Improvisation: An Always-Accessible Instrument of Innovation

Author(s): Beate Kutschke

Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), pp. 147-162
Published by: Perspectives of New Music
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/833513
Accessed: 29-05-2015 20:08 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Perspectives of New Music is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Perspectives of New Music.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 IMPROVISATION:
AN ALWAYS-ACCESSIBLE
INSTRUMENT OF INNOVATION

BEATEKUTSCHKE

CREATIVITY YESTERDAY AND TODAY

N ECCEHOMO(1889) Nietzsche wrote: "A thought flashes up like

lightning, with necessity, unfalteringly formed-I have never had any
choice" (Nietzsche 1979, 102-3). This description of how his thoughts
emerge corresponds to a popular idea of the creative process that has per-
sisted until the present day: The striking artistic idea appears suddenly; it
is unexpected and obsessional. Creativity is considered to be a miracle
that cannot be understood or predicted. Composers such as Mahler,
Pfitzner and Schonberg enforced the authority of this "romantic" image
by destroying their sketches and thus preventing others from insights
into their creative processes (cf. Danuser 1991 and Neumann 1993).

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
148 Perspectivesof New Music

Because rational explanations of the creative process could not be

found, metaphysical reasons filled in the explanatory gap: Since antiquity,
the ability to create artistically and scientifically has been considered a
fortunate gift from God, a daemon, or a muse; since the seventeenth cen-
tury, a person who has the ability to create has been named a genius.1
Within the discourse about genius, newness, originality and uniqueness
were defined as indispensable criteria of the creative product. The mode
of production (creativity) and the character of the resulting product
(newness, originality, and uniqueness) became thus two sides of the same
phenomenon.
Within these parameters-the creative product is new, original, and
unique, and emerges unpredictably-musicologists such as Dahlhaus
called into question the idea of improvisation in music, like the cadenza
in the traditional solo concert, and improvisation in jazz. Their objec-
tions rose from the observation that the improvised parts in compositions
claim to spontaneously create music ex improviso, a term whose direct
translation means "unforeseeable," while simultaneously they purport to
be derived from a creative act. Thus, the paradox emerges that the inspi-
ration must be ready on cue, at a particular moment, although the cre-
ative performance of musical inventions is per definitionem a random,
uncontrolled event which cannot be produced on demand (cf. Dahlhaus
1979, 10).
In the 1960s and 1970s certain types of indeterminate compositions
were conceptualized which rely completely on the improvisation of the
performers. Thus, the success of the piece depends solely on the paradox-
ical concept that is inherent in improvisation. In order to produce new,
original, and unique sounds, creativity must appear in improvisation.
However, because improvisation happens on demand, creativity, a phe-
nomenon that per definitionem is unforeseeable and uncontrolled, also
must happen on demand.

IMPROVISATION
IN AVANT-GARDEMUSIC

Against this background the question arises:What ideas did avant-garde

composers in the sixties and seventies associate with improvisation, that
allowed them to include improvisation in their compositional programs
and render the success of their performances conditional on the appear-
ance of creativity on cue, even though creativity is unreliable and unfore-
seeable? To answer this question, I will deal with both the American and
the European traditions, concentrating on John Cage, Christian Wolff,
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Dieter Schnebel, and Vinko Globokar. Assuming

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Improvisation 149

that the individual programs of the composers are well-known, I will

emphasize specific features that they share with each other, especially
those that mark improvisation as creative performance.
According to Cage, Globokar, and Stockhausen, the reason for inde-
terminate music and, therein included, for improvisation, was generally a
movement against rationally conceived twelve-tone and serial music in
which the appearanceof the unplanned was viewed as a technical defect.2
The enforcement of improvised aspects in composition contributed to
the reintegration of spontaneous and creative features into music.
Another important reason for fostering improvised indeterminate fea-
tures seemed to be the production of the new and unique, which should
be stimulated by improvisational creative spontaneity. Cage's philosophy
"to let sounds be themselves" (Cage 1960a, 10), which was developed in
the mid-1950s, included the idea "that each performance of such a piece
of music is unique, as interesting to its composer as to others listening"
(Cage 1960a, 11). This concept required creativity of the performers,
because, contrary to indeterminate compositions, like 4'33", which relied
on random events, there were types of indeterminate music that could
not be realized just by randomness. Variations II (1961), for instance,
required the performer's creativity in, first, combining different layers of
the graphic score, printed on transparencies,and, afterwards, in produc-
ing sounds, stimulated by the graphics.
Approximately fifteen years later Stockhausen coined the term "intui-
tive music" to distinguish his concept from traditional improvisation.
The pieces in Aus den sieben Tagen (1968), which is a paradigm for intui-
tive music, consist of instructions, stimulating in the performers a certain
attitude which should overcome self-control and provoke creativity.Prac-
ticing intuitive music by playing these kinds of pieces was, according to
Stockhausen, "a technique for myself as composer and as interpreter to
extend these lightning moments of intuition" (Stockhausen 1978, 138-
39).3 Because intuition has been considered the essential factor for the
production of the new and unique since the eighteenth century, Stock-
hausen's emphasis on intuition implies the need for new and unique
music.
In the concepts of both, Cage and Stockhausen, it is implied that
improvised performances, which rely on creativity, should lead to new,
unique, and unknown sounds; whereas in the concepts of Wolff (the
youngest of Cage's associates), Schnebel, and Globokar, the quality of
newness referred to nonmusical aspects, accompanying the improvised
performance. In the introduction of Burdocksfor one or more or orches-
tras (1970-1) Wolff invited the musicians to

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
150 Perspectivesof New Music

gather and decide, or choose one or more representatives to decide,

what sections will be played in what arrangement. It must also be
decided: how many and which players will make up an orchestra for
a section. (Wolff 1971, 1)

Within the scope of politically engaged questions in the early seventies,

Wolff's compositions should contribute to the improvement of the soci-
ety.4 The instructions to Burdocksaimed to exercise social and political
acts in the musical field. By arranging these kinds of musical situations
Wolff aimed to stimulate communicative processes in groups that con-
ceived new ways of social and sociopolitical behavior. Wolff said: "New
music should actually be music that is adequate for a new society. This
would be its newness" (Wolff 1975, 10).5
Schnebel shared Wolff's goals. According to Schnebel, performing
"Gesums," one piece of Schulmusik I (1974), trains musicians to act
jointly.6 Additionally, his purpose was to incite creative abilities-abilities
that, in Schnebel's opinion, were underestimated in an authoritariansoci-
ety, and that lead per definitionem to something new and unique.7 There-
fore Schnebel states in his introduction that Schulmusik stimulates
spontaneous creation of music.8
As different as the concepts of these composers might have been, they
all relied on common principles: the composers prepared the general
conditions of the performance because they aimed to provoke new and
unique sounds and new social behavior through spontaneous processes.
The spontaneous performance and the resulting new and unique phe-
nomena served as a counterweight against the dominating, universally
controlling rationality-a rationality that the composers not only diag-
nosed in serial music but, sharing the critical attitude with leftist social
and political movements in the 1960s and early seventies, that they also
criticized as a defect of an "administered world" (Adorno 1983, 333)
and an authoritarianindustrialized society. Improvisation is-as Globokar
states-the antibody of an established rationality (Globokar 1979, 33). It
is an instrument to overcome the present social and compositional condi-
tions.
However, the question I posed at the beginning of this essay remains
unanswered: Why could the composers of avant-garde music in the six-
ties and seventies rely on the emergence of creative processes by playing
spontaneously on cue? My hypothesis is that the musical procedures were
inspired by a scientific understanding of the creative ability that differs
profoundly from the "romantic" understanding. In the second half of the
nineteenth century, there emerged creativity research at a specifically sci-
entific kind, and this awoke broad interest in the fifties and sixties. In the

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Improvisation 151

following section, I will show how it laid the groundwork for the increas-
ing interest in improvisational methods in avant-garde music.

RESHAPINGCREATIVITY

In the 1860s, a development had started that changed the understanding

of creative imagination. Disregarding the traditional "romantic" image-
that creativity is a fortunate gift which cannot be fixed by rational
terms-scientists, foremost among them Sir Francis Galton, tried to
reveal the mystery of creativity.Galton developed a "theory of hereditary
genius" using statistical methods (Galton 1892, vi). However, it is the
year 1950 which is generally regarded as the turning point with respect to
interest in creativity,when Guilford gave his presidential keynote address
to the American Psychological Association (Guilford 1968, 140). In
1949 Joy Paul Guilford started the Aptitudes Research Project (ARP) at
the University of Southern California which, over a period of twenty
years, was supported by the Personnel and Training Branch of the Psy-
chological Sciences Division of the U.S. Office of Naval Research (Guil-
ford and Hoepfner 1971, XIII), and which sought to determine the
intellectual abilities of the test subjects. It is scientifically striking that
Guilford classified creativity as an intellectual ability. In 1971 Guilford
described his own project, ARP: "The area of intellectual abilities receiv-
ing most attention from the ARP was that of creativity or creative-think-
ing abilities" (Guilford/Hoepfner 1971, 9-10).
The project was obviously carried out against the backdrop of military
goals-Guilford himself stated in 1968: "The coming of peace [after
World War II] called for ever-acceleratingefforts in a contest of intellects.
Inventive brains were at a premium, and there were never enough"
(Guilford 1968, 140). Therefore the project placed "considerable
emphasis upon rational predictions of unique abilities to be expected"
(Guilford and Hoepfner 1971, XII). It seems that such research intended
to make creativity available for the scientific and military competition
between the United States and the Soviet Union during the cold war-
particularlyafter 1957 when the shock of Sputnik demonstrated that the
Soviet Union was the leader in space research. The reason for Guilford to
treat creativity as part of intelligence, generally considered to be
grounded on rational, objective, and thus intersubjectively valid prin-
ciples, was that, in order to instrumentalize creativity in the Cold War, he
needed to restrict its features of irrationalityand randomness. And indeed
Guilford must have been well satisfied with the achieved results, because
they suggested that "the assessment of the intellectual resources of man

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
152 Perspectivesof New Music

can now take on features of a psychoengineering" (Guilford and Hoe-

pfner 1971, 361).
In general, according to the terminology of the psychologist Robert
W. Weisberg, the "genius" view was replaced by the "ordinary" view
(Weisberg 1993, 241). Creativity lost its image of being the opposite of
rationality; it became a mastered aspect of everybody's intelligence. Cre-
ativity could be measured and quantified and-in the end-could be
instrumentalized and operationalized toward several goals.
The research emphasis on creativity evoked, for example, the interest
of E. Paul Torrance, an educational psychologist, who was largely influ-
enced by Guilford's factor-analytic research. Under the title "The Cre-
ative Potential of School Children in the Space Age," he stated at a
conference in 1960:

More and more insistently, today's schools and colleges are being
asked to produce men and women who can think, who can make
new scientific discoveries, who can find more adequate solutions to
impelling world problems, who cannot be brainwashed, men and
women who can adapt to change and maintain sanity in this age of
acceleration. This is the creative challenge to education. (Torrance
1963, 4)

As Torrance's quote implies, in the United States the interest in creativity

for educational aims threw the light on the significance of practicing cre-
ative thinking for the development of an educated personality.The ability
to think creatively was considered to complement the ability of rational
thinking.
In Germany, considerations of creativity stimulated pedagogues to pick
up former ideas of education and merge them with the new psychological
knowledge about creativity.They revived firstly the concept of the "cre-
ative child," which goes back to the beginning of the nineteenth century
(see Jode 1928). It highlights the importance of the pupil's self-guided
inventive activities as against the passive reproduction of precomposed
pieces. Secondly, the German pedagogical discussion of creativity empha-
sized improvisation as a catalyst of creativity-an idea that was developed
in the Weimar Republic. Thirdly, the concept of creativity in Germany in
the sixties and seventies was influenced by the ideology of improving the
human being. In the Weimar Republic as well, the promotion of creative
abilities generally, and as an aspect of musicality specifically,was spurred
on by the vision of a new "man" (Kiihn 1923, v). Interestingly, the pro-
gram for a renewal of the human species, in the twenties was related to
eugenics, a discipline that aims to ameliorate the human race through

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Improvisation 153

breeding. The term "eugenics" was coined by the above-mentioned Gal-

ton, who was the first to address creativity scientifically.

I propose to show ... that a man's natural abilities are derived by

inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are the form and
physical features of the whole organic world. Consequently, as it is
easy, notwithstanding these limitations, to obtain by careful selection
a permanent breed of dogs or horses gifted with peculiar powers of
running, or of doing anything else, so it would be quite practicable
to produce a highly-gifted race of man by judicious marriagesduring
several consecutive generations. (Galton 1892, 1)

Within the vision of eugenics, creativity was (and is still today) a highly
valued human trait. Despite the generally shared mystical image of cre-
ativity, Galton started research in order to understand the laws which
govern the inheritance of talents, normal as well as exceptional.
Improvisation in the twenties was considered to contribute to the same
project of human reform by stimulating creativity,but contrary to Galton
the project was carried out by practical means (like Guilford's "human
engineering" project), not by genetic means. Therefore, improvisation in
the sixties and seventies was seen as a pedagogical instrument and thus as
a tool of both cultural and social renewal. With respect to culture, it was
employed as a weapon against mass music.9 The model was avant-garde
music (Ritzel 1979, 68). Regarding society, improvisation as creative
method contributed to the goal of improving social behavior-an idea
which emerged within the attempts to democratize society in the nine-
teenth century and which was taken up, in 1968, when student protests
and the new political left articulated the need to radically change socio-
political conditions. As the German pedagogue Roscher stated in 1970:
"The results of a political and social revolution are jeopardized in the
long term if it fails to realize and to rationalize the aesthetic revolution"
(Roscher 1970, 22; my emphasis)10-a revolution which included the
establishment of improvisation.
It soon became clear that the reconceptionalization of creativity had
applications for industry as well. Despite intensive research which
attempted to predict creativity,creativity never lost its features of irratio-
nality. However, it was demonstrated that the general conditions that
allow creativity to appear could be improved. On this basis, economists
stressed the importance of introducing creativity in manufacturing indus-
tries and companies. In contrast to the view of the nineteenth century,
which focused only on the unique and inspired master, never his associ-
ates, these economic projects were obviously based on a Guilfordian

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
154 Perspectivesof New Music

understanding of creativity. They proposed to engender creativity, and

thus productivity, by encouraging a cooperative, interactive group
dynamic (cf. Nystrom 1979, 57 and Crosby 1968).
One of the most extraordinaryexamples of the use of the new creativ-
ity concept for economical goals is the relatively recent concept of
Weston H. Agor: intuitive decision making as an approach for Top Man-
agement. In 1981 Agor published a book that "tells you how to use your
intuition to help make key decisions at work and in your personal life"
(Agor 1986, XII). Agor adopts the new scientific outfit of creativity by
redefining the term "intuition." Although intuition traditionally is expe-
rienced as a potency that effects exceptional results at the price of unreli-
ability, Agor declares intuition to be "a very rational and logical decision
making skill rather than a 'non-rational' skill as it is often characterized
by many psychologists and academians" (Agor 1986, XII). Thus, con-
trary to the traditional experience, the economist produces the illusion
that there is a magically reliable tool for decision making.

In summary, creativity changed its image. Scientific research affected the

practical approach to creativity that had been marked by a rationalist
impetus since the 1950s. Instead of being a fortunate talent of a singular
genius, creativity became a common ability, that could be taught to any-
body. It developed into a commodity available for political, scientific,
educational and economic maximization, progress, and innovation-
characteristicsthat are a definite part of the value system of modernity.
This new image of creativity repressed the original characterization of
creativity as an irrational and mystifying act.

CREATIVITY IN AVANT-GARDE MUSIC: AGAINST OR FOR MODERN

RATIONALITY?

Creativity research stimulated an intense discussion in almost every area

of society in both in the United States and in Germany: it was applied to
the military, to economics, science, art, politics, and the personal sphere.
Books about creativity started to be published in the early sixties and
increased significantly from then on. A person who participated only a
little in current events, might well have been aware of the predominance
of the new idea of creativity.The terminology composers used in the six-
ties and seventies indicates that they, in any case, had adapted the new
concept of creativity.
Promoting intuitive music, Stockhausen wrote in 1969:

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Improvisation 155

We have passed many states of a primarily rational music ...

between 1950 and about 1965.... Now the task is to increase the
experiences beyond these limits and let them affect the limited field
of the rational. (Stockhausen 1971, 124)11

Although Stockhausen exposed intuitive music as an instrument which

overcomes rationality,he nevertheless, like Guilford, treated creativity,or
in his words, "intuition," as a controllable ability. Thus, Stockhausen
stated during a lecture in 1973: "In intuitive music it becomes extremely
obvious which musician has the most control over himself" (Stockhausen
1978, 123).12 If, as previously quoted, Stockhausen wanted to develop
intuition as an always-accessible personal ability, intuition must be con-
trollable. Thus, it is clear that in Stockhausen's program intuitive music
did not overcome rationality. Rather, creativity changed its essence,
assumed features of rationality and, thus, fed the machinery of rational-
ization. Projects such as Stockhausen's and Guilford's carried out the
mission of modernity and progress: the investigation and instrumental-
ization of the world by controlled procedures.
Although Cage and Stockhausen were clearly in different camps, they
nevertheless shared an interest in controlling the creative act. Regarding
indeterminate music, Cage stated "that composition is necessarily experi-
mental" (Cage 1960b, 39). Even if his term "experimental music"
belonged to the American tradition of Emerson, Thoreau, and Ives,
which aimed to experience the environment through experimentation
(cf. Shultis 1998, xvii), Cage's statement that an "experimental action is
one the outcome of which is not foreseen" (Cage 1960b, 39) revealed a
correspondence with the scientific tradition in so far as, if the composer
created conditions (like the transparenciesin Variations II for instance)
which secured a higher probability, then the outcome would be new and
unique.

Creative education ... aims at a self-starting, resourceful, and confi-

dent person, ready to face personal, interpersonal and other kinds of
problems. Because he is confident, he is also tolerant where there
should be tolerance. A world of tolerant people would be peaceful
and co-operative people. Thus creativityis the key to education in its
fullest sense and to the solution of mankind's most serious prob-
lems. (Guilford 1968, 147)

Surprisingly, this quotation is not from a political or social leftist, but

from Guilford, in regard to Torrance's educational aims. Therefore,
Wolff's claim that improvisation should give rise to better social behavior

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
156 Perspectivesof New Music

and Schnebel's insistence that art should be shaped by psychoanalytical

knowledge with the goal of "self-experience and self-shaping"
(Oehlschlagel 1975, 108),13 had dialectical features. They tried to over-
come the authoritarian, coercive postwar society by using the tools that
had just been developed by the same society to settle the Cold War.
Against this background, Globokar's statement that "individual develop-
ment makes sense only if it serves the collective creative activity"
(Globokar 1979, 37)14 not only implied the reformed understanding of
creativity, including the possibility that even a product of a group could
be a creative act, but also indicated that the center of the reform process
was no longer the individual but the needs of the social apparatus, to
which the improvising person must adapt. The improviser was, as the lit-
erary theorist Giinter Blamberger pointed out, "the vehicle rather than
the responsible subject of the creative force" (Blamberger 1991, 29-
30).15
In summary, creativity in improvisation in indeterminate music of the
sixties and seventies was handled according to its new concept: Creativity
was no longer the uncontrollable, mystic gift of a singular genius. Con-
sidered as a rational, controllable tool, it was used for attaining unique
sounds (Cage and Stockhausen) or social improvements (Wolff,
Schnebel, and Globokar).

CONCLUSIONS

Of course the connections which I have tried to show can be considered

only as tendencies, which have been emphasized for the sake of my argu-
ment. On the one hand, the aim to make creativityrationally controllable
is not a phenomenon only of the twentieth century. In the middle ages
there was, for example, already a deep interest in developing methods of
invention, using the ars inveniendi in rhetoric and philosophy. From this
perspective the desire to dominate creativity seems to be an anthropolog-
ical constant. On the other hand, the scientific exploration of creativity
never erased the idea that the creative act is an extraordinary act of a
genius. And it seems that these traditional features invisibly merged with
the new Guilfordian view of creativity.
Nevertheless, against the scientific, political, and social horizon dis-
cussed here, the image of creativity in improvisational types of avant-
garde music of the sixties and seventies must be revised. In contrast to
the traditional opinion that creativity in avant-garde music participated in
an antirational, antibourgeois and antiprogressive alternative movement,
creativity in its new Guilfordian shape prolonged the value system against

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Improvisation 157

which it intended to take action. Creativity in improvisational avant-

garde music can be understood as a method of innovation and of
progress. Insofar as they considered creativity a reliable tool and focussed
the concepts of the compositions, avant-garde composers shared a typi-
cally modern attitude towards control and rationalization with politi-
cians, scientists, pedagogues, and economists. In this respect,
improvisation in music is less a phenomenon that overcomes modernity
and anticipates postmodernity, than a phenomenon which extends
modernity.
In Die rationalen und soziologischenGrundlagen der Musik of 1921,
Max Weber argued that, since antiquity, musical progress is due to the
rationalization of the primary parameters of music, which are: pitch,
rhythm, harmony, and meter. This perspective suggests that serialism
continued the process by also rationalizing the secondary parameters,
agogic, timbre, articulation, loudness, and speed. The rationalization of
one of the main components of composing, creativity, completes the
development described by Weber. After all other possibilities of composi-
tional progress and innovation had been exhausted during the develop-
ment of Western European music of the preceding two hundred years,
composers in the sixties and seventies seemed to feel a need for new com-
positional impulses. The functionalization of the creative dimension in
improvised avant-garde music may have provided the possibility of main-
taining the Enlightenment premises of progress and optimization in
music.

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
158 Perspectivesof New Music

NOTES

1. "Original Genius ... is distinguished by an inventive and plastic

Imagination, by which it sketches out a creation of its own, discloses
truths that wvereformerly unknown, and exhibits a succession of
scenes and events which were never before contemplated or con-
ceived. In a word, it is a peculiar character of original Genius ... to
start new sentiments, and throw out new lights on every subject it
treats" (Duff 1970, 89-90).
2. With respect to twelve-tone and serial music Globokar states: "Es
gibt also keinen Zufall, kein Appellieren an die Intuition, kein
Unvorhergesehenes-denn das Unvorhergesehene wird ja gleich-
gesetzt mit den Mangeln der technischen Realisierung" (Globokar
1979, 28).
3. "Ich mochte hier begreiflich machen, dafi ich eine Technik fir mich
selbst als Komponist und Interpret zu finden suche-und auch fir
die anderen Musiker, die mit mir arbeiten-, diese blitzhaften
Momente der Intuition auf bewufgteWeise zu verlangern."
4. Wolff's politically engaged attitude was provoked by the Vietnam
war (Duckworth 1995, 180).
5. "Und die Neue Musik sollte in diesem Sinn eigentlich eine Musik
sein, die sich fir eine neue Gesellschaft eignet. Darin wiirde ihre
Neuheit liegen, und mit 'neu' meine ich etwas, das durchaus sozi-
alisiert und demokratisiert ist."
6. "Bei der Gestaltung solcher Ablaufe moge gemeinsames Handeln
eingeiibt werden" (Schnebel 1974, 12).
7. According to Tielebier-Langenscheidt, Schnebel aimed to "make
people act freely and self-responsibly, i.e. to provide them with a
frameworkwithin which they can creatively develop and experience"
("Weitaus wichtiger und seinem padagogischen wie asthetischen
Denken entsprechender erscheint es ihm, Menschen zu freier und
eigenverantwortlicher Tatigkeit zu bringen, ihnen Rahmen zu
geben, in denen sie sich kreativ entfalten und erfahren k6nnen"
(Tielebier-Langenscheidt 1980, 80).
8. Schulmusikstimulates a creation "whose motivations seek to release a
concentrated and unmediated production of music" ("deren Anreize

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Improvisation 159

die konzentrierte und unmittelbare Hervorbringung von Musik frei-

zusetzen suchen") (Schnebel 1974, 1).
9. Friedemann for instance argued "that musically educated youths
react to the currently vital music"-Friedemann means popular
music-"without any addiction, even if we do not particularlyinflu-
ence them" ("dafi musikalisch so erzogene Jugendliche der jeweils
aktuellen Vitalmusik kritikfahig und ohne Suchterscheinungen
begegnen, auch wenn wir sie nicht speziell beeinflussen") (Friede-
mann 1973, 15).
10. "Die Ergebnisse von politischer und sozialer Revolution sind auf die
Dauer in Frage gestellt, wenn es nicht gelingt, asthetische Revolu-
tion zugleich zu realisierenund zu rationalisieren."
11. "Wirsind durch viele Stadien einer primarrationalen Musik, im Fazit
einer langen Tradition, gegangen zwischen 1950 und ca. 1965....
Nun besteht die Aufgabe, die Erfahrungen jenseits jener Grenzen
stetig zu erweitern und auf den begrenzten Bereich des Rationalen
einwirken zu lassen, damit bei Gott kein neuer Dualismus zwischen
dem Intuitiven und Rationalen entsteht."
12. "Beim Spielen von Intuitiver Musik wird es ganz offensichtlich,
welcher Musiker die meiste Selbstkontrolle hat."
13. "Da habe ich vor drei oder vier Jahren eine Arbeitsgemeinschaft fir
Neue Musik aufgemacht, die, wie gesagt, auf Schulerinitiative hin
entstanden war: und wir fingen an, uns Dinge zu erarbeiten. Bei
dieser Erarbeitung wurde ich, wurden wir in Gruppenprozesse ver-
wickelt, und da bekam die Beschaftigung mit Psychoanalyseplotzlich
etwas Konkretes, weil sie einerseits ein Mittel lieferte, solche Grup-
penprozesse zu begreifen, und weil es mir plotzlich jetzt auch
moglich schien, die Kunst von Erkenntnissen der Psychoanalyse her
zu gestalten-und sie beispielsweise zu einem Mittel fir Selbsterfahr-
ungen, Selbstgestaltungen zu machen."
14. "Individuelle Entfaltung ist nur im Dienst kollektiver schopferischer
Aktivitat sinnvoll."
15. "Die kreative Personlichkeit gilt eher als blofer Trager denn als ver-
antwortliches Subjekt schopferischer Krafte."

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
160 Perspectivesof New Music

REFERENCES

Adorno, Theodor W. 1983. Aesthetic Theory.London, Boston: Rout-

ledge & Kegan Paul.
Agor, Weston H. 1986. The Logic of Intuitive Decision Making. New
York: Quorum Books.

Blamberger, Gunter. 1991. Das Geheimnis des Schopferischenoder: Inge-

nium est ineffabile? Stuttgart: Metzler.

Cage, John. 1960a. "Experimental Music." In Silence, 7-13. Middle-

town, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.
. 1960b. "Composition as Process: II. Indeterminacy." In Silence,
35-40. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.

