source file: mills2.txt Date: Sat, 10 Aug 1996 22:53:21 -0700 Subject: improvisation From: bq912@freenet.uchsc.edu (Neil G. Haverstick) Hstick aboard...listening to Bach a lot lately has got me to thinking about how he could possibly write such a huge quantity of music, much of it astonishing...simply, how did he do it? Where did he find the time to write all that, much less have 20 kids, teach, and hang out at coffee shops? Well, it's obvious that he could improvise on a very high level, than go back and jot down a close fascimile...endless var- iations, at an incredible level of physical execution. My feeling is that many of Bach's pieces would have sounded slightly different if written, say, one day later...I don't think those Baroque (an "academic" term) dudes was too picky about their pieces at times. They were skilled, I believe, in a much more complete and integrated way than most musicians are today. They were master improvisors, who could also read and write music very fluently, and they were expected to be able to do many various functions, from arranging to playing funerals...Bach was a freelancer, who stayed alive by hustling all sorts of gigs, from the most Sacred of cantatas to pop tunes in the coffee shops. It's the improvising part, I suppose, that most attracts me, because that's exactly the tradition I come out of, starting when I got into blues in the late 1960's...blues and jazz and other American idioms put a huge burden on a player to be a composer who comes up with their OWN thing within the dictates of a style...thus, all blues players are composers, in a sense...a jazz guy (or gal) is composing every time they pick up their axe., but from an endless pool of riffs and rhythmic patterns that are part of the basic language. Believe me, blues is a very tough art form. I am only happy playing these days when I come up with riffs that I have never played before. Anyway, I think improvisation is a subject that has rarely been touched on in this forum...so, it makes me wonder about Partch's compositional style...how did he compose his works? Did he sit around messing with his instruments and seeing what happened, or did he work things out in his head first, and then write down those ideas? Did he write fast, slow, did he make a lot of corrections, did he agonize over a few notes (as Miles said Gil Evans would do), or did he think the idea had precedence over a certain way of expressing that idea? In that regard, I read in the liner notes to a Bach Lute album that Bach (or others in that period) would sometimes write things that were idiomatically incorrect for the Lute, but he knew that the lutenist would take care of it, and adapt it for his own axe...they were expected to be able to do this...thus, a few notes here and there were not the issue...the performer was now actually INVOLVED in the compositional process in a way that is conspicuously absent from many players of the European orchestral repertoire. As I said, I learn a lot from the people on this forum, and the inter- action makes me evaluate what I do in serious ways. I AM an improvisor, and it is a natural language for me...my band works best when we impro- vise, too. And I don't believe I've ever seen ant info on the inner workings of old Harry's writing style...seems like it would be an inter- esting subject. Also, there was a great article on Partch in the June 1990 issue of Keyboard mag...Hstick Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 11 Aug 1996 16:36 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA07281; Sun, 11 Aug 1996 16:36:21 +0200 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA07273 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id HAA07015; Sun, 11 Aug 1996 07:36:18 -0700 Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 07:36:18 -0700 Message-Id: <199608111339.OAA26810@gollum.globalnet.co.uk> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu