Imaging Music: Abstract Expressionism and Free Improvisation
Author(s): Matthew Sansom
Source: Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 11, Not Necessarily "English Music": Britain's Second
Golden Age, (2001), pp. 29-34
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1513424
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Music:
Imaging
and
Free
Abstract
Expressionism
Improvisation
ABSTRACT
MatthewSansom
"
ree 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. The form first emerged during
the 1960s; it is now widely practiced 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-cited 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.
INDE'ERMINACY
Free improvisation has its roots in the developments of jazz
on the one hand and the experimental classical music of both
America and Europe on the other. During the late 1950s and
early 1960s, a move towards a freer style of jazz improvisation
(as exemplified in the playing of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and, later, John Coltrane) developed in contrast to the
more idiomatic and established styles of Bebop and HardBop [1]. Through the development and questioning of the
conventions of jazz's harmonic and metrical patterns and its
structural principles, a variety of ideas and approaches
emerged. As EkkehardJost comments, free jazz led to a heterogeneity of personal and group styles with new ways of approaching issues of instrumental technique, ensemble playing and formal organization [2]. In retrospect, Steve Lacy
says of these changes,
Whenyou reached"hardbop"there wasno mysteryany more.
It waslike-mechanical-some kindof gymnastics.The patterns
are well knownand everybodyis playingthem.... It got so that
everybodyknewwhatwas going to happen and, sure enough,
that'swhathappened.... But when Ornettehit the scene, that
wasthe end of theories.He destroyedthe theories.I remember
at that time he said,verycarefully,"Well,youjust havea certain
amountof spaceand you put whatyou wantin it" [3].
Similarly,developments in "art"music during this era articulated a response to the issues raised by a certain rigidity within
compositional technique. It is clear that during the 1950s, increasing control and organization of pitch, rhythm and tim-
? 2001 ISAST
definesfreeimThe author
a formof music-makprovisation,
inthe
ingthatfirstemerged
and
1960swithU.K.composers
Bailey,
groupssuchas Cardew,
Music
AMM
andtheSpontaneous
here
Theapproach
Ensemble.
as
freeimprovisation
considers
its
creative
encompassing
activity,
artistic
agendaontheonehand
of
andtheprocess-based
dynamic
ontheother.After
itsproduction
location
thehistorical
considering
Westwithin
offreeimprovisation
thearticleexernmusichistory,
as analoploresfreeimprovisation
Expressionist
gouswithAbstract
enablesa
art.Thiscomparison
ofthe
fullerunderstanding
basisandthe
conceptual
activity's
creative
processitengenders.
bre-the pursuit of the "illusory
goal of total organisation" [4]reached a point of exhaustion for
many composers. An increasing
variety of sources challenged the
modernist attempt to derive a
common musical language from
the principles of serialism. A central factor within these developing
responses to integral serialism was
the role of indeterminacy. The excessively complex notation of serial compositions led to the use of
approximate durations and proportional notation (for example Stockhausen's Zeitmasse
[1956] and Berio's Sequenza[1958]) and to an awareness of
the illogicality in using conventional notation to produce results that could only be approximate. In Europe, indeterminacy was initially applied only to time, and it was not until the
1960s that it would be used with the parameters of pitch, form
and means. These changes inevitably led to an openness towards the role of notation and the development of graphic
scores and a shift by performers towards a more improvisational role. Gy6rgy Ligeti, who along with Iannis Xenakis
openly attacked serialism [5], developed the idea that a work's
formal shape is more dependent upon matters of texture and
timbre than harmony, counterpoint or thematic working (for
example, in Atmosphresfor orchestra [1961] and Voluminafor
organ [1961-1962]). The implementation of large-scale forms
of timbral control and associated performance techniques
(such as also in Stockhausen's Carre [1959-1960] and
Penderecki's Threnos [1960]) further contributed to the
changing roles of notation and performance.
In contrast to, but in tandem with, the collapse in Europe
of the modernist linear development towards increasing control, American music had already begun undergoing a radical
rethinking. Starting in 1950, John Cage's applications of Zen
philosophy aimed to rid his compositions of intention and to
let sounds simply be "themselves." Cage used chance operations (indeterminacy being applied to all parameters, in contrast to its gradual application in Europe) to derive the content of compositions as he sought to achieve "a musical
composition the continuity of which is free of individual taste
and memory (psychology) and also of which is free of the literature and 'traditions' of the art" [6]. Cage, along with
Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and Christian Wolff, initiated
Matthew Sansom, Department of Music, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NEI 7RU, U.K E-mail: <[email protected]>.