Crosby, Andrew. 1968. Creativity and Performance in Industrial Orga-

nization. London: Tavistock Publications.
Dahlhaus, Carl. 1979. "Washeifit Improvisation." In Improvisation und
Neue Musik, ed. Reinhold Brinkmann, 9-23. Mainz: B. Schott's
Sohne.
Danuser, Hermann. 1984. Die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Laaber:
Laaber-Verlag.
.1991. Gustav Mahler und seine Zeit. Laaber:Laaber-Verlag.
Duckworth, William. 1985. Talking Music: ConversationswithJohn Cage,
Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations of American
Experimental Composers.New York:Schirmer Books.
Duff, William. 1970. An Essay on Original Genius (1767). New York:
Garland Publishing, Inc.
Friedemann, Lilli. 1973. Einstiege in neue Klangbereicheund Gruppen-
improvisation.Vienna: Universal-Edition.
Galton, Sir Francis. 1892. Hereditary Genius. London: Macmillan.
Guilford, Joy Paul. 1968. Intelligence, Creativity and Their Educational
Implications. San Diego, California:Robert R. Knapp.
Guilford, Joy Paul, and Ralph Hoepfner. 1971. The Analysis of Intelli-
gence. New York:McGraw-Hill Book Company.

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Improvisation 161

Globokar, Vinko. 1979. "Reflexionen iiber Improvisation." In Improvi-

sation und Neue Musik, ed. Reinhold Brinkmann, 24-41. Mainz: B.
Schott's Sohne.
Jode, Fritz. 1928. Das schaffende Kind in der Musik. Wolfenbuttel: G.
Kallmeyer.
Kuhn, Walter. 1923. Schulmusik.Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hartel.
Neumann, Peter Horst. 1993. "Mythen der Inspiration aus den
Grunderjahren der Neuen Musik: Hans Pfitzner, Arnold Schonberg
und Thomas Mann." In Vom Einfall zum Kunstwerk, ed. Hermann
Danuser and Giinter Katzenberger, 331-42. Laaber:Laaber-Verlag.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1979. Ecce Homo, trans., with an introduction and
notes by R. J. Hollingdale. Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin
Books.

Nystrom, Harry. 1979. Creativity and Innovation. Chichester: John

Wiley & Sons.
Oehlschlagel, Reinhard. 1995. "Avantgarde und Vermittlung. Dieter
Schnebel." Musiktexte57/58 (March): 93-113.
Ritzel, Fred. 1979. "'Dieser freche Blodsinn wird seit Jahren in den
Schulen geduldet'-Uber Improvisation in der Musikpadagogik." In
Improvisation und Neue Musik, ed. Reinhold Brinkmann, 66-95.
Mainz: B. Schott's Sohne.
Roscher, Wolfgang. 1970. AsthetischeErziehung-Improvisation-Musik-
theater.Hannover: Roedel.
Schnebel, Dieter. 1974. SchulmusikL Mainz: B. Schott's Sohne.
. 1980. "Festrede." Musik-Konzepte 16: Dieter Schnebel ed.
Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn, 82-86. Munich: Edition
Text+Kritik.
Shultis, Christopher. 1998. Silencing the Sounded Self. Boston: North-
eastern University Press.
Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1971. "Aus den sieben Tagen." In Texte zur
Musik 4, 123-25. Cologne: Verlag M. DuMont Schauberg.
. 1978. "Fragen und Antworten zur Intuitiven Musik." In Texte
zur Muzik 4, 130-44. Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag.

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
162 Perspectivesof New Music

Tielebier-Langenscheidt, Florian. 1980. "Der Schulhof als konkrete

Utopie." In Dieter Schnebel. Musik-Konzepte 16, ed. Heinz-Klaus
Metzger and Rainer Riehn, 74-81. Munich: Edition Text+Kritik.
Torrance, E. Paul. 1963. Education and the Creative Potential. Minne-
apolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Weisberg, Robert W. 1993. Creativity Beyond the Myth of Genius. New
York:W. H. Freeman and Company.
Wolff, Christian. 1970-71. Burdocks.New York: C.F. Peters Corpora-
ton.
. 1975. "Zur Situation." Darmstddter BeitraPgezur Neuen Musik
14, ed. Ernst Thomas, 9-11. Mainz: B. Schott's Sohne.

This content downloaded from 193.219.48.143 on Fri, 29 May 2015 20:08:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions