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LosingControl: Indeterminacy and Improvisation in Music Since 1950 Althoughone can observe indeterminate moments in many works of the performingarts throughout the centuries, "indeterminacy" was not partof the musical vocabulary until the late 1950s. It was mainly used inmathematics, physics, biology, linguistics, philosophy, andjurisprudence and it means "having inexact limits,""indefinite," "indistinct," "unsettled."JohnCage was one ofthe first to use the word "indeterminacy" in musicalcontexts and used indeterminacy as a compositional dimension withregard to performance. In his 1958 essay, "Indeterminacy?????? "he presented and explained compositions indeterminate with respect totheir performance such as Bach'sArtof the Fuguewhich lacks specific instrumentation. One of Cage's most significantindeterminate compositions is his Concertfor Piano and Orchestra(1957/58) which is a collection of individual parts consisting ofambiguous notations, and no score. The number of passages to beplayed, the order of the sections and the duration of the whole work,for instance, are left to the performers' choice. One could assumethat the indeterminate graph notations might allow for someimprovisation. But Cage objected to improvisatory techniquesstrongly: "Improvisation? is something that I want to avoid.Most people who improvise slip back into their likes and dislikes andtheir memory, and? they don't arrive at any revelation that theyare unaware of."(1)His indeterminate pieces ask the performer for responsibility,discipline, and compositional decisions within the framework thatCage designed. Cage is well-known for his use of chance operations(for instance by tossing coins) which are part of his compositionalprocesses and come into focus after defining materials and designingsystems and rules for the application of chance procedures. Yetchance operations and indeterminacy are two different things, as Cageexplains: "Bringing about indeterminacy is bringing about asituation in which things would happen that are not under my control.Chance operations can guide me to a specific result, like the Musicof Changes. An example of indeterminacy is any one of the piecesin a series called Variations which resemble cameras thatdon't tell you what picture to take but enable you to take apicture?"(2) Fora long time Cage viewed his concepts of chance operations andindeterminacy as not compatible with improvisation. Yet in theseventies he reconsidered improvisation: "Chance operations area discipline, and improvisation is rarely a discipline. Though at thepresent time it's one of my concerns, how to make improvisation adiscipline. But I mean doing something beyond the control of theego."(3)Cage's goal was to free improvisation from taste and memory, likesand dislikes Childof Tree(1975), Branches(1976) or? Inlets (1977) the players have to make discoverieswith unfamiliar materials such as plants or conch shells. In the caseof Inlets, for three performers with partly filled conchshells and a fire live or recorded the players moving and turning theconch shells have no control over the occurrence of the gurgles andtheir rhythms. Cagecalled this new improvisational concept "structural"improvisation and explained: "What delights me in this thing?is that the performer, the improviser, and the listener too arediscovering the nature of the structure? Improvisation? that isto say not thinking, not using chance operations, just letting thesound be, in the space, in order that the space can be differentiatedfrom the next space which won't have that sound in it."(4)This definition of improvisation which seems to have nothing incommon with the conventional idea of improvisation actually comesvery close to its etymological meaning: "to bring forward theunforeseeable," it comes also close to the notion of "creatingsounds extempore without any preparation." Incidentallythe score of Inlets is one of the few indeterminate notationsby Cage allowing for improvisation. What did Cage, whose works areoften declared as aleatorypieces, actually think about aleatory? He rejected it. When askedabout his view of aleatory, he stated that, PierreBoulez broughtit up in his polemic essay "Alea" (1957) to distinguishbetween the right and the wrong use of chance operations, the wronguse being Cage's approach.(5) Theconcept of "aleatory" was preferred by European composers,among them PierreBoulez, WitoldLutoslawski andFrancoEvangelisti. Itwas first used by Werner Meyer-Eppler in the context ofelectro-acoustics and information theory for describing a course ofsound events that is determined in its framework and flexible indetail.