Perspectives On Improvisation - Gary Smart

Perspectives On Improvisation
Dr. Gary Smart
Presentation at the NASM Annual Meeting, Boston, MA., Nov. 1998

I was about twelve years old when Miss Adelaide, my piano teacher, heard through the grapevine that I was known to “fool around” at the keyboard for hours with no notated music on the stand, and even worse, that I had been entertaining friends and family with musical improvisations. Miss Adelaide’s agitated response was the musical equivalent to every mother’s “you’re going to put your eye out with that thing!”

She was a wonderful teacher, a mentor to whom I owe much gratitude. However, Miss Adelaide was of the generation that considered Western classical music, as embodied in the notated score, to be the one true music. In her mind the concept of improvisation was associated with a lack of discipline, a lack of attention to detail, and a sloppy technique . . . not to mention a frivolous aesthetic mindset.

One does have to admit that these weaknesses are often present in the music making of fledgling improvisors. Pretentiousness often rears its ugly head too. I remember with embarrassment Miss Adelade throwing a volume of the Beethoven Sonatas the length of the room when I allowed myself to take several very inappropriate improvisational liberties with the score.

I certainly deserved the lecture I received about musical tradition and respect for great artistic achievement, and yet I still find myself defending that young seeker that I was.

Any skill can be misused. At that age I simply needed guidance to find artistic balance. It does seem a shame to me that I spent years leading a musical double life, studying classical scores and playing that music in recital on the one hand, while secretly learning to improvise by playing along with pop, folk, jazz and yes, classical recordings on the other. Many contemporary music students find themselves more or less in the same situation.

Surely the need to touch on the natural musicality of all of the above mentioned musics, and the concomitant need to play unwritten music, can be acknowledged and reconciled. Modern music students deserve this kind of an all embracing education and American music teachers and musical institutions are struggling to accomplish this today.

Musical improvisation is less mysterious than the uninitiated might suppose. No art is created out of a void. To the contrary, the clearer the material, the method and the context, the better the creation. As obvious as that statement might seem, myths and misunderstandings persist. Many years ago a colleague heard me practicing for an improvisation concert. As I remember, I was working up fantasy variations on some well known tune. He was indignant. “You’re practicing?”, he asked in disbelief. “What a fraud! I thought you were going to improvise tomorrow’s concert!” Herein lies an important point: improvisation need not be thought of as a cheap parlor trick. It is for me a great irony that jazz fans tend to glorify improvisation as a kind of magic, while in the classical field there is a stigma placed on the unwritten. Improvisation is not magic, nor is degenerate. It is simply a musical skill, an artistic tool which can be developed.

Improvisors at any level . . . as composers at any level . . . must clearly choose the musical “what” and the musical “how”. The choices, be they common practice or unique, are a necessity, but are no guarantee of success in themselves. Quality, I believe we would all agree, is more dependent on the development of materials and the overall success of the musical narrative. In any case, these choices can be made with or without the use of musical notation.

“Jelly Roll” Morton, reminiscing about his group’s early recordings, explained that music was always on the stands during those sessions. His musicians, however, only sometimes played exactly what was written. Just as often they embellished what was notated, or in reacting to the musical moment, played something else, mixing reading and improvisation in a practical and quite creative manner. To that old jazz master the notated score and the improvised phrase were both just tools of the trade. In American big band music, a tradition of which “Jelly Roll” was the first master, one finds a consistent use of this approach. In this music impro-vised and notated music are happily juxtaposed and mixed. It has long been the case, in our own musical history and in other cultures’ musics, in fact, that a very effective and exciting music is created by presenting both kinds of activity simultaneously. This is entirely practical and natural.

Consider the close relationship of improvisation to notated composition. A useful concept might be a sliding scale which ranges from “composed in the moment” to “completely precomposed”. Practically, almost any musical undertaking exists nearer the middle of this scale than might be supposed. From where does the primary musical impulse come? Doesn’t composition first move through improvisation? Isn’t composition a kind of very carefully considered, notated improvisation? Ask a composer. Isn’t performance preparation, even performance itself, at times very closely related to improvisation? Ask a performer. Let me stir the pot a little more: there is the fascinating phenomenon of “solidified improvisation”. As an improvisor, I have found, in a couple of instances, that improvised pieces have “set” or “solidified “over time, thus becoming in practice unnotated compositions. This is not so unusual.

The great jazz pianist Art Tatum let several small improvised specialities like his “Carnegie Hall Bounce” and “Humoresque” set, thus becoming something very close to unnotated composition by the late part of his career. A favorite showpiece of Tatum’s, “Tea for Two”, contained large composed but unnotated sections which alternated with improvised sections. Gunther Schuller has pointed out this phenomenon in the Duke Ellington orchestra where trombonist Lawrence Brown allowed smaller eight bar solos to set, and so become unnotated composed solos in a notated piece.

I always think of Mozart when this subject comes up. For such a great talent, it would appear that composition and improvisation were almost the same thing. Mozart wrote in a letter, “When I am . . . say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not. “ He later goes on to say, “Nor do I hear the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing, lively dream! . . . For this reason the committing to paper is done quickly enough, for everything is, as I said before, already finished.”1 I doubt that Mozart was exaggerating.

As an improvisor, I’m particularly interested in his Variations K. 416e, “Salve tu, Domine”, and the Variations K. 455, “Unser dummer Pobel meint”. Mozart seemed so pleased with these works, both of which were improvised at a soiree on March 23, 1783, that he wrote them down in the next few days. I wonder: are these works then improvisations, or compo-sitions? Mozart hardly made the distinction.

In fact, throughout most of the history of our Western music, improvisation and the use of semi-notated music were the rule. The musicianship of Mozart, as well as that of Bach, Beethoven and many, many other masters and journeymen practitioners throughout the centuries included a well developed improvisational ability. World music provides us with a wonderful mix of musics which are improvised, composed but unnotated, or make use of both techniques. I’ll just mentioned 1) the East Indian sitar tradition . . . a profound and subtle art music that is improvised, 2) Indonesian gamelan music . . . which is most often composed but unnotated, 3) and Japanese Shakuhachi flute music . . . more often composed but unnotated, but also making use of various degrees of improvisation. Where in the world do our pat Western ideas of composed works versus improvisation fit in with this array of musics?

Let me come back to my own experience: I have for some time included in my jazz concerts transcriptions of recorded jazz piano improvisations. When a modern performer learns and notates a historical improvisation, does that old improv then become a composition? By this point, it seems to me the question is moot.

To my mind musical improvisation at any level, in whatever context, professional or playful, complex or simple, profound or not, is essential music making, and so is an essential experience for the music student. Improvisation inexorably links spontaneous composition with performance, and dispels the proposition that musical substance is necessarily the pro-perty of “composers”, while interpretation is the business of “interpreters”.

For today’s students these ideas already present a false dichotomy. Though many students will finally choose to stress one particular area in their careers, the musical world which they will soon enter is pluralistic in the most practical sense. Most of the musical world outside academia, i.e. the areas of commercial music, contemporary classical, jazz, folk music, world music, etc. has moved on into a delightful era of fusion and pluralism which makes constant use of the musical improvisor’s skills.

Yet, don’t most students of our classical tradition still learn to “recite” music, not to “speak” it? Is my distinction unfair? Isn’t that really what we mean when we use the word “unmusical”?

Consider the parallels in the other arts: improv is a staple teaching tool in theater education, dance students regularly improvise in class, artists sketch, writers converse, debate, draft, all balancing a natural sense of play with a feeling for order. These young artists are challenged to truly learn to “speak” the language of their respective arts.

Though all music students should experience improvisation, our teachers and educational institutions often cannot and/or do not facilitate that experience. Of course, jazz programs teach improvisation, though only within the jazz context. In a general context, an improvisation class, which offers valuable peer interaction, and hopefully, an improvising teacher-model, would undoubtedly be the best educational setting for learning to improvise in any stylistic context. Such a class would be especially effective for beginning improvisors, who respond well to an enthusiastic model- teacher. The jazz tradition has a proud history of apprenticeship. Modeling is the simplest, yet most directly effective tool for teaching improvisation.

For the interested and dedicated student who would learn to improvise, there are many simple improvisational activities with which one may begin to learn. Success depends on the use of improvisational exercises with set goals, and the ability to assess progress realistically. Simple activities which the self-teacher and/or the class teacher may utilize effectively are 1) the creation and repetition of simple melodic or figural patterns, 2) experimentation with call and response patterns, 3) playing along with recordings (over and over again, with persistence), 4) imitation: imitating one’s own musical gestures or those of one’s peers or teacher, imitating the melodies, rhythms, sound colors and/or patterns of the immediate environment, 5) embellishing written music (heresy can be fun), or 6) writing simple pieces, learning them, and then altering them in improvised performances. The involved student will quite naturally create more exercises that are stimulating and immediately enjoyable.

It is important that after all of these activities the student replay the improvisation in his mind and critique seriously. Often the student may wish to try again with alterations and/or improvements in mind. Self motivation is obviously all important here. As in an English composition writing class, the student must be willing to create an unpolished, only partially satisfying first draft. The student must rely on, and believe in, the effectiveness of constructive play. Constant, thoughtful repetition will indeed bring real progress and finally, fluency.

Improvisational experience reacquaints the student with the primal need to make music and with the simple pleasure of working spontaneously with basic musical materials. What is learned will naturally affect all subsequent music making, in whatever context.

The concrete advantages of improvisational experience are diverse and many. They include a true, more integrated comprehension of the musical phrase, of harmony and harmonic progression, and a better understanding of form in its many aspects, thus creating a more solid ability to conceptu-alize, and memorize, written works.

For the performance student improvisation activity is particularly valuable. It is my experience that concentrated improvisation practice can improve technique, Miss Adelaide’s misgivings to the contrary. Students often find that improvisation brings a new fluidity to their playing, a new, natural feeling for gesture, and a more natural linkage of technique to musical goal.

Specific values for the composition student include the opportunity to physicalize musical thought, an opportunity to weigh the value of spontaneous creation in relation to the value of carefully considered revision and the layering up of ideas, and an appreciation of what an interpreter can and should bring to the written score.

For the theory or musicology student there is again that opportunity to experience the physicalization of musical thought, to integrate left and right brain activity. There is also the opportunity to develop a “hands on” understanding of the many elements of style, as well as the chance to consider the limitations, as well as the strengths, of the written score.

The goal of all music study and practice should be a whole brain musicianship which finds that fragile balance between discipline and freedom. My Miss Adelaide need not have worried. I still recognize well the importance of control and order, and I know this thanks to her teaching. But, as her favorite composer, Claude Debussy, said, “Music must never be shut in, must never become an academic art. Music is a free art, as boundless as the elements, the wind, the sea, the sky!” 2