Abstract Expressionism and Free Improvisation Author(S): Matthew Sansom Source: Leonardo Music Journal, Vol
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Imaging Music: Abstract Expressionism and Free Improvisation Author(s): Matthew Sansom Source: Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 11, Not Necessarily "English Music": Britain's Second Golden Age, (2001), pp. 29-34 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1513424 Accessed: 23/07/2008 15:55 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress. 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For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Imaging Music: Abstract Expressionism and Free Improvisation ABSTRACT MatthewSansom The authordefines free im- provisation,a form of music-mak- ingthat first emerged in the 1960swith U.K. composers and groupssuch as Cardew,Bailey, AMMand the Spontaneous Music Ensemble.The approach here considersfree improvisation as " ree improvisation"is the term most often bre-the pursuit of the "illusory creativeactivity, encompassing its used to describe the music and/or form of music-making goal of total organisation" [4]- artisticagenda on the one hand most associated with the likes of Cornelius reached a point of exhaustion for andthe process-based dynamic of immediately onthe other. After and Derek and such as AMM and the An itsproduction Cardew Bailey groups many composers. increasing thehistorical location of sources the considering Spontaneous Music Ensemble. The form first emerged during variety challenged of freeimprovisation within West- the 1960s; it is now widely practiced by numerous artists modernist attempt to derive a ernmusic history, the article ex- throughout many countries and has become (perhaps some- common musical language from ploresfree improvisation as analo- what a in its own with associated the principles of serialism. A cen- gouswith Abstract Expressionist ironically) genre right, art.This enablesa record aficionados and tral factor within these comparison labels, media, significant artists, per- developing fullerunderstanding of the formance rituals. In seeking a definition of free improvisation, responses to integral serialism was activity'sconceptual basis and the and given its oft-cited ephemeral and transient status, the ap- the role of indeterminacy. The ex- creativeprocess it engenders. proach taken here considers free improvisation as creative ac- cessively complex notation of se- tivity, encompassing its artistic agenda on the one hand and rial compositions led to the use of the process-based dynamic of its production on the other. The approximate durations and pro- article opens with an exposition of the historical location of portional notation (for example Stockhausen's Zeitmasse free improvisation within Western music history. Following [1956] and Berio's Sequenza[1958]) and to an awareness of this, and as a means of developing a fuller understanding of the illogicality in using conventional notation to produce re- the activity's conceptual basis and processes, free improvisa- sults that could only be approximate. In Europe, indetermi- tion is explored as analogous with Abstract Expressionist art. nacy was initially applied only to time, and it was not until the 1960s that it would be used with the parameters of pitch, form and means. These changes inevitably led to an openness to- INDE'ERMINACY wards the role of notation and the development of graphic Free improvisation has its roots in the developments of jazz scores and a shift by performers towards a more improvisa- on the one hand and the experimental classical music of both tional role. Gy6rgy Ligeti, who along with Iannis Xenakis America and Europe on the other. During the late 1950s and openly attacked serialism [5], developed the idea that a work's early 1960s, a move towards a freer style of jazz improvisation formal shape is more dependent upon matters of texture and (as exemplified in the playing of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Tay- timbre than harmony, counterpoint or thematic working (for lor and, later, John Coltrane) developed in contrast to the example, in Atmosphresfor orchestra [1961] and Voluminafor more idiomatic and established styles of Bebop and Hard- organ [1961-1962]). The implementation of large-scale forms Bop [1]. Through the development and questioning of the of timbral control and associated performance techniques conventions of jazz's harmonic and metrical patterns and its (such as also in Stockhausen's Carre [1959-1960] and structural principles, a variety of ideas and approaches Penderecki's Threnos [1960]) further contributed to the emerged. As EkkehardJost comments, free jazz led to a het- changing roles of notation and performance. erogeneity of personal and group styles with new ways of ap- In contrast to, but in tandem with, the collapse in Europe proaching issues of instrumental technique, ensemble play- of the modernist linear development towards increasing con- ing and formal organization [2]. In retrospect, Steve Lacy trol, American music had already begun undergoing a radical says of these changes, rethinking. Starting in 1950, John Cage's applications of Zen aimed to rid his of intention and to When reached"hard there was no more. philosophy compositions you bop" mysteryany let sounds be "themselves." used chance It waslike-mechanical-some kindof gymnastics.The patterns simply Cage opera- are well knownand everybodyis playingthem.... It got so that tions (indeterminacy being applied to all parameters, in con- everybodyknew what was going to happen and, sure enough, trast to its gradual application in Europe) to derive the con- that'swhat happened.... But when Ornettehit the scene, that tent of as he to achieve "a musical the end of He the theories.I remember compositions sought was theories. destroyed the of which is free of individual taste at that time he said, "Well, havea certain composition continuity verycarefully, youjust and and also of which is free of the lit- amountof space and you put whatyou wantin it" [3]. memory (psychology) erature and 'traditions' of the art" [6]. Cage, along with Similarly,developments in "art"music during this era articu- Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and Christian Wolff, initiated lated a response to the issues raised by a certain rigidity within compositional technique. It is clear that during the 1950s, in- Matthew Sansom, Department of Music, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, NEI 7RU, U.K E-mail: <[email protected]>. creasing control and organization of pitch, rhythm and tim- ? 2001 ISAST LEONARDO MUSICJOURNAL, Vol. 11, pp. 29-34, 2001 29 changes of attitude toward: the percep- score Treatise(1963-1967) that "Psycho- sues for contemporary music-new tion of what can be experienced as mu- logically the existence of Treatiseis fully ideas for coordination, performance sically significant, be it environmental explained by the situation of the com- problems, conducting techniques and sound, "silence" and/or other chance poser who is not in a position to make instrumental discoveries. Additionally, sound events; the possibilities of graphic music" [8]. Cardew further explored the from the early 1960s, the international notation (pre-empting many develop- acute questioning of the processes of Fluxus movement further conflated the ments in Europe); and the role of the composition and performance that such traditional categories associated with composer in relation to ideas of music large-scale indeterminacy provoked in musical practice [15]. as performance rather than prescrip- joining the experimental improvising Returning to England, mention should tion, as a unique event or "happening" (or "free improvisation") group AMM in also be made of Gavin Bryars (later to rather than a permanent "work." 1966. Later he wrote, work with Cage and Cardew), Tony Oxley there was a of cross- and Derek who also worked within Inevitably degree Written are fired off into Bailey, fertilization between and the compositions the field of this Europe the future; even if never performed, improvisation during pe- U.S.A. during the 1950s, but America's the writingremains as a point of refer- riod: between 1963 and 1966, their musi- weaker demands of history and tradition, ence. Improvisationis in the present, cal explorations shifted from more obvi- with artistic vision, estab- its effects maylive on in the solos of the idiomatic to coupled Cage's both active and ously jazz freely improvised lished its in more participants, passive music "non-idiomatic place experimental ap- (i.e. audience), but in its concrete (or improvisation," proaches to music. Philosophical goals form it is gone forever from the mo- to use Bailey's term [16]). fundamentally