In writing an email to a friend, the following thought occurred to me that seems worthy of further engagement, viz., might there be a number of interesting parallels between the increasing attempt to logically arrange the major theological loci into a comprehensive systematic whole [e.g., the movement from Lombard's Sentences to St. Thomas' ST and beyond] and the increased sophistication in musical notation which had the effect of diminishing the practice of improvisation and creating an image of improvisation as intellectually substandard, as well as producing sharp dichotomies (at least in the Western way of thinking about music) between our ideas of (1) improvisation and composition, (2) the composer and the performer, and (3) the musical score and the (one correct) interpretation of that score.
According to Jeremy Begbie in Theology, Music, and Time the majority of academic writings on music have been commentaries on written scores. Though this is understandable given the difficulty of reconstructing music that is not written out prior to the invention of recording devices, it has nonetheless produced an extremely one-sided view of the history of musical practices.[1] To cite one well-known example, many music scholars have brought to our attention that even following the development of music notation, we find composers such as J.S. Bach, Handel, and Mozart highly skilled in the art of improvisation and expecting those who performed their pieces to possess this skill as well. Tracing some of the possible reasons why improvisation’s high reputation and regard began to wane, Begbie points to the increasing sophistication of notation, as concerts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gained in notoriety. Even the improvised solos sections purposely crafted by composers to display the talent of highly gifted soloists were with time significantly diminished by written solos.[2] Although this increase in notation severely diminished opportunities for improvising in classical music, the improvisatory elements even in meticulously notated music cannot be totally removed so long as human beings are the performers. Avid music listeners can attest that whether speaking of an individual soloist or a orchestral unit, the personalities, stylistic particularities, and interpretative nuances manifest in the actual performance a musical work all contribute a degree of creative liberty that falls within the sphere of improvisation broadly construed. With Begbie, I tend to agree that
All this suggests that the customary picture of improvisation as a discrete and relatively frivolous activity on the fringes of music-making might need to be replaced by one which accords it a more serious and central place. Instead of regarding thoroughly notated and planned music as the norm and improvisation as an unfortunate epiphenomenon or even aberration, it might be wiser to recall the pervasiveness of improvisation and ask whether it might be able to reveal fundamental aspects of musical creativity easily forgotten in traditions bound predominantly to extensive notation and rehearsal.[3]
[1] Ibid., p. 181. [2] Ibid., pp. 182-83. [3] Ibid., p. 182.
