Robert Jedrzejewski

Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, Poland

Abstract

We are not spontaneously aware of duration when we give our whole attention to the present situation, that is when we are not made to turn to any other time of action through our needs or through social necessity. In other words, we are not conscious of time when we are fully satisfied with the present situation.

We become spontaneously aware of time in media res (into the middle of things) only when we are dissatisfied in some sense.

There are two main factors: waiting (as in the conscious interval between the emergence of a need and its fulfillment) and the effort of continuity (the obstacle to be overcome in order to complete a task once initial impulse has been exhausted).

What sort of “time” are we becoming conscious of in such cases? It is not a quantized variety of temporal experience, not that sort we might refer to as “real”. The latter variety would probably have a more objective, measured quality based on the rate of some reliable clock.

Its duration, like the richness of its contents, depends on the possibilities for the organization of successive elements into one unit. As our perception of succession is dependent on the possibilities of organization, everything which facilitates this – the attitude of the subject, grouping by proximity, structure, meaning – increases the richness of what constitutes the present.

It is perfectly accurate to say that a sense of time can only exist where there is submission to reality. Through imagination, tension / anticipation and decision (act of ostension), to reactions and evaluations that close the autopoietic loop (feedback).

 Keywords: improvisation, composition, creation, intuition, perception

Biography

Robert Jędrzejewski holds degrees in performance, improvisation, composition, and pedagogy from the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Kraków (MA), and from the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw (PhD), and is a former Fellow of the Polish Ministry of Culture. His diverse projects and compositions are regularly performed all over Europe, in Canada, in Singapore, and in the USA. His goal is to determine to what extent the truly free and pure improvisation can become the basic creative method in music, which itself is part of an extremely dynamic performative sphere of the modern world. He would like to test which elements constitute the main engines of this kind of practice and how people behave under these kind of conditions, and if an act of ostension based on improvisation can become the basic source of experiencing truth for the artist and researcher in the 21st Century. He is co-founder of SALULU – duo of improvising composers, organiser of MUSIC IN A NEW KEY – Conference – Festival in Warsaw, Poland, and member of ISIM – International Society for Improvised Music and Ring für Gruppenimprovisation.