improvisation
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improvisation, in music, the extemporaneous composition or free performance of a musical passage, usually in a manner conforming to certain stylistic norms but unfettered by the prescriptive features of a specific musical text. Music originated as improvisation and is still extensively improvised in Eastern traditions and in the modern Western tradition of jazz.
Many of the great composers of Western classical music were masters of improvisation, especially on keyboard instruments, which offered such celebrated composer-performers as Johann Sebastian Bach, W.A. Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn, and Frédéric Chopin virtually boundless opportunities for the spontaneous unfolding of their rich musical imaginations. Many an idea so generated eventually appeared in a written composition. Some composers have regarded improvisation as an indispensable warm-up for their creative task.
Prior to the instrumental era in the West, improvisation within the systematized musical context was largely limited to ornamental variants of vocal parts in polyphonic compositions and to instrumental adaptations of vocal compositions, especially by lute and keyboard virtuosos. The monodic textures that originated about 1600, on the other hand, were ready-made, indeed in large measure intended, for improvisational enhancement, not only of the treble parts but also, almost by definition, of the bass, which was figured to suggest no more than a minimal chordal outline.
In essentially monophonic musical cultures, whether Western or non-Western, improvisation has been of paramount importance, if only because successful improvisation is always more readily achieved by soloists than by groups. A monophonic oral musical tradition, however, does not necessarily imply the prevalence of improvisational practices. Quite to the contrary, oral traditions have been prone to preserve the integrity of particular songs and dances from generation to generation with a degree of precision virtually unknown in literate musical contexts.
It is generally assumed that early European music from Roman Catholic chant to medieval polyphony was rooted in such improvisational practices as the exploration of motivic possibilities in the church modes (see church mode) and the addition of a second melody to a preexisting melody or cantus firmus. Modal improvisations have remained central to much non-Western music, including the chant of the Jewish synagogue, Islāmic maqām elaborations, and Indian raga performances.
In the West, cantus firmus improvisation inspired a great deal of instrumental music as well, beginning with late Renaissance improvisations over ostinato basses (relatively short repeated bass patterns) and maintained through the centuries especially by organists who embraced such popular ostinato genres as the passacaglia and chaconne. Organists have remained in the forefront of improvisation as a primary musical activity in no way at odds with written composition, while keyboard improvisation in turn has been responsible for compositions of a freely associative character of the sort found among hundreds of preludes, toccatas, and fantasies written during the past three centuries. Improvisations on Protestant hymn tunes gave birth to the important 17th- and 18th-century genre the chorale prelude. In the later 18th century, improvisation, often based on variation techniques but not excluding the strictly polyphonic procedures of canon and fugue, challenged the ingenuity of virtuoso-composers repeatedly in public improvisational contests, such as those that pitted Mozart against Muzio Clementi and Ludwig van Beethoven against Joseph Wölfl.
In modern times, improvisation survives as one of the chief distinguishing characteristics of jazz. Here, too, the process is usually inspired by, and structured (however loosely) in accordance with, salient characteristics of the model in question, be it a well-known show tune or a ground bass. During the second half of the 20th century, there arose among certain avant-garde composers and performers a tendency away from any vestige of traditional structure. A “composition” from this experimental school might be entirely devoid of conventional notation, consisting rather of a verbal instruction, a prescription for duration, or an idiosyncratic graphic code. Some works required performers to combine at random “building blocks” of brief musical phrases or entire sections presented by the composer; it has been asserted that such a process embodies a more profound creative collaboration between composer and performer than does the interpretation of a fully notated work or the express but limited freedom accorded performers at crucial moments in certain fixed compositions (e.g., the da capo section of an 18th-century aria or the cadenza near the end of a solo concerto movement). See also aleatory music.