a Marie Curie co-funded project I am dealing with at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS), Aarhus University. Its core idea originated from a talk given at the 53th annual Meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, hosted by Loyola University & Tulane University, New Orleans.

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Angelino, L. Motor intentionality and the intentionality of improvisation: a contribution to a phenomenology of musical improvisation. Cont Philos Rev 52, 203–224 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-018-9452-x

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