Imaging : Abstract and 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.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

http://www.jstor.org Imaging Music: and Free Improvisation

ABSTRACT

MatthewSansom The authordefines free im- provisation,a form of music-mak- ingthat first emerged in the 1960swith U.K. and groupssuch as Cardew,Bailey, AMMand the Spontaneous Music .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 . 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 , 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 scores and a shift by performers towards a more improvisa- on the one hand and the experimental of both tional role. Gy6rgy Ligeti, who along with America and Europe on the other. During the late and openly attacked serialism [5], developed the idea that a work's early 1960s, a move towards a freer style of formal shape is more dependent upon matters of texture and (as exemplified in the playing of , Cecil Tay- than , or thematic working (for lor and, later, ) developed in contrast to the example, in Atmosphresfor orchestra [1961] and Voluminafor more idiomatic and established styles of 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 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, 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, trol, American music had already begun undergoing a radical says of these changes, rethinking. Starting in 1950, '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 - 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- , 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: . creasing control and organization of pitch, 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, "" 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 movement further conflated the ments in Europe); and the role of the composition and performance that such traditional categories associated with 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 "" (or "free improvisation") group AMM in also be made of (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 different from those of ment that it occurs, nor did it have any This contextualization reveals free im- the developmental and rationalist Euro- previousexistence before the moment provisation as a specific and definable tradition new that it occurred,so neither is there any an awareness of music pean generated possibili- historicalreference available[9]. activity,displaying ties of musical thought. In distinguishing as a unique sound event; acknowledging between the "avant-garde"and "experi- In Cardew's work with AMM, the in- and exploring the role and significance mental," the English composer Michael fluences of serialism and the European of the performer as creator/composer Nyman wrote in the early 1970s, tradition, American indeterminacy and without the dictates of notation, graphic or the use of are and the experimental tradition and jazz otherwise; incorporating Experimental composers by the use of ele- large not concerned with prescribinga came together to form a "radically dif- chance, encouraging defined time-object whose materials, ferent kind of music-making" [10]. Al- ments conscious and deliberate are structuringand relationships calcu- though the improvised music that control; and exhibiting an openness to lated and arrangedin advance,but are from this called the of sounds-both as an ex- more excited the of outlin- emerged group-once totality by prospect in with ing a situationin which sounds may oc- "John Cage jazz" [11]-reflected many ploratory approach conjunction cur, a process of generating action Cageian ideals, it differed with respect experimental instrumental techniques (sounding or otherwise), a field delin- to emotional intent, impact and re- and in relation to environmental con- eated certain "rules" by compositional sponse. For Cage, the absence of such text (not only aurally but also in other [7]. qualities informed his aesthetic stance fields of awareness). The notion that a certain process and compositional process, whereas action has close affini- AMM accepted emotion in music as a might generate MUSIC AND THE ties with free improvisation and will be possible dimension for meaning to in- albeit free im- returned to; at this point, however, it is habit [12]. Also, although indetermi- Having located, briefly, within Western music pertinent to provide some detail about nacy, or rather each musician's choice to provisation history, I now consider its relation to certain his- the English composer and contempo- incorporate chance events, was central and as- rary of Nyman, . to their music, it was wholly different torical, conceptual procedural from the compositional indeterminacy pects of the visual arts during the twenti- of such works as Stockhausen's Aus den eth century. It should be noted that this RADICALLY DIFFERENT sieben Tag (1968). As Eddie Pr6vost, a connection with the visual arts has a his- MUSIC-MAKING longtime member of AMM, wrote, torical and explicitly practical root in Cardew's early works are serial composi- "AMM differed from all such projects much of the work carried out in the art tions (two string trios [1955-1956] and because it denied all external authority schools of Great Britain at the end of the three [1955-1958]), but and resisted attempts to impose their 1960s and early 1970s [17]. Colleges in after a short period as Stockhausen's as- will upon events" [13]. Leeds, , Liverpool, Falmouth, sistant (1958) and contact with John A final historical point needs to be Portsmouth and elsewhere became Cage and at the Darmstadt made here (with reference to the title of homes for much - composition courses of 1959, he aban- this volume of LMJ) concerning the in- making thanks to visits from composers doned serialism. Composing TwoBooks ternational status of free improvisation and performers such as Cardew, John of Studyfor Pianists (1959)-a work that during the 1960s. Before the formation Tilbury, , Gavin engages the performer intellectually, of AMM, Lukas Foss was working in the Bryars and Christian Wolff [18]. That technically and aesthetically through U.S.A. with his Improvisation Chamber said, I compare here the activity of free notational innovations and complex in- Ensemble. In his 1963 article "The improvisation (in no sense as the unique structions-he began exercising a more Changing Composer-Performer Rela- embodiment of experimental music, but experimental and strongly ideological tionship: A Monologue and a Dialogue" rather as having a key role in the project approach to composition and music that [14], he identified free improvisation as of rethinking music and the subject mat- would lead him to an involvement with one area in which the traditional duality ter of art) with certain approaches evi- freely improvised music. Cardew wrote between composer and performer was dent in the visual arts during the twenti- of his vast and intricately crafted graphic being questioned, raising many new is- eth century. Such a comparison provides

30 Sansom,Imaging Music insight into the nature of free The Freeing of Form: New tach to them, rather than thinking them improvisation's creative dynamics of pro- Procedures up, preparing them and producing duction and its artistic agenda and aes- Breton's first attempts at automatic writ- them. The search is conducted in the thetic basis. Significantly, this approach ing (1919) [21], which share an affinity medium of sound and the musician also helps identify specific aspects of the with Freud's clinical method of free as- himself is at the heart of the experi- creative process in music (an area typi- sociation, came to the attention of artists ment" [25]. As percussionist Frank Perry cally avoided due to traditional categori- Joan Mir6 and Andre Masson. Along has stated, "improvisation has meant the zations and the "splitting-off"of compo- with , they developed new pro- freeing of form that it may more readily sition as a specialist activity). cedures as direct counterparts to auto- accommodate my imagination" [26]. The development of modern abstract matic writing. Masson stated of his tech- There is a shared attitude towards the art provides certain obvious and strong nique that "I begin without an image or possibilities of each medium's material parallels with the musical issues already plan in mind, butjust draw or paint rap- make-up: from the incorporation of considered. The prior destructuring of to- idly according to my impulses. Gradu- found and environmental objects to new nality at the turn of the century can also ally, in the marks I make, I see sugges- ways of using more traditional elements be considered (less helpfully, I would ar- tions of figures or objects. I encourage (for example, in Ernst's use of paint gue) alongside the destructuring of repre- these to emerge, trying to bring out straight from the tube or the unconven- sentation in the visual art of the same pe- their implications ...." [22] Masson's tional use of a ). riod. Abstraction dealt exclusively with interest was in the point at which a line During the years that followed, a art's own intrinsic formal language of was in the process of becomingsomething number of factors influenced the line, tone, color, surface texture and com- else, and he went on to develop the course of , most notably the position; and this new mode of presenta- method of automatic in a series pre-World War II immigrations of the tion demanded a new aesthetic response. of sand . Having roughly European Surrealists to America. Works The origins of, and issues within, these de- spread glue over the , he would by the likes of Ernst and Masson were velopments are central to and throw sand on and shake it off, then use now a direct presence within the Ameri- were a significant influence upon the mu- lines and patches of color to evoke the can . During the 1930s and sic emerging during the 1950s and 1960s. suggested images. 1940s the crisis over art's subject matter This is especially so in the work of Cage Similarly, Ernst began using materials was an ever-present issue facing the art- and the phenomenon of free improvisa- such as sacking, leaves and thread to ist: the American painter Adolph tion, providing related (but distinct) reso- construct images from an initial frot- Gottlieb said at the time, "the situation lutions to some of the aesthetic and cre- tage. Frottage was used as a means of was so bad I know I felt free to try any- ative raised the no matter how absurd it seemed" problems by destructuring all conscious mental thing, of art's matter" excluding guid- As with the "subject [19]. ance (of reason,taste, morals), reducing [27]. Surrealism, emerging Throughout the first half of the twen- to the extreme the active part of that aesthetic emphasized the artist's capac- tieth century, a number of artistic move- one whomwe have called up to now the ity for self-expression and rejected the ments new forms, "author"of the work, the procedure is of the intellect, for- developed procedures to be the exact of supremacy carrying and theories of art. It is in the ideas and revealed equivalent ward the well-established ideal that thatwhich is alreadyknown by the term of the Surrealist movement maximum would practices automaticwriting [23]. spontaneity express that the most significant parallels be- the deepest levels of being. Art func- tween improvisation and Abstract Ex- Again, the significance of the proce- tioned as a form of self-realization pressionism have their origin. Surreal- dures employed by the Surrealists was "through which they [artists] could re- ism, which arose in from the revealed when Mir6 wrote: "I begin deem their alienation from society and dwindling movement with its cyni- painting, and as I paint the picture be- from the given aesthetic tradition" [28]. cism towards bourgeois rationalism and gins to assert itself, or suggest itself, un- With this came a new emphasis on the its nihilistic outlook, took onboard the der my brush. The form becomes a sign "act of painting." Appropriating the no- ideas of Freud and the unconscious as a for a woman or a bird as I work. The first tion of pure intention within the activity means of liberating the imagination stage is free, unconscious...." [24] of mark-making (a key interest being from what they believed to be the crip- Surrealism's fixation with dream im- Eastern art and in particular Chinese pling effects of logic and reason. With agery and the use of "automatic" meth- calligraphy [29]), artists emphasized little regard for Freud's models, the Sur- ods of working established the signifi- the qualities existing within the activity realists sought to break the barrier be- cance of the unconscious, both as a of painting-its "happening." Other in- tween consciousness and the uncon- present force in everyday life and more fluences included the drawings of chil- scious, maintained as they saw it only for importantly as a source of direction in dren and psychotics, following the idea the sake of order and control, through artistic production. These procedures, that an over-developed conscious mind dreams and automatic writing. The fol- along with the use of unusual materials, could hinder the spontaneous expres- lowing conclusive definition is from the discouraged deliberate control and en- sion of the imagination [30]. first written by the couraged the emergence of more un- poet Andre Breton in 1924: "SURREAL- conscious imagery. Such factors provide Material Facture and Form ISM, noun. Pure psychic automatism by significant similarities with the proce- The term Abstract Expressionism, like which it is intended to express, either dures of free improvisation, and the pre- most such classifications, covers the verbally or in writing, the true function vious descriptions of automatic painting work of a number of artists from differ- of thought. Thought dictated in the ab- are strongly evocative of the processes of ent countries over several years. The Ox- sence of all control exerted by reason, free improvisation. A description by ford Companionto Art states, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoc- Cardew highlights this: "Weare searching Though the diversity of the work of cupations" [20]. for sounds and for the responses that at- these artists makes it less susceptible

Sansom, Imaging Music 31 than most schools to be confined The spontaneous emergence of forms velopment of strategies and techniques within any general formula, the es- the free of is that movement from sence of Abstract through handling paint encouraged away Expressionism may the in which conventional and aesthetic perhaps be summed up as imageless paralleled musically by way teachings and anti-formpainting, improvisatory, formal, idiomatic and/or traditionally concerns. Eddie Pr(vost explicitly ac- dynamic, energetic, and free in tech- functional elements occur in freely im- knowledges these influences upon the to stimulate vision nique, tending music. Free as a musicians of AMM, in particular Chi- rather than establishedconven- provised improvisation, gratify nese [42]. In visual arts, tions of good taste [31]. "language spontaneously developed calligraphy amongst the players and between players , for example, was devoted Equivalents can be observed in the and listeners" [36], has no stylistic or idi- to the study of East Asian painting-vis- way formal qualities of structured har- omatic commitment to fulfill and yet iting China and Japan, living in a Zen mony, , rhythm, etc. exist within maintains the potential to reveal a par- monastery for a month and converting freely improvised music. The inevitable ticular musician's history (be it psychi- to the Baha'i World Faith-as a means presence of such qualities is secondary cal, emotional, physical or musical). The of liberating his aesthetic development. to the exploratory processes emphasized improvising guitarist holds The directness and presence of the in the act of music's creation. Formal that while there is no prescribed idiom- mark-making in the work of artists such qualities are experienced and evaluated atic sound to free improvisation, its char- as and share as emergent (unconscious) and arbi- acteristics are established by the sonic- a similar sense of intention and ener- trary (chance) elements (i.e. based on musical identity of the person playing getic force present in the immediacy the quality and nature of the experience [37]. The intensity of the interactions and interactions of much freely impro- over-and-above an intellectual justifica- between the artist and medium and the vised music. True to their Surrealist ori- tion based on historic references and/ dynamic of emergent qualities represent gins, new techniques (classically, or specific idiomatic context), in much the central focus of both art forms [38]. Pollock's "drip" method) were devel- the same way as the paintings of Abstract Structurally, freely improvised music is oped to increase the subtlety of re- Expressionism, whether , characterized by the exploration of the sponse to the artist's intuitive interac- ex- color-field painting, gestural/lyrical relationships between order and disor- tions with the canvas. Furthermore, pressionism, matter painting, art brut, der, with differences of emphasis exist- alternative materials were commonly etc. The emphasis upon process and ing from performer to performer and incorporated, such as burlap in the material qualities enabled by "freedom" from group to group: it is inevitable that work of Alberto Burri and Masson's use from the image and more (traditionally) references to and occurrences of more of sand and glue referred to above. formal concerns is paralleled by "free- idiomatic, familiar and/or repetitive ma- Likewise, the use of musical instru- dom" from functional harmony and/or terial will be viewed with a variety of atti- ments in unconventional ways and traditional modes of compositional con- tudes and aesthetic concerns [39]. Con- more unusual sound sources (from struction, resulting in a direct engage- tinuing the analogy, within Abstract children's toys to homemade electronic ment with the medium of sound and the Expressionist art there exists a varying devices) has become established means processes of musical creation. importance placed upon the role of the of sound-production in freely impro- of The legacy and significance Surreal- image. For example, the English painter vised music. ism within AbstractExpressionism contin- Francis Bacon, who employed trance-like Such approaches have expanded the ued with the emphasis placed upon im- states to create his work, came to criticize available vocabulary of sounds and tex- of the unconscious the of ages [32], value Pollock for failing to return to and work tural possibilities and help to relax con- for "psychicautomatism," a distrust overly with the images discovered through scious control, diminishing the role of polished technique and a pronounced chance procedures and created by the learned responses/processes. This ap- taste for and horror disintegration [33]. paint itself [40]. One can clearly observe proach is exemplified by the use of the Methods of that facilitated production such differences of approach in the electric flat on its back, aug- of the relaxation conscious control re- paintings of Pollock and Bacon, and, as a mented with various pieces of electron- mained a central concern. Sentiments further example, across the oeuvre of ics, metal, plastic and wood [43]. similar to Masson's fascination with the . Significantly, such Prevost writes that this style of guitar and transformation of metamorphosis comparisons and examples reveal a dy- playing (that of AMM's spe- within the images painting process are namic tension existing between what has cifically) "enable[s] certain 'actions' to both Pollock and expressed by Jackson been described by (and explored in the be carried out, to let dribbles of sound . Pollock said, work of) Anton Ehrenzweig as articulate meander, collect in drowning pools of and inarticulate volume or run off the into con- When I am painting, I have a general (conscious) (uncon- edges notion as to whatI am about. I cancon- scious) form [41]. gealed silence" [44]. The comparison trol the flow of the paint: there is no with Pollock's "action painting" is both accident.... I no have fearsabout mak- obvious and intentional [45]. The the THE AESTHETICS pri- ing changes,destroying image, etc., in both visual and aural because the painting has a life of its OF PRESENCE mary purpose own. I try to let it come through [34]. contexts is the transcendence of con- The influence of the Orient has already ventional physical, artistic and cultural Motherwell thought of the process of been identified in relation to art his- boundaries imposed by traditional ma- painting as "an adventure, without pre- tory, Cage's music and free improvisa- terials/instruments and procedures. conceived ideas, on the part of persons tion. The philosophy of Zen Buddhism, This emphasis is also reflected in the of intelligence, sensibility and passion. the aesthetic of Chinese poetry (in previously mentioned fascination with Fidelity to what occurs between oneself which the quality of the brush-stroke is "" and the dislike of techni- and the canvas, no matter how unex- of equal importance to literary con- cal virtuosity. In relation to this, pected, becomes central" [35]. tent) and the I Ching all aided the de- Dubuffet's comment that he

32 Sansom, Imaging Music 9. Cornelius TreatiseHandbook hold[s] to be useless all those types of "musical tradition" provides the musical Cardew, (London: skill and those (such as Edition Peters, 1971) p. xvii. acquired gifts parallel to these developments. Cage's we are used to finding in the works of 10. Edwin No Sound Is Innocent:AMM and Eastern-influenced aesthetics, jazz's Prevost, professional painters) whose sole effect the Practiceof Self-Invention.Meta-Musical Narratives. seems to me to be that of extinguishing struggle with racism and capitalist con- Essays. (Harlow, U.K.: Copula, 1995) p. 9. all spontaneity, switching off and con- trol and reactions to serialism integral 11. The term was used the music and demning the work to inefficiency [46] by contribute to the twentieth century's cen- organizer Victor Schonfield. Prevost [10] p. 12. tral theme of the "content" of enjoys kinship with Cardew's view that redefining 12. Prevost [10] 14. It should be noted that this works of art an p. technical is of no intrinsic through emphasis upon "possible dimension" needs to be understood or mastery in relation to the that fol- value in music Elaborate what can be called material facture. Free perhaps qualified quote (or love). ... lows in the main text, that "AMM. . . denied all ex- forms and a brilliance of draws from these trends technique improvisation ternal authority and resisted attempts to impose conceal a basic inhibition, a reluctance and, along with Abstract Expressionism, their will upon events," a comment obviously di- to directly express love, a fear of self- represents a highly personal and ab- rected against notions of authorial intent and "the exposure [47]. stracted use of its medium artist" but that nevertheless highlights an interest- (approached, ing and significant ambiguity. Art as an expression of the artist's ultimately, as "sound"). 13. Prevost [10] p. 13. alienation from society and the given Cardew's comparison of free improvi- 14. Lukas "The aesthetic (especially important to the sation with composed music views writ- Foss, Changing Composer-Per- ten as historic reference former Relationship: A Monologue and a Dia- Dada and Surrealist movements) led not compositions logue," Perspectivesof New Music 1 (1963) pp. 45-53. to new and new materi- to the music's concrete form; im- only procedures points 15. For a detailed consideration of links on the other has no between als but to new forms. The disorientation provisation, hand, Fluxus and Cardew's "Scratch Orchestra," see of the spectator aided the destruction of such reference to its concrete form [50]. Michael Parsons's article, "The Scratch Orchestra and the Visual Arts," in this issue of conventional ways of understanding the The thesis here is that the paintings of LMJ. world and dealing with experiences ac- Abstract Expressionism can be viewed as 16. Bailey [3] pp. xi-xii. historic reference for cording to preconceived patterns. Im- equivalent points 17. For a detailed discussion of this the reader is, provisation shares a similar strategy of the 1960s genre of "free improvisation." again, referred to Parsons [15] and to Eddie Prevost's "The Arrival Of A New Musical alienation: the to live By virtue of the similarity of processual article, aspiration beyond Aesthetic: Extracts From A Half-Buried Diary,"also forms of stifling institutionalized or- dynamics and artistic agenda, the con- in this issue of LMJ. der-be it Western classical aesthetics crete forms of Abstract Expressionism 18. This is documented in 's foreword to can be as historical refer- (Cage); white-dominated capitalist cul- approached the long-overdue second edition of Nyman's Experi- ture (jazz); or other commercial factors ences, or indeed "scores"insofar as such mentalMusic: Cageand Beyond.Originally published in 1974 [7] p. xi. and established aesthetic systems (the paintings can be understood in their "underground")-led to the emergence broadest sense as imagistic representa- 19. Although worthy of more detail than appropri- ate here, it is to comment on the musical of free and remains a tions of past and potential necessary improvisation key arts' apparent time lag in the questioning and aesthetic focus. The vast size of many of free improvisation. destructuring of "content." In comparison to the Abstract served visual arts (and putting aside the issue of "represen- Expressionist paintings tation" for art "art"music and its "works" this end the References and Notes forms), through overpowering pre- have traditionally been more heavily mediated. The dominance of textural surface qualities 1. The mid-1950s style of Hard-Bop, largely indistin- musical event has its genesis with the genius com- and their and guishable in musical terms from its parent style of poser, is stored in notation and is realized, after engulfing disorientating reaffirmed modernist inten- much effort, skilled affect Bop (Bebop), Bop's by highly performer-interpret- upon the spectator. Prevost states tions through continued and uncompromising ad- ers within specific and uniquely related perfor- that the notions of theory, practice, hier- herence to melodic, harmonic and rhythmic density mance contexts. From this perspective it can be ar- as a reaction "cool" and West Coast In that it was a smaller for the visual arts to and structure of the were, against styles. gued step archy period relation to free jazz, Ekkehard Jost's analytic study turn the subject matter of art in upon itself and to- for AMM, replaced by a focus upon the points out that its development cannot only be wards the material of the medium. The ossification color and texture of sound linked to the playing of one or two outstanding mu- engendered by music's history required visionaries (analogous but that the and as and those to a a "sound- sicians, multiple influences of the time inter-disciplinarians (such Cage "painterly aesthetic"), are equally significant: "The influences felt in the musician/artists working in the art schools of Brit- world in which there was not even a for- divergent personal styles of the Sixties encompass ain) to unhinge musical experience and musical musicians like Sidney Ben from the notation-based mal beginning and ending" [48]. Bechet, Webster, understanding composer- Thelonius Monk and as well as performer "work" axis. Additionally, the displace- Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Cage." Ekkehard Jost, ment of notation, by advances in technology, as the FreeJazz(New York: Da Capo Press, 1994) p. 11. primary means of "music storage" has continued to CONCLUSION enhance and focus this paradigm shift. 2.Jost [1] pp. 9-10. It has already been said that the shift ini- 20. Dawn Ades, "Dada and Surrealism," in David 3. Derek Its Nature and Practice tiated abstraction focused the subject Bailey, Improvisation: Britt, ed., ModernArt: Impressionismto Post- by in Music (New York: Da Capo Press, 1993) p. 55. Thames & 226. First matter of art itself. for (London: Hudson, 1992) p. upon Concern First published in 1980 by Moorland in association published in 1974. and was with . iconography replaced 21. Anna Elizabeth in Andre an with abstract form. Balakian, Breton,Magus by engagement 4. , "Recherches maintenant," in Of Surrealism(NewYork: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971), Releves Artists explored the nature and function d'apprenti(Paris, 1966) pp. 27-32. describes automatic writing as a process involving "a the of of art on its own terms 5. Paul Modern Music: The Avant Garde triple convergence: psychological concept through explora- Griffiths, the liberation of the math- Since 1945 Dent & psychic inhibitions, tions of the medium's intrinsic formal (London: J.M. Sons, 1986) pp. ematical one of the coincidences of chance verbal 138-141. language of line, tone color, composition encounters, and the hermetic one of the oracular function of the medium-poet," 61. and texture. In Abstract Expressionism 6.John Cage, Silence:Lectures and Writings(London: p. Marion Boyars, 1987) 59. First in these elements are p. published 22. Ades [20] p. 229. foregrounded along- Great Britain in 1968 by Calder and Boyars. side the (essentially modernist) agenda 23. Ades [20] pp. 229-230. 7. Michael Nyman, ExperimentalMusic: Cage and Be- of an artist seeking a maximum of inter- yond (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 24. Ades [20] p. 231. action with these qualities as a means of 1999) p. 4. First published in 1974 by Studio Vista, and Collier London. 25. Cardew xviii. self-expression [49]. The breaking down Cassell, Macmillan, [9] p. of functional and formal elements of the 8. Griffiths [5] p. 182. 26. Bailey [3] p. 112.

Sansom, Imaging Music 33 27. Anthony Everitt, "Abstract Expressionism," in dialoguing with other levels which I might call mind ing" is not a new one. In 1967 Lukas Foss wrote of Britt [20] p. 253. and perception." [One could easily include the group improvisation: "One might call it 'Action- term "unconscious."] "The thoughts and decisions Music' . . . Chamber improvisation lays the empha- 28. Everitt [27] p. 254. are sustained and modified by my physical poten- sis on the 'performance' resulting from the situa- tials and vice versa but as soon as I try to define tion, and puts the responsibility for the choices 29. Peter Wollen points out that pre- these I run into It is a mean- squarely on the shoulders of the performer. It by- ceded Surrealism as the initial vehicle for a rejec- separately problems. for it is the of the composer. It is composition become per- tion of instrumental reason within the avant-garde, ingless enterprise very entanglement passes levels of awareness and that formance, performer's music." Reginald Smith and that there was "a strong transitional Orientalist perception, physicality makes See Bailey [3] p. 108. Brindle, The New Music: The Avant-GardeSince 1945 current at play within the Surrealist movement it- improvisation." (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990) p. 86. self," in Raiding the Icebox:Reflections on Twentieth- 39. It seems that many free improvisers accept with- First published in 1987. CenturyCulture (London: Verso, 1993) p. 24. out question that extremes of chaos, and non-idi- 46. Everitt 287. 30. It should be noted that these developments omatic and non-repetitive playing are what charac- [27] p. were also current within terms terize their art and when idiomatic references or Europe. Although 47. Cardew [9] pp. xviii-xix. differ (Abstract Expressionism being more usually repetitive, harmonically centred and/or clearly me- lodic content occurs, it is to be eradicated immedi- applied to American painters, with Gestural or Lyri- 48. Prevost [10] p. 9. cal Abstraction more often used to describe Euro- ately. Alternatively, such events can be incorporated pean "equivalents") Surrealism and its associated as dimensions of the music's process (and hence its 49. The emergence and success of modernist ab- influences resulted in similar painting-styles on ongoing and developing structural relationships). A straction should, of course, be seen in relation to both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, it was the French further distinction exists in groups who emphasize the re-institution of in Stalinist and Nazi to- artistJean Dubuffet who coined the term "art brut" texture, where repetition is key but functions quite talitarian art. This move served to confirm modern- (raw or crude art) after his fascination with the art differently to the repetition of, for example, a ist abstraction as the alternative style of the demo- of children, psychotics, and amateurs. strong melodic and/or rhythmic idea. These cratic free world, banishing realism for good. thoughts touch on an area left undeveloped in this The to 31. Harold Osborne, ed., OxfordCompanion article. For further discussion of the relationship 50. Cardew [9] p. xvii. 4. Art (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970) p. between "unconscious" intuitive playing and the more "conscious" intellectual of ma- 32. In the words ofJackson Pollock (from 1944): "I manipulation terial, see Matthew Sansom, "Musical A am particularly impressed with their [the Surreal- Meaning: Qualitative of Free ists'] concept of the source of art being the uncon- Investigation Improvisation," Ph.D. Thesis, of Sheffield, 1997. scious" Ades [20] pp. 249-250. University Manuscript received 28 December 2000. 33. Wollen [29] p. 72. 40. Wollen [29] p. 73.

34. Pollock quoted in Everitt [27] p. 265. 41. See Anton Ehrenzweig, The Hidden Orderof Art First in 35. Motherwell in Everitt 266. (London: Weidenfeld, 1993). published quoted [27] p. 1967. 36. Cardew [9] p. xx. Matthew Sansom is a Lecturer in Music at 42. Prevost [10] p. 15. 37. Bailey [3] p. 83. the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, En- 43. I once heard this type of playing referred to, gland. wide research interests that 38. The following description by flautistJim Denley somewhat but not his- Alongside of the a musical disparagingly inaccurately include musical improvisational process provides torically, as "70s art-school playing." creativity, meaning, popular example of the way in which artist and medium can, music and club culture, he is an accom- in a sense, exchange autonomy and influence one 44. Prevost [10] p. 17. in im- another. voice box and their plished saxophonist (specializing free "Mylungs, lips, finger, and and studio- working together with their potentials of sound are 45. The comparison with Pollock's "action paint- provisation) DJ produces and groove-based .

34 Sansom,Imaging Music