(6)Aleatory, a word derived from the latin alea, has manydifferent meanings such as dice, gameof dice, risk,danger, bad surprise, and chance. Most composers using aleatoryreferred to the meaning of chance, but some composers referred tomeanings like risk (for instance Evangelisti) and dice (HenriPousseurcomposed a piece called Repons pour sept musiciens,1960, where performers throw dice for sheets of music and cues, aprocedure similar to pieces by Kirnbergeror Mozartin which the order of the measures is determined by throwing adice.). Many composers thought they dealt with chance and createdchance compositions when they allowed for greater performanceflexibility. None of them used chance operations as Cage did. Sincemany composers were skeptical about "pure" chance and mereaccident they came up with the idea of "controlled chance"and "limited aleatorism" (preferred by Lutoslawski). Inhis Third Piano Sonata (1955/57), for instance, Boulez tried "toabsorb" chance, that is "controlled chance" for thefirst time. While composing that piece he intentionally allowed forcertain "automatisms" or variability in serialstructures. Andhe introduced some limited liberties with respect to performance suchas the flexible order of sound events (mobility) and multiplecombinations of certain structures, similar to Stockhausen'sKlavierstuck XI (1956). Inspired by literary works of Mallarmeand Joyce,Boulez compared his sonata to a labyrinth where the performer canchoose different ways to get through the piece. Yet, unlike inStockhausen's Klavierstuck XI, Boulez's choices are much morelimited. Stockhausen actually wants the performer to play thesections he accidentally looks at. Insome earlier works Boulez aimed at the appearance of improvisationand spontaneity when he, in regard to some sections of his Livrepour quatuor (1948/49) and Lemarteau sans maitre(1953/53), asked the performers to make it sound improvised, so thatone does not hear the hard work, but experiences an impression offlexibility.(7)This reminds one of efforts to construct and suggest improvisation insuch forms as the impromptu, toccata, or fantasia. However, in 1957Boulez explored improvisation further as he composed hisImprovisations sur Mallarme I, II and III. Each of thethree pieces presents one of Boulez's interpretations ofimprovisation. The first represents the zero point of improvisationand therefore offers the performer no liberties. The secondimprovisation includes certain flexible tempos. The third piece whichis the culminating point of improvisation offers choices betweenvarious melodic lines, alternative passages which can be performedwith or without a vocal part. Yet Boulez withdrew this daring scoreof 1959, revised it, and eliminated most aspects of mobility. Boulez'sconcepts of controlled chance, aleatory, and improvisation coincideand refer to a dimension of flexibility in music (if some of hisso-called improvisation is not bare construction and make-believe).Boulez, doubtless, rejects all the other types of improvisation incontemporary music, in particular "free" improvisation. Heconsiders the latter a psycho-drama consisting of indifferent soundevents since the memory cannot mix certain elements. LosingControl: Indeterminacy and Improvisation in Music Since 1950 Afurther concept which came up in the late fifties was "openform" or "musique informelle." Open means"unfinished," "indeterminate," "accessible,""available," or "liberal." Since form, a wordrooted in visual imagination, means shape, outline, or mold whichgives shape to materials, the expression "open form" seemscontradictory and abstract. When consisting of mixed formal elements,works of the past by Mozartand CharlesIves, forinstance, were declared to be pieces with open form (Adorno,Wolff).(8)Certain serialcompositions, often accused of being devoid of form, were consideredharbingers of open form. Their form seemed to be the result ofchance. Yet, "open form" refers rather to a certain degreeof indeterminacy in a work, notation, structure, content, material,and only rarely to the traditional concept of form. Open form mostlypoints toward the interchangeability of parts with determined details(Stockhausen,Klavierstuck XI) or to the variability of details whereby thecourse of the piece is determined. HenryCowell actuallycan be considered a pioneer of open form techniques. The fivemovements of his MosaicQuartet of1935 can be played in any desired order. EarleBrown was amongthe first to claim the term open form for a number of hiscompositions. Influenced by AlexanderCalder'smobiles, he aimed at a great mobility of musical elements. He alsoattached considerable importance to spontaneity and improvisationsince he had a jazz background. Brown's open form piece December1952, partof the seven-piece set Folio (1952-53), provides one of theearliest and most famous examples of graph scores. The notation ofDecember 1952 is ambiguous. Horizontally and verticallyarranged thin and thick lines offer the performer extremely littleinformation. The musical content, material, structure, form andinstrumentation are not fixed and musicians, according to Brown, ""[have to improvise] the sound materials relative to the verysimple graphic implications of the score."(9)Later Brown questioned whether "open form" was an adequateterm for this approach or whether he should have called it "soloor collective improvisations based on graphic implications"since the content was not fixed.(10) December1952 is not representative of Brown's approach to open form.Numerous compositions written after the Folio pieces such asTwenty-five Pages for piano (1953) or Available Forms Iand II for orchestra show more or less worked-out segments ofwhich the order is left open. After 1953 Brown incorporatedopportunities to improvise only occasionally as in String Quartet(1965) and Centering for violin and chamber orchestra (1973). Brownexplored open form possibilities extensively and improvisation to acertain degree, yet he dissociated himself from concepts of aleatoryand chance. In an interview he stated: "I don't use chance! Doyou think Indian music is chance-music? Do you think jazz ischance-music? ? When you conduct my open-form pieces, you are notdoing it by chance. You're doing it because you want the next thingto happen. Because you think it's right. And that's what animproviser does. It's what a composer does who writes closed-formmusic: but he does it in his room upstairs, rather than doing it onstage? There's a huge difference between improvisation (spontaneousdecisions) and chance. Chance really has to be an exterior, objectivething."(11) LosingControl: Indeterminacy and Improvisation in Music Since 1950 Besidesindeterminacy,aleatory,and openform, in thefifties, the concept of experimental music came into focus. Yet,"experiment" and "experimental" were used muchearlier as negative descriptions for new compositions that did notcorrespond to conventional ideals. The word "experiment"indeed connotes risk, trial, unexpected and preliminary outcomes,failure, success, skepticism, and pragmatism. It also refers toscientific research and proof. Since about 1950 experimental musichas served as a general term for electro-acoustic music emphasizingthe relationship of musical composition and scientific research. Themusical experiment can refer to pre-composition, composition,performance, and the act of listening. Improvisations and musicalexperiments, however, not only share common connotations, but theyare often and in various ways related to one another (if, forinstance, their outcome is unpredictable). Forcomposers like CorneliusCardew, FredericRzewski, AlvinCurran, andRichardTeitelbaum,improvisation and experimentation became the main focus in the latefifties and sixties. All of them were involved in improvisationgroups such as AMM,ScratchOrchestra, andMusicaElettronica Viva(MEV). The latter ensemble, founded in 1966 in Rome, set out toexplore possibilities of improvisation and live-electronics. Similarto the British ensembles AMM and Scratch Orchestra, MEV experimentedwith "free improvisation, street music, theater, collaborationswith untrained musicians, and audience participation." It usedindividual compositions, indeterminate scores, verbal instructions,sketches, tapes, and produced sounds with conventional and electronicinstruments, household devices, everyday objects, and sounds throughintermodulation and biofeedback. Incorporating these ingredients intoan ongoing sound flow lasting several hours, the group's goal was tobring about unpredictable musical situations and make discoveries.Teitelbaum, a founding member of MEV and involved in experimentationand improvisation until today, was particularly interested inbiofeedback sounds, which he derived from brainwaves, heartbeat, andbreathing, as well as muscle movements which he manipulated with hisMoogsynthesizer. In1967, he composed In Tune for brainwaves, heartbeat,breathing, and synthesizer, which is based on numerous experimentsinvolving the physical and psychological effects of playing throughelectronic instruments and circuitry. Experimentsand improvisation as spontaneous reactions to the sounds, "doubles"coming out of the speakers, are part of the performance. Teitelbaumdescribed the realizations of In Tune as follows: "Weexperimented increasingly with more conscious means of feedbackcontrol? we also expanded the piece to allow group performances byas many as six or eight performers, all simultaneouslyinterconnected. Often these were structured in pairs?a marriedcouple feeding back alpha to each other, another playing a heartbeatduet, etc. Gradually influenced by the aesthetic bent of the group atthe time, which was very much towards expressive improvisation, theserealizations of In Tune became highly 'performed,'expressionistic even aggressive. Such 'bio-musical' improvisationsoften contained vocal and instrumental sounds extraneous to thebiological ones, as well as intentional muscle movements by theperformers, producing artifacts in the circuit."(12) Experiencedin jazz improvisation and non-western musical practice (shakuhachi,West-Africanpercussion,Javanesegamelan),Teitelbaum nowadays prefers the concept of "real-timecomposition" in particular with respect to his more recentpieces based on interactive computer improvisation. Such real-timecompositions require pre-compositional preparations as providing setsof instructions, presets, patches, and even the design of thesoftware. During a performance the computer transforms Teitelbaum'simprovisations, for instance, through "long-term delays,multiple processes that extend a line or a note, or can store aphrase or an entire section when played to be brought back later inthe piece." His improvisations, which Teitelbaum considersreflections of the subconscious (similar to automatic writing) arenot identical with real-time composition: "People talk aboutimprovisation as real-time composition. But if you can control, in asingle gesture, something that's going to happen ten seconds or tenminutes later, you start to be able to control the broader structurallevels, and it really does become much more like composition."(13) LosingControl: Indeterminacy and Improvisation in Music Since 1950 Meditationprimarily denotes "thinking over," "contemplation,""mental or solemn reflection," and "practice."The phenomenon of musical meditation, however, was not completely newin the sixties. CharlesGounod andOlivierMessiaen, forinstance, composed pieces entitled "meditation" in aChristian-mystic spirit.(14)Meditation can refer to the process of composition (as in the case ofGiacintoScelsi), toperformance and to the effects on the listener. Ajazz saxophonist in the fifties, LaMonte Youngfocuses in his musical projects mainly on improvisation. In the latefifties he became more and more interested in Indian, Japanese andIndonesian music and studied theoretical treatises like TheGrammar of South Indian (or Karnatic) Music by Iyyar. Butalready before he began taking lessons in ragasinging (Kiranastyle) with PanditPran Nath in1970, he had found his characteristic improvisational approach tocomposition. Concerning works like Map of 49's Dream The TwoSystems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental LightyearsTracery (started in 1966) for voice, various instruments and sinewaves, he provided his ensemble TheTheatre of Eternal Music(1962), not with scores, but oral instructions. Each player has tomemorize the selected and allowed tone combinations and improvisetheir durations and cues. Every realization of this conceptionprovides, through improvisation, a new variation, which is considereda new autonomous composition and which is recorded, titled andcatalogued. The Second Dream of The High Tension Line StepdownTransformer (The Melodic Version) for tunable and sustaininginstruments of like timbre is based on a similar technique: ?Withina framework of fixed rules, the musicians listen to each other andimprovise durations and cues.? Manyperformances of Young's pieces took place in the so-called DreamHouse, alocation specially designed and lighted by his wife, MarianZazeela. Hereina generator incessantly produced sine waves and 80 to 90 musicianscould join in and continuously improvise virtually for weeks, months,and years aspiring toward Young's idea of "eternal music."Listeners could come and go at any time and gain from a meditativeatmosphere. Young considered his "organically evolvingimprovisations [as] approach to meditation in sound." He wasinterested in a "Yogicapproach to meditation through concentration." (whereas the Zenapproach would be to clear the mind.) and while improvising heendeavored to "[get] inside the sound" so that his body wasno longer perceivable. Incomparison, PaulineOliveros who hasalso dealt with improvisation throughout her career, began todiscover meditation techniques as compositional material in thesixties. Influenced by her TaiChi Chuanteacher, her improvisations gradually changed into meditation. Shesang and played on her accordion long tones and kept them soundinguntil they changed her perception, and she translated the breathrhythms and slow natural motions of Tai Chi into her soloimprovisations. Later she studied psychology, Asian philosophies,mythology, and rituals and developed her manifold concept ofmeditation whereby the aspects of global and focal attention andmandala symbols are of great importance. Oliveros views meditationbasically as "steady attention and steady awareness forcontinuous or cyclic periods of time." In her works such asAeolian Partitions (1969), Sonic Meditations (1971-73)or the Deep Listening Pieces (1970-90) she applies variousmeditation techniques. In Aeolian Partitions (1969) for mixedensemble Oliveros requires from performers and audience, forinstance, the willingness to participate in "telepathicimprovisation." The participants have to concentrate on a singleperformer, hear an interval or chord mentally, perform one of thepitches and send the other to another performer by telepathy. Theyare further supposed to make silences by becoming mentally blank.Sonic Meditation I, for instance, is based on the observationof each performer's breath cycle and gradual transitions frombreathing to making sounds. Incidentally, the concept of the SonicMeditations, according to Oliveros, surpasses improvisation, yetshe includes telepathic improvisation in some of her meditations. LosingControl: Indeterminacy and Improvisation in Music Since 1950 Doubtlessthe concepts above involved a lot of changes and problems forperformers interested in contemporary music. Performers had to dealwith new philosophies, performance techniques, equivocal notations,the preparation of their own scores and manifold ways ofimprovisation. The changes occurred after a period of glorifyingperformances that were objective and faithful to the original(Stravinskyand Schonberg)and rejecting interpretations brimming with individualembellishments, variation, or improvisation in the manner of Lisztor Busoni.Playing from memory, suggesting the impression of immediate creation,seemed to provide the substitute for improvisation or improvisatoryinterpretation. The existence of notation in Western music stimulatedconstant musical innovation and progress, producing a variety ofstyles and complex scores that inhibited performers more and morefrom improvising. Devoid of notation, Non-Western music ratheremphasizes the preservation of its timeless musical material andperformance rules. However, the suspension of the performer inelectronic music and in ConlonNancarrow'sworks for player piano could be viewed as the culminating point of atendency in Western music to control and determine more and moreperformance aspects. Yet, in so-called free improvisation theperformer seems to be suspended as well. The phenomenon ofimprovisation in new music thwarts the dichotomycomposition-performance or composition-interpretation. Often it isdifficult to distinguish between the composed, performed andimprovised portions of a piece. When requiring improvisation on thebasis of vague instructions, composers emphasized the aspect ofproviding the performer with a more human and creative role. Yet,they often overlooked the fact that performers became equallyrespectable creators or inventors, that is co-owners, of the music inquestion and did not get their share of credit and royalties. Therewere fewer problems in the case of a personal union of composer andperformer (Young,Well-TunedPiano) or aclose collaboration between composer and performer where pieces werewritten for the performer's unique abilities (Jazz). But manyperformers were overwhelmed by the new amount and confusingly widerange of liberty. Some who did not want to risk dilettantespontaneous activities "illegally" worked out their owntraditionally notated version (as it was done in Germany quite often,by the Kontarskybrothers, and the conductor Clytus Gottwald). Others used the demandto improvise to fool around. It is known that improvisers, unlikeperformers of traditional scores, need to have a reservoir of motorpatterns, structures, scales, etc. at their disposal. If they do notwant to depend on a kind of automatic writing, they also needexperience in making musical decisions, following rules, judging thesounds, and selecting the next activity while playing. This implieslong-term practicing and experience. Muchhope was put into "free" improvisation. But what is freeimprovisation compared to the variety of controlled improvisation? Itwas the goal of groups like the New Music Ensemble (Austin,Eaton,W.O. Smith,Vandor),AMM(Prevost,Rowe,Gare,Cardew),and New Phonic Art (Globokar,Alsina,Drouet,Portal)to create a kind of "pure" improvisation, music free ofnotation, arrangements, form, style, idioms, and tradition throughconstant development, changes, and questioning of the sound product.Yet, it was certainly more a wishful thinking than reality. Everyfree and "non-idiomatic" improvisation is based on somewhatfamiliar material since the improviser cannot ignore his musicalbackground, his musical baggage. And whatever seems completely new,at first glance, can eventually be at risk of being consolidated as amusical idiom. Many groups focusing on free improvisation wereshort-lived. Larry Austin explained why his New Music Ensemble gaveup: "There was a crisis point in our development, which wereached about three years after we formed: we had learned the piececalled 'free improvisation'. The original reason for the group wasdisappearing."(15)LukasFoss dissolvedhis ImprovisationChamber Ensemblein the early sixties when he realized: "Improvisation: one playswhat one already knows? Acrobats practice until it is safe.Improvisation that works is made safe."(16)(Among the long-lived groups are AMM, ArtEnsemble of Chicago.) Lastbut not least, one wonders about the role of the listeners. Whilemost composers and improvisers did not try to conform to thelistener's taste, they show various attitudes toward them. Thelistener was partly viewed as a kind of a voyeur peeping intointimate music making, partly as a tolerated tourist (as VinkoGlobokar put it). At some improvisation concerts, due to theirworkshop character, the listener was not charged an admission fee.Cage, for instance, wanted the listener to focus on the soundsthemselves without trying to get emotional and intellectual resultsout of them. Boulez aspired to communicate a message that thelistener should perceive critically. He disapproved of aural statesof euphoria, while Young declared that the listener "should bemoved to a strong spiritual feeling and be carried away to heaven,"and used incense and lighting to support these effects. MEV wanted tofree the audience, to democratize the institution of the concert, andorganized musical events in streets, factories and prisons involvingaudience participation. Considering audience participation throughmeditation and telepathy, Oliveros aimed at educating the listener tomore intense perception, greater receptivity and openness. However,in the case of audience participation, listeners might only be ableto listen with half an ear, since they have to use energy for variousother activities. In most cases listeners have to use individuallistening strategies, since they cannot fall back upon familiarstructures, models and forms. They have to depend on principles of"spontaneous listening" (Adorno's expression) focusing, forinstance, on repetition, similarity and contrast of sound textures inorder to structure the piece aurally. With all of the aboveprinciples in mind and by memorizing previous sounds and anticipatingsubsequent sounds, listeners might enlarge their perception to arriveat a "multi-dimensional listening" (Adorno) experience. LosingControl: Indeterminacy and Improvisation in Music Since 1950 (1)S. S. Turner, "John Cage's Practical Utopias," MusicalTimes, 130, 1990, 472. (2)D. Campana, "Interview with Cage (1985)," Form andStructure in the Music of John Cage, Ph.D. NorthwesternUniversity Evanston 1985, 109. (3)S. Kauffmann/J. Cage/W. Alfred, "The Changing Audience for theChanging Arts (Panel)," The Arts: Planning for Change,New York 1987, 46. (4)"John Cage and Roger Reynolds. A Conversation," MusicalQuarterly, 65, 1979, 581. (5)B. A. Varga, "Komponieren heute. These, Antithese, Synthese. EinDoppelgesprach mitJohn Cage und Morton Feldman," Neue Zeitschrift furMusik, 147/1, 1986, 26. (6)W. Meyer-Eppler, "Statistische und psychologischeKlangprobleme," Elektronische Musik, Die Reihe I,ed. H. Eimert, Vienna 1955, 22. (7)P. Boulez, Par Volonte et par hasard. Entretien avecCelestin Deliege, Paris 1975, 68. (8)Chr. Wolff, "Open to Whom and What?" Interface, XVI,1987, 134 and Th. W. Adorno, Asthetische Theorie, ed. G.Adorno and R. Tiedemann, Frankfurt/M. 1970, 212. (9)E. Brown, "Notes on some Works," Contemporary MusicNewsletter 6/1, 1972, 1. (10)Ibid. (11)R. Duffalo, Trackings, New York 1989, 114. (12)R. Teitelbaum, "In Tune: Some Early Experiments in BiofeedbackMusic," Biofeedback and the Arts: Results of EarlyExperiments, ed. D. Rosenboom, Vancouver 1976, 66. (13)M. Dery, "Richard Teitelbaum. Interview," Keyboard,15/7, 1989, 88. (14)Gounod's first version of his Ave Maria setting was titledMeditation sur le premier Prelude de Piano de J. S.Bach (1853) for violin and piano. The words were added later. (15)L. Austin/S. Lunetta u.a., "Groups: New Music Ensemble, ONCEGroup, Sonic Arts Group, Musica Elettronica Viva," Source3, 1968, 16. (16)Ibid, 17. FromLosingControl: Indeterminacy and Improvisation in Music Since 1950 ?
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