Improvisation and Spirituality 4: What is Improvisation?

I am not a musician.  Or any type of performing artist.  I write therefore from the perspective of someone who has listened to performing arts all my life. 

We live in a world of recorded performances.  How many times do we hear material that has been recorded directly from an improvised performance?  It is a difficult question to answer.  One way is to describe the sorts of things we might be hearing.  For musical performances, I suspect we hear the following:

1. Some performances are rehearsed performances of material that has been written down.  Most people would agree this is not improvised, even though the original composer might have improvised the music before she or he wrote it down.
2. Sometimes, there has been a long process of improvisation, particularly with groups of jazz players but the recorded result is something they can now reproduce note for note. 
3. A standard tune is improvised by a group of musicians according to strict rules, based upon some degree of rehearsal.
4. A group of people play together and record whatever comes out.

Clearly there is a range of possibilities between the attempt to reproduce written music and raw music generated on the hoof.  Sometimes it is difficult to tell where improvisation ends.  Go back to my post about Little Boots.  It is clear her finished version for her CD (the third I mention) is no longer improvised.  But how much work had already been done before the recording of the same tune in her bedroom (second version)?  It could be an early recording but just as easily produced after her album as promotional material.

Similarly, Diana Krall's version of Fly Me to the Moon  could be just as rehearsed as Nat Cole's.  My guess is not only most new music but also new interpretations of old music start with improvisation.  But at some stage a piece of music is recorded or ready for public performance and and the performance itself is not improvised.

Improvisation is the conversation the musician has with the composer, other musicians, their own instrument or even an orchestra in their imagination.  Sