Improvisation versus score – memory, language and ritual
In my thesis The Creative Abyss: Improvisation and the Challenge of Not-knowing I make the claim that improvisation is at the heart of all music-making, as the element of spontaneity that is physically available to us at any moment in some form or other during performance. Such a spontaneity is, however, only conceivable against the backdrop of subliminal relationships, that from earliest infancy have created and maintain our comfortable sense of ‘being-in-the-world’, as Heidegger puts it, and that are constitutive of memory. Heidegger deconstructs our usual understanding of ourselves as individuals, separate from our surroundings and each other, and I believe that the practice of spontaneous improvisation can be a useful tool in doing the same.
In his article “Heidegger, Hegel, and Ethnicity: The Ritual Basis of Self-Identity” (1995), John Russon explores the possibility that the subliminal backdrop referred to above has a communal, ritual basis, connecting to wider questions of culture and ethnicity. If this is true, it might hold important clues as to the possible role of music and language in articulating our daily processes of intelligent, if unconscious, self-maintenance. Russon says (1995, p. 11):
“The science which claims to be revealing to us the truth of our situation itself precisely conceals the nature of our situation to the extent that it treats that being which is truly the substance of our lives as if it were fundamentally an alien object for reflection, and treats us as fundamentally reflective agents, when reflection is in fact a derived mode of human existence.”
This is what the ‘not-knowing’ in the title of my thesis refers to: a physical intelligence inherent in bodily memory, but too often concealed or obliterated by less subtle forms of explicit reflective reasoning. If we accept, for the purposes of argument, that this intelligence is vastly superior to our so-called rational mind, then our artistic practices could be a way in which we can draw consciously closer to this ‘irrational’ reality. In contrast to improvisation, the writing of a score will naturally suggest a more explicit process of reflection, but in reality the ‘felt sense’, as Gendlin calls it in Experience and the Creation of Meaning (1997), is always the ultimate guide, involving memory in its fullest sense, grounded in bodily repetition (that is never actually the same).
I will tie this to physical questions of language and ritual in two vocal works of mine, Canzone (1973) and Changes (1976), discussed in a chapter of my thesis. The text of Canzone, written around 1290 by the Italian poet Guido Cavalcanti, is a late example of the troubadour tradition, linking it to possible physical, ritual and musical influences of Arabic (see Menocal, ed., The Literature of Al-Andalus, 2000). In Changes, on the other hand, I mix English texts from five different centuries to create a physical ritual all of my own.
Keywords: improvisation, score, language, ritual
Biography
Nicholas McNair was head chorister at Canterbury Cathedral at the age of 13, later studying at Cambridge University as well as composition and piano at the Royal College of Music. He initiated a career as a composer in London with support from the Arts Council and other foundations, giving his first recital of improvisation in 1979 before moving to Portugal. In 1987 he joined the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa, from which he recently retired. He worked in the 1990s as an editor for Sir John Eliot Gardiner, collaborating also in contemporary opera and theatre productions, music for silent films, and as organist and pianist with the Gulbenkian Choir and Orchestra. In 2021 he formed a duo with jazz pianist and composer Samuel Gapp for improvisation on 2 pianos, and in 2024 was awarded a PhD in Musical Arts at UNL with a recital and thesis on improvisation.
CESEM, Portugal – gentlemuse@gmail.com