Abstract

The music notation on the pentagram, the great diffusion of printed scores, and the division between composer, performer and audience, are the main aspects of the modern Western composition. It is in this context that Western musical improvisation – which flourished in the Twentieth century through jazz, free jazz, free improvisation and contemporary music – was and is promoted, appreciated and studied. Therefore, the most common conception of improvisation opposes it to written composition. From this opposition also derives the usual definition of improvisation as "instant composing". However, if we broaden the concepts of 'writing' and ‘composition’ beyond the pentagram, we soon realize that in any improvisation there is always a degree of ‘composition’ and ‘writing’, often directly achieved through one’s instrument or voice. The term "instant composing" suggests an underestimation of the long-term work required for an improviser to create his own material. On the other hand, it has fostered the myth of the ‘genius’ improviser. The industry of reproductions and transcripts, as well as jazz schools, have thrived – and continue to thrive – on this myth; however, the great amount of those materials transforms improvisations into a kind of ‘writing’: into texts to be performed and imitated. The notion of "instant composing" also seems to suggests a chronometric concept of the present as a moment inside a line connecting the past with the future. But all good music is a gesture that establishes its own time, its duration, its rhythm. Improvisation establishes its time thanks to its capacity to make its own singular ‘voice’ heard. Singularity as such, has no cause, no antecedents, and hence it is surprising in itself. The present, without past and future, is the time of this surprise. It is a time very different from that of traditional Western written composition. The main difference between improvisation and Western modern composition is to be found in their relation with time, while it does not concern necessarily the notation on the pentagram or the musical 'materials' as such: indeed, in improvisation a wonder can arise also using old or written musical ‘materials’.