Abstract

Philosophy and music can achieve the same thing by different means. This paper considers three types of improvisation as steps in an investigation on freedom in musical improvisation, as well as on its potential liberation of life. As an alternative to the well-known concepts of “rapid” or “instant composing”, here musical improvisation is conceived of as the production of a present – in which life is present to itself – through composition-for-improvisation and as a kind of poetic work designed to give one a “voice” of one’s own.