Imaging Music: Abstract Expressionism & Free Improvisation

The Leonardo Music Journal, MIT Press, Vol. 11, 2001 with Compact Disc" Not Nececessarily "English Music": Britain's Second Golden Age

Abstract

The author defines free improvisation, a form of music-making that first emerged in the 1960s with U.K. composers and groups such as Cardew, Bailey, AMM and the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. The approach here considers free improvisation as creative activity, encompassing its artistic agenda on the one hand and the process-based dynamic of its production on the other. After considering the historical location of free improvisation within Western music history, the article explores free improvisation as analogous with Abstract Expressionist art. This comparison enables a fuller understanding of the activity's conceptual basis and the creative process it engenders.

Introduction

'Free improvisation' is the term most often used to describe the music and/or form of music-making most immediately associated with the likes of Cornelius Cardew and Derek Bailey, and groups such as AMM and the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. First emerging during the 1960s it is now widely practised by numerous artists throughout many countries, and has become (perhaps somewhat ironically) a genre in its own right, with associated record labels, media, significant artists, aficionados, and performance rituals. In seeking a definition of free improvisation and given its oft-sited ephemeral and transient status, the approach taken here considers free improvisation as creative activity, encompassing its artistic agenda on the one hand, and the process-based dynamic of its production on the other. The article opens with an exposition of the historical location of free improvisation within Western music history. Following this, and as a means of developing a fuller understanding of the activity's conceptual basis and processes, free improvisation is explored as analogous with Abstract Expressionist art.

[Leonardo Music Journal]