Recently, while preparing a presentation on "improvisation in Java" for a graduate seminar devoted to musical improvisation, I was struck by independent assertions from two Indonesian authors whose articles I assigned (Susilo 1987; Suanda 1988) about the difficulty of discussing the subject in Java because there were no precisely equivalent terms or concepts for "improvisation" in Javanese languages. The most compelling parts of the articles were where the authors discussed the shades of meaning of various terms that seemed to describe improvisation-like practices but did not fit precisely within Western rubrics of improvisation. The experience reminded me how the terms of discussion inevitably regulate the outcomes of any discourse, and left me wondering how much is lost when we insist on framing our discussions of music-making as "improvisation" rather than developing more nuanced, situation-specific approaches. My question, then, while reading Musical Improvisation: Art, Education, and Society edited by Gabriel Solis and Bruno Nettl, was as follows: will this new collection of essays about improvisation be limited by the terms of its own discourse, or will it open up new ways of thinking about the real-time performance of music?
The embarrassingly reductive gloss that opens the book’s back cover blurb—improvisation, it says, is "a musical practice used for centuries the world over"—perpetuates the tired idea that improvisation is a monolithic and well-understood thing, and did not strike me as an auspicious start. In the book’s introduction, however, it becomes clear that Solis is acutely aware of the term’s dangerous imprecision, and promotes the collection as a way "to investigate the many possible permutations of musical practice that might be called improvisation" (3). Nettl, whose earlier work on improvisation (Nettl 1983; Nettl and Russell 1998) broke new ethnomusicological ground for thinking beyond a monolithic conception of improvisation, begins his preface with the promising (and witty) assertion that, "We probably never should have started calling it ’improvisation’" (ix); he goes on to problematize improvisation as "a vast network of practices" (xi). So far, so good.
The editors attempt to expand the discussion of the wide range of practices that fall under the rubric of improvisation by grouping the essays into three sections, each of which provides a different entry point for our consideration: (1) explorations of homologies between improvisatory practices and social structures; (2) inquiries into how individuals learn to improvise; and (3) examinations of how improvisatory processes are theorized by groups and internalized by creative individuals. Each of these three sections is anchored by an extended essay intended to provide an introduction to the section’s theme, followed by several more focused pieces that develop the theme. Summarizing, or even naming, all nineteen essays is outside the scope of this short review (besides, in his introduction, Solis ably précises each piece [10–15]). I will therefore limit myself to commenting on only a few notable features of the book.
In the first section, "Society," the model for ethnomusicological research that Ingrid Monson lays out—one that considers equally discourse about music, musical structures, and the details of musical practice—holds great promise and is worth careful consideration. Natalie Kononenko’s analysis of inconsistencies between discourse and practice in Ukrainian funeral laments demonstrates a practical application of Monson’s approach. Thomas Turino’s contribution recaps his compelling ideas about the social significance of participatory music making (see Turino 2008) in a very useful condensed form.
Highlights of the "Education" section include Robert Levin’s remarkably succinct overview of Mozart’s improvisatory practices and John Toenjes’ thoughtful analysis of how improvised music for dance class accompaniment maps to dance gestures. Overall, however, this is the weakest section of the book; I wonder why Patricia Shehan Campbell chose to spend a disproportionate amount of time on Dalcroze in her general survey of literature about improvisation education, and why Bruno Nettl neglects to even mention Iran’s political history in the twentieth century—which surely had a significant impact on the development of classical music there—in his otherwise thoughtful exploration of the many ways in which the radif teaches.
Stephen Blum’s insightful historical exploration of the discourse of improvisation, which opens the "Creation" section, is perhaps the high point of the book. Through a masterful survey and analysis of how discourses of creativity and originality have resulted in improvisation’s becoming a "marked" category of music, Blum warns that the reification of improvisation as a category continues to limit our ability to explore other ways to explicate and compare musical practices. Ironically, two of the articles that follow, Robert S. Hatton’s analysis of improvisatory gestures in the piano music of Chopin and Schumann, and William Kinderman’s overview of improvisation’s role in Beethoven’s creative process, perpetuate precisely the kind of reification and marking against which Blum warns.
Inevitably, some essays (and some scholars) are more successful at transcending the stultifying rubric of "improvisation" than others. It is worth noting, too, that nine of the nineteen authors are either formerly or currently associated with the University of Illinois (not surprisingly, because the conference on which the book was based was held there in 2004), and thus may not provide as wide a set of perspectives as a collection with a different history might. Solis boldly proposes that shifting our analytical focus to musical processes may provide a rational way for musicology to move beyond "the intellectual cul-de-sac of focusing exclusively on canonical works" (9). While it is laudable that so many of the book’s essays attempt to explore improvisation in Western music, it nevertheless is clear that such studies do not yet realize Solis’ dream of musicology’s escape from a narrow view of hero-composers and the canon. Ultimately, however, the book as a whole contributes to making the point that all music—whether nominally "composed" or "improvised"—is foremost an activity, not a thing, and that the practices that drive musical decision-making during the course of performance are worthy of scholarly attention.
Returning to my original question: while many of Musical Improvisation’s essays are indeed limited by the terms of conventional, even hackneyed discourses of improvisation, they are nevertheless worth reading and discussing, and the book as a whole provides a welcome addition to musicological literature.
WORKS CITED
Nettl, Bruno. The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-nine Issues and Concepts. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983.
Nettl, Bruno, and Melinda Russell, eds. In the Course of Performance: Studies in the World of Musical Improvisation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Suanda, Endo. "Dancing in Cirebonese Topeng," Balungan 3.3 (1988): 7–15.
Susilo, Hardja. "Improvisation in Wayang Wong Panggung: Creativity within Cultural Constraints," Yearbook for Traditional Music 19 (1987): 1–11.
Turino, Thomas. Music as Social Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
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[Review length: 1098 words • Review posted on June 1, 2010]