LEONARDO MUSICJOURNAL, Vol. 11, pp. 29-34, 2001
29
changes of attitude toward: the percep- score Treatise(1963-1967) that "Psychotion of what can be experienced as mu- logically the existence of Treatiseis fully
explained by the situation of the comsically significant, be it environmental
other
chance
"silence"
and/or
sound,
poser who is not in a position to make
sound events; the possibilities of graphic music" [8]. Cardew further explored the
acute questioning of the processes of
notation (pre-empting many developments in Europe); and the role of the composition and performance that such
composer in relation to ideas of music large-scale indeterminacy provoked in
as performance rather than prescrip- joining the experimental improvising
tion, as a unique event or "happening" (or "free improvisation") group AMM in
1966. Later he wrote,
rather than a permanent "work."
Inevitably there was a degree of crossWrittencompositionsare fired off into
fertilization between Europe and the
the future; even if never performed,
U.S.A. during the 1950s, but America's
the writingremainsas a point of reference. Improvisationis in the present,
weaker demands of history and tradition,
its effectsmaylive on in the solos of the
coupled with Cage's artistic vision, estabparticipants, both active and passive
lished its place in more experimental ap(i.e. audience), but in its concrete
form it is gone forever from the moproaches to music. Philosophical goals
ment that it occurs,nor did it have any
fundamentally different from those of
previousexistence before the moment
the developmental and rationalist Eurothat it occurred,so neither is there any
tradition
new
pean
generated
possibilihistoricalreference available[9].
ties of musical thought. In distinguishing
between the "avant-garde"and "experiIn Cardew's work with AMM, the inmental," the English composer Michael fluences of serialism and the European
tradition, American indeterminacy and
Nyman wrote in the early 1970s,
the experimental tradition and jazz
Experimental composers are by and
came together to form a "radically diflarge not concerned with prescribinga
defined time-objectwhose materials,
ferent kind of music-making" [10]. Alstructuringand relationshipsare calcuthough the improvised music that
lated and arrangedin advance,but are
emerged from this group-once called
more excited by the prospectof outlin"John Cage jazz" [11]-reflected many
a
in
ocsituation
which
sounds
may
ing
cur, a processof generating action
Cageian ideals, it differed with respect
to emotional intent, impact and re(sounding or otherwise), a field delineated by certain compositional"rules"
sponse. For Cage, the absence of such
[7].
qualities informed his aesthetic stance
and
The notion that a certain process
compositional process, whereas
AMM
accepted emotion in music as a
might generate action has close affinities with free improvisation and will be possible dimension for meaning to inreturned to; at this point, however, it is habit [12]. Also, although indetermipertinent to provide some detail about nacy, or rather each musician's choice to
the English composer and contempoincorporate chance events, was central
to their music, it was wholly different
of
Cardew.
Cornelius
rary Nyman,
from the compositional indeterminacy
of such works as Stockhausen's Aus den
RADICALLY DIFFERENT
sieben Tag (1968). As Eddie Pr6vost, a
MUSIC-MAKING
longtime member of AMM, wrote,
Cardew's early works are serial composi- "AMM differed from all such projects
tions (two string trios [1955-1956] and because it denied all external authority
three piano sonatas [1955-1958]), but and resisted attempts to impose their
after a short period as Stockhausen's as- will upon events" [13].
A final historical point needs to be
sistant (1958) and contact with John
Cage and David Tudor at the Darmstadt made here (with reference to the title of
composition courses of 1959, he aban- this volume of LMJ) concerning the indoned serialism. Composing TwoBooks ternational status of free improvisation
of Studyfor Pianists (1959)-a work that during the 1960s. Before the formation
of AMM, Lukas Foss was working in the
engages the performer intellectually,
U.S.A. with his Improvisation Chamber
technically and aesthetically through
notational innovations and complex in- Ensemble. In his 1963 article "The
structions-he began exercising a more Changing Composer-Performer Relaexperimental and strongly ideological
tionship: A Monologue and a Dialogue"
approach to composition and music that [14], he identified free improvisation as
would lead him to an involvement with one area in which the traditional duality
freely improvised music. Cardew wrote between composer and performer was
of his vast and intricately crafted graphic being questioned, raising many new is-
30
Sansom,ImagingMusic
sues for contemporary music-new
ideas for coordination, performance
problems, conducting techniques and
instrumental discoveries. Additionally,
from the early 1960s, the international
Fluxus movement further conflated the
traditional categories associated with
musical practice [15].
Returning to England, mention should
also be made of Gavin Bryars (later to
work with Cage and Cardew), Tony Oxley
and Derek Bailey,who also worked within
the field of improvisation during this period: between 1963 and 1966, their musical explorations shifted from more obviously idiomatic jazz to freely improvised
music (or "non-idiomatic improvisation,"
to use Bailey's term [16]).
This contextualization reveals free improvisation as a specific and definable
activity,displaying an awareness of music
as a unique sound event; acknowledging
and exploring the role and significance
of the performer as creator/composer
without the dictates of notation, graphic
or otherwise; incorporating the use of
chance, encouraging the use of elements outside conscious and deliberate
control; and exhibiting an openness to
the totality of sounds-both as an exploratory approach in conjunction with
experimental instrumental techniques
and in relation to environmental context (not only aurally but also in other
fields of awareness).
MUSIC AND THE VISUAL ARTS
Having located, albeit briefly, free improvisation within Western music history,
I now consider its relation to certain historical, conceptual and procedural aspects of the visual arts during the twentieth century. It should be noted that this
connection with the visual arts has a historical and explicitly practical root in
much of the work carried out in the art
schools of Great Britain at the end of the
1960s and early 1970s [17]. Colleges in
Leeds, London, Liverpool, Falmouth,
Portsmouth and elsewhere became
homes for much experimental musicmaking thanks to visits from composers
and performers such as Cardew, John
Tilbury, Howard Skempton, Gavin
Bryars and Christian Wolff [18]. That
said, I compare here the activity of free
improvisation (in no sense as the unique
embodiment of experimental music, but
rather as having a key role in the project
of rethinking music and the subject matter of art) with certain approaches evident in the visual arts during the twentieth century. Such a comparison provides
insight into the nature of free
improvisation's creative dynamics of production and its artistic agenda and aesthetic basis. Significantly, this approach
also helps identify specific aspects of the
creative process in music (an area typically avoided due to traditional categorizations and the "splitting-off"of composition as a specialist activity).
The development of modern abstract
art provides certain obvious and strong
parallels with the musical issues already
considered. The prior destructuring of tonality at the turn of the century can also
be considered (less helpfully, I would argue) alongside the destructuringof representation in the visual art of the same period. Abstraction dealt exclusively with
art's own intrinsic formal language of
line, tone, color, surface texture and composition; and this new mode of presentation demanded a new aesthetic response.
The origins of, and issues within, these developments are central to art history and
were a significant influence upon the music emerging during the 1950s and 1960s.
This is especially so in the work of Cage
and the phenomenon of free improvisation, providing related (but distinct) resolutions to some of the aesthetic and creative problems raised by the destructuring
of art's "subjectmatter" [19].
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, a number of artistic movements developed new forms, procedures
and theories of art. It is in the ideas and
practices of the Surrealist movement
that the most significant parallels between improvisation and Abstract Expressionism have their origin. Surrealism, which arose in Paris from the
dwindling Dada movement with its cynicism towards bourgeois rationalism and
its nihilistic outlook, took onboard the
ideas of Freud and the unconscious as a
means of liberating the imagination
from what they believed to be the crippling effects of logic and reason. With
little regard for Freud's models, the Surrealists sought to break the barrier between consciousness and the unconscious, maintained as they saw it only for
the sake of order and control, through
dreams and automatic writing. The following conclusive definition is from the
first Surrealist Manifesto written by the
poet Andre Breton in 1924: "SURREALISM, noun. Pure psychic automatism by
which it is intended to express, either
verbally or in writing, the true function
of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason,
and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations" [20].
The Freeing of Form: New
Procedures
Breton's first attempts at automatic writing (1919) [21], which share an affinity
with Freud's clinical method of free association, came to the attention of artists
Joan Mir6 and Andre Masson. Along
with Max Ernst, they developed new procedures as direct counterparts to automatic writing. Masson stated of his technique that "I begin without an image or
plan in mind, butjust draw or paint rapidly according to my impulses. Gradually, in the marks I make, I see suggestions of figures or objects. I encourage
these to emerge, trying to bring out
their implications ...." [22] Masson's
interest was in the point at which a line
was in the process of becomingsomething
else, and he went on to develop the
method of automatic painting in a series
of sand paintings. Having roughly
spread glue over the canvas, he would
throw sand on and shake it off, then use
lines and patches of color to evoke the
suggested images.
Similarly, Ernst began using materials
such as sacking, leaves and thread to
construct images from an initial frottage. Frottage was used as a means of
excluding all conscious mental guidance (of reason,taste,morals),reducing
to the extreme the active part of that
one whomwe havecalledup to now the
"author"of the work,the procedureis
revealed to be the exact equivalent of
thatwhichis alreadyknownby the term
automaticwriting [23].
Again, the significance of the procedures employed by the Surrealists was
revealed when Mir6 wrote: "I begin
painting, and as I paint the picture begins to assert itself, or suggest itself, under my brush. The form becomes a sign
for a woman or a bird as I work. The first
stage is free, unconscious...." [24]
Surrealism's fixation with dream imagery and the use of "automatic" methods of working established the significance of the unconscious, both as a
present force in everyday life and more
importantly as a source of direction in
artistic production. These procedures,
along with the use of unusual materials,
discouraged deliberate control and encouraged the emergence of more unconscious imagery. Such factors provide
significant similarities with the procedures of free improvisation, and the previous descriptions of automatic painting
are strongly evocative of the processes of
free improvisation. A description by
Cardew highlights this: "Weare searching
for sounds and for the responses that at-
tach to them, rather than thinking them
up, preparing them and producing
them. The search is conducted in the
medium of sound and the musician
himself is at the heart of the experiment" [25]. As percussionist Frank Perry
has stated, "improvisation has meant the
freeing of form that it may more readily
accommodate my imagination" [26].
There is a shared attitude towards the
possibilities of each medium's material
make-up: from the incorporation of
found and environmental objects to new
ways of using more traditional elements
(for example, in Ernst's use of paint
straight from the tube or the unconventional use of a musical instrument).
During the years that followed, a
number of factors influenced the
course of Surrealism, most notably the
pre-World War II immigrations of the
European Surrealists to America. Works
by the likes of Ernst and Masson were
now a direct presence within the American art world. During the 1930s and
1940s the crisis over art's subject matter
was an ever-present issue facing the artist: the American painter Adolph
Gottlieb said at the time, "the situation
was so bad I know I felt free to try anything, no matter how absurd it seemed"
[27]. As with Surrealism, the emerging
aesthetic emphasized the artist's capacity for self-expression and rejected the
supremacy of the intellect, carrying forward the well-established ideal that
maximum
spontaneity
would
express
the deepest levels of being. Art functioned as a form of self-realization
"through which they [artists] could redeem their alienation from society and
from the given aesthetic tradition" [28].
With this came a new emphasis on the
"act of painting." Appropriating the notion of pure intention within the activity
of mark-making (a key interest being
Eastern art and in particular Chinese
calligraphy [29]), artists emphasized
the qualities existing within the activity
of painting-its "happening." Other influences included the drawings of children and psychotics, following the idea
that an over-developed conscious mind
could hinder the spontaneous expression of the imagination [30].
Material Facture and Form
The term Abstract Expressionism, like
most such classifications, covers the
work of a number of artists from different countries over several years. The Oxford Companionto Art states,
Though the diversity of the work of
these artists makes it less susceptible
Sansom, Imaging Music
31
than most schools to be confined
within any general formula, the essence of Abstract Expressionism may
perhaps be summed up as imageless
and anti-formpainting, improvisatory,
dynamic, energetic, and free in technique, tending to stimulate vision
ratherthan gratifyestablishedconventions of good taste [31].
Equivalents can be observed in the
way formal qualities of structured harmony, melody, rhythm, etc. exist within
freely improvised music. The inevitable
presence of such qualities is secondary
to the exploratory processes emphasized
in the act of music's creation. Formal
qualities are experienced and evaluated
as emergent (unconscious) and arbitrary (chance) elements (i.e. based on
the quality and nature of the experience
over-and-above an intellectual justification based on historic references and/
or specific idiomatic context), in much
the same way as the paintings of Abstract
Expressionism, whether action painting,
color-field painting, gestural/lyrical expressionism, matter painting, art brut,
etc. The emphasis upon process and
material qualities enabled by "freedom"
from the image and more (traditionally)
formal concerns is paralleled by "freedom" from functional harmony and/or
traditional modes of compositional construction, resulting in a direct engagement with the medium of sound and the
processes of musical creation.
The legacy and significance of Surrealism within AbstractExpressionism continued with the emphasis placed upon images of the unconscious [32], the value of
"psychicautomatism,"a distrustfor overly
polished technique and a pronounced
taste for disintegration and horror [33].
Methods of production that facilitated
the relaxation of conscious control remained a central concern. Sentiments
similar to Masson's fascination with the
metamorphosis and transformation of
images within the painting process are
expressed by both Jackson Pollock and
Robert Motherwell. Pollock said,
When I am painting, I have a general
notion as to whatI am about. I cancontrol the flow of the paint: there is no
accident.... I haveno fearsaboutmaking changes,destroyingthe image, etc.,
because the painting has a life of its
own. I try to let it come through [34].
Motherwell thought of the process of
painting as "an adventure, without preconceived ideas, on the part of persons
of intelligence, sensibility and passion.
Fidelity to what occurs between oneself
and the canvas, no matter how unexpected, becomes central" [35].
32
Sansom, Imaging Music
The spontaneous emergence of forms
through the free handling of paint is
paralleled musically by the way in which
formal, idiomatic and/or traditionally
functional elements occur in freely improvised music. Free improvisation, as a
"language spontaneously developed
amongst the players and between players
and listeners" [36], has no stylistic or idiomatic commitment to fulfill and yet
maintains the potential to reveal a particular musician's history (be it psychical, emotional, physical or musical). The
improvising guitarist Derek Bailey holds
that while there is no prescribed idiomatic sound to free improvisation, its characteristics are established by the sonicmusical identity of the person playing
[37]. The intensity of the interactions
between the artist and medium and the
dynamic of emergent qualities represent
the central focus of both art forms [38].
Structurally, freely improvised music is
characterized by the exploration of the
relationships between order and disorder, with differences of emphasis existing from performer to performer and
from group to group: it is inevitable that
references to and occurrences of more
idiomatic, familiar and/or repetitive material will be viewed with a variety of attitudes and aesthetic concerns [39]. Continuing the analogy, within Abstract
Expressionist art there exists a varying
importance placed upon the role of the
image. For example, the English painter
Francis Bacon, who employed trance-like
states to create his work, came to criticize
Pollock for failing to return to and work
with the images discovered through
chance procedures and created by the
paint itself [40]. One can clearly observe
such differences of approach in the
paintings of Pollock and Bacon, and, as a
further example, across the oeuvre of
Wassily Kandinsky. Significantly, such
comparisons and examples reveal a dynamic tension existing between what has
been described by (and explored in the
work of) Anton Ehrenzweig as articulate
(conscious) and inarticulate (unconscious) form [41].
THE AESTHETICS
OF PRESENCE
The influence of the Orient has already
been identified in relation to art history, Cage's music and free improvisation. The philosophy of Zen Buddhism,
the aesthetic of Chinese poetry (in
which the quality of the brush-stroke is
of equal importance to literary content) and the I Ching all aided the de-
velopment of strategies and techniques
that encouraged movement away from
conventional teachings and aesthetic
concerns. Eddie Pr(vost explicitly acknowledges these influences upon the
musicians of AMM, in particular Chinese calligraphy [42]. In visual arts,
Mark Tobey, for example, was devoted
to the study of East Asian painting-visiting China and Japan, living in a Zen
monastery for a month and converting
to the Baha'i World Faith-as a means
of liberating his aesthetic development.
The directness and presence of the
mark-making in the work of artists such
as Hans Hartung and Franz Kline share
a similar sense of intention and energetic force present in the immediacy
and interactions of much freely improvised music. True to their Surrealist ori(classically,
gins, new techniques
Pollock's "drip" method) were developed to increase the subtlety of response to the artist's intuitive interactions with the canvas. Furthermore,
alternative materials were commonly
incorporated, such as burlap in the
work of Alberto Burri and Masson's use
of sand and glue referred to above.
Likewise, the use of musical instruments in unconventional
ways and
more unusual sound sources (from
children's toys to homemade electronic
devices) has become established means
of sound-production in freely improvised music.
Such approaches have expanded the
available vocabulary of sounds and textural possibilities and help to relax conscious control, diminishing the role of
learned responses/processes. This approach is exemplified by the use of the
electric guitar flat on its back, augmented with various pieces of electronics, metal, plastic and wood [43].
Prevost writes that this style of guitar
playing (that of AMM's Keith Rowe specifically) "enable[s] certain 'actions' to
be carried out, to let dribbles of sound
meander, collect in drowning pools of
volume or run off the edges into congealed silence" [44]. The comparison
with Pollock's "action painting" is both
obvious and intentional [45]. The primary purpose in both visual and aural
contexts is the transcendence of conventional physical, artistic and cultural
boundaries imposed by traditional maand procedures.
terials/instruments
This emphasis is also reflected in the
previously mentioned fascination with
"outsider art" and the dislike of technical virtuosity. In relation to this,
Dubuffet's comment that he
hold[s] to be useless all those types of
acquired skill and those gifts (such as
we are used to finding in the works of
professional painters) whose sole effect
seems to me to be that of extinguishing
all spontaneity, switching off and condemning the work to inefficiency [46]
enjoys kinship with Cardew'sview that
technical mastery is of no intrinsic
value in music (or love). ... Elaborate
forms and a brilliance of technique
conceal a basic inhibition, a reluctance
to directly express love, a fear of selfexposure [47].
Art as an expression of the artist's
alienation from society and the given
aesthetic (especially important to the
Dada and Surrealist movements) led not
only to new procedures and new materials but to new forms. The disorientation
of the spectator aided the destruction of
conventional ways of understanding the
world and dealing with experiences according to preconceived patterns. Improvisation shares a similar strategy of
alienation: the aspiration to live beyond
forms of stifling institutionalized order-be it Western classical aesthetics
(Cage); white-dominated capitalist culture (jazz); or other commercial factors
and established aesthetic systems (the
"underground")-led to the emergence
of free improvisation and remains a key
aesthetic focus. The vast size of many
Abstract Expressionist paintings served
this end through the overpowering predominance of textural surface qualities
and their engulfing and disorientating
affect upon the spectator. Prevost states
that the notions of theory, practice, hierarchy and structure of the period were,
for AMM, replaced by a focus upon the
color and texture of sound (analogous
to a "painterly aesthetic"), a "soundworld in which there was not even a formal beginning and ending" [48].
CONCLUSION
It has already been said that the shift initiated by abstraction focused the subject
matter of art upon itself. Concern for
symbolism and iconography was replaced
by an engagement with abstract form.
Artists explored the nature and function
of art on its own terms through explorations of the medium's intrinsic formal
language of line, tone color, composition
and texture. In Abstract Expressionism
these elements are foregrounded alongside the (essentially modernist) agenda
of an artist seeking a maximum of interaction with these qualities as a means of
self-expression [49]. The breaking down
of functional and formal elements of the
"musical tradition" provides the musical
parallel to these developments. Cage's
Eastern-influenced aesthetics, jazz's
struggle with racism and capitalist control and reactions to integral serialism
contribute to the twentieth century's central theme of redefining the "content" of
works of art through an emphasis upon
what can be called material facture. Free
improvisation draws from these trends
and, along with Abstract Expressionism,
represents a highly personal and abstracted use of its medium (approached,
ultimately, as "sound").
Cardew's comparison of free improvisation with composed music views written compositions as historic reference
points to the music's concrete form; improvisation, on the other hand, has no
such reference to its concrete form [50].
The thesis here is that the paintings of
Abstract Expressionism can be viewed as
equivalent historic reference points for
the 1960s genre of "free improvisation."
By virtue of the similarity of processual
dynamics and artistic agenda, the concrete forms of Abstract Expressionism
can be approached as historical references, or indeed "scores"insofar as such
paintings can be understood in their
broadest sense as imagistic representations of past and potential performances
of free improvisation.
References and Notes
1. The mid-1950s style of Hard-Bop, largely indistinguishable in musical terms from its parent style of
Bop (Bebop), reaffirmed Bop's modernist intentions through continued and uncompromising adherence to melodic, harmonic and rhythmic density
as a reaction against "cool" and West Coast styles. In
relation to free jazz, Ekkehard Jost's analytic study
points out that its development cannot only be
linked to the playing of one or two outstanding musicians, but that the multiple influences of the time
are equally significant: "The influences felt in the
divergent personal styles of the Sixties encompass
musicians like Sidney Bechet, Ben Webster,
Thelonius Monk and Lennie Tristano as well as
Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Cage." Ekkehard Jost,
FreeJazz(New York:Da Capo Press, 1994) p. 11.
2.Jost [1] pp. 9-10.
3. Derek Bailey, Improvisation:Its Nature and Practice
in Music (New York: Da Capo Press, 1993) p. 55.
First published in 1980 by Moorland in association
with Incus Records.
4. Pierre Boulez, "Recherches maintenant," in
Relevesd'apprenti(Paris, 1966) pp. 27-32.
5. Paul Griffiths, Modern Music: The Avant Garde
Since 1945 (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1986) pp.
138-141.
6.John Cage, Silence:Lecturesand Writings(London:
Marion Boyars, 1987) p. 59. First published in
Great Britain in 1968 by Calder and Boyars.
9. Cornelius Cardew, TreatiseHandbook (London:
Edition Peters, 1971) p. xvii.
10. Edwin Prevost, No Sound Is Innocent:AMM and
the Practiceof Self-Invention.Meta-MusicalNarratives.
Essays. (Harlow, U.K.: Copula, 1995) p. 9.
11. The term was used by the music and concert
organizer Victor Schonfield. Prevost [10] p. 12.
12. Prevost [10] p. 14. It should be noted that this
"possible dimension" needs to be understood or
perhaps qualified in relation to the quote that follows in the main text, that "AMM. . . denied all external authority and resisted attempts to impose
their will upon events," a comment obviously directed against notions of authorial intent and "the
artist" but that nevertheless highlights an interesting and significant ambiguity.
13. Prevost [10] p. 13.
14. Lukas Foss, "The Changing Composer-Performer Relationship: A Monologue and a Dialogue," Perspectivesof NewMusic 1 (1963) pp. 45-53.
15. For a detailed consideration of links between
Fluxus and Cardew's "Scratch Orchestra," see
Michael Parsons's article, "The Scratch Orchestra
and the Visual Arts," in this issue of LMJ.
16. Bailey [3] pp. xi-xii.
17. For a detailed discussion of this the reader is,
again, referred to Parsons [15] and to Eddie
Prevost's article, "The Arrival Of A New Musical
Aesthetic: Extracts From A Half-Buried Diary,"also
in this issue of LMJ.
18. This is documented in Brian Eno's foreword to
the long-overdue second edition of Nyman's ExperimentalMusic: Cageand Beyond.Originally published
in 1974 [7] p. xi.
19. Although worthy of more detail than appropriate here, it is necessary to comment on the musical
arts' apparent time lag in the questioning and
destructuring of "content." In comparison to the
visual arts (and putting aside the issue of "representation" for art forms), "art"music and its "works"
have traditionally been more heavily mediated. The
musical event has its genesis with the genius composer, is stored in notation and is realized, after
much effort, by highly skilled performer-interpreters within specific and uniquely related performance contexts. From this perspective it can be argued that it was a smaller step for the visual arts to
turn the subject matter of art in upon itself and towards the material of the medium. The ossification
engendered by music's history required visionaries
and inter-disciplinarians (such as Cage and those
musician/artists working in the art schools of Britain) to unhinge musical experience and musical
understanding from the notation-based composerperformer "work"axis. Additionally, the displacement of notation, by advances in technology, as the
primary means of "music storage" has continued to
enhance and focus this paradigm shift.
20. Dawn Ades, "Dada and Surrealism," in David
toPost-Modernism
Britt, ed., ModernArt:Impressionism
(London: Thames & Hudson, 1992) p. 226. First
published in 1974.
21. Anna Elizabeth Balakian, in AndreBreton,Magus
Of Surrealism(NewYork: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971),
describes automatic writing as a process involving
"a triple convergence: the psychological concept of
the liberation of psychic inhibitions, the mathematical one of the coincidences of chance verbal
encounters, and the hermetic one of the oracular
function of the medium-poet," p. 61.
22. Ades [20] p. 229.
23. Ades [20] pp. 229-230.
7. Michael Nyman, ExperimentalMusic: Cageand Beyond (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1999) p. 4. First published in 1974 by Studio Vista,
Cassell, and Collier Macmillan, London.
25. Cardew [9] p. xviii.
8. Griffiths [5] p. 182.
26. Bailey [3] p. 112.
24. Ades [20] p. 231.
Sansom, Imaging Music
33
27. Anthony Everitt, "Abstract Expressionism," in
Britt [20] p. 253.
28. Everitt [27] p. 254.
29. Peter Wollen points out that Orientalism preceded Surrealism as the initial vehicle for a rejection of instrumental reason within the avant-garde,
and that there was "a strong transitional Orientalist
current at play within the Surrealist movement itself," in Raiding the Icebox:Reflectionson TwentiethCenturyCulture(London: Verso, 1993) p. 24.
dialoguing with other levels which I might call mind
and perception." [One could easily include the
term "unconscious."] "The thoughts and decisions
are sustained and modified by my physical potentials and vice versa but as soon as I try to define
these separately I run into problems. It is a meaningless enterprise for it is the very entanglement of
levels of perception, awareness and physicality that
makes improvisation." See Bailey [3] p. 108.
32. In the words ofJackson Pollock (from 1944): "I
am particularly impressed with their [the Surrealists'] concept of the source of art being the unconscious" Ades [20] pp. 249-250.
39. It seems that many free improvisers accept without question that extremes of chaos, and non-idiomatic and non-repetitive playing are what characterize their art and when idiomatic references or
repetitive, harmonically centred and/or clearly melodic content occurs, it is to be eradicated immediately. Alternatively, such events can be incorporated
as dimensions of the music's process (and hence its
ongoing and developing structural relationships). A
further distinction exists in groups who emphasize
texture, where repetition is key but functions quite
differently to the repetition of, for example, a
strong melodic and/or rhythmic idea. These
thoughts touch on an area left undeveloped in this
article. For further discussion of the relationship
between "unconscious" intuitive playing and the
more "conscious" intellectual manipulation of material, see Matthew Sansom, "Musical Meaning: A
Qualitative Investigation of Free Improvisation,"
Ph.D. Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1997.
33. Wollen [29] p. 72.
40. Wollen [29] p. 73.
34. Pollock quoted in Everitt [27] p. 265.
41. See Anton Ehrenzweig, The Hidden Orderof Art
(London: Weidenfeld, 1993). First published in
1967.
30. It should be noted that these developments
were also current within Europe. Although terms
differ (Abstract Expressionism being more usually
applied to American painters, with Gestural or Lyrical Abstraction more often used to describe European "equivalents") Surrealism and its associated
influences resulted in similar painting-styles on
both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, it was the French
artistJean Dubuffet who coined the term "artbrut"
(raw or crude art) after his fascination with the art
of children, psychotics, and amateurs.
31. Harold Osborne, ed., The OxfordCompanionto
Art (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970) p. 4.
35. Motherwell quoted in Everitt [27] p. 266.
36. Cardew [9] p. xx.
37. Bailey [3] p. 83.
38. The following description by flautistJim Denley
of the improvisational process provides a musical
example of the way in which artist and medium can,
in a sense, exchange autonomy and influence one
another. "Mylungs, lips, finger, voice box and their
working together with their potentials of sound are
34
Sansom,Imaging Music
42. Prevost [10] p. 15.
43. I once heard this type of playing referred to,
somewhat disparagingly but not inaccurately historically, as "70s art-school playing."
44. Prevost [10] p. 17.
45. The comparison with Pollock's "action paint-
ing" is not a new one. In 1967 Lukas Foss wrote of
group improvisation: "One might call it 'ActionMusic' . . . Chamber improvisation lays the emphasis on the 'performance' resulting from the situation, and puts the responsibility for the choices
squarely on the shoulders of the performer. It bypasses the composer. It is composition become performance, performer's music." Reginald Smith
Brindle, The New Music: The Avant-GardeSince 1945
(Oxford, U.K.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990) p. 86.
First published in 1987.
46. Everitt [27] p. 287.
47. Cardew [9] pp. xviii-xix.
48. Prevost [10] p. 9.
49. The emergence and success of modernist abstraction should, of course, be seen in relation to
the re-institution of realism in Stalinist and Nazi totalitarian art. This move served to confirm modernist abstraction as the alternative style of the democratic free world, banishing realism for good.
50. Cardew [9] p. xvii.
Manuscript received 28 December 2000.
Matthew Sansom is a Lecturer in Music at
the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Alongside wide research interests that
include creativity, musical meaning, popular
music and club culture, he is an accomplished saxophonist (specializing in free improvisation) and DJ and produces studioand groove-based electronic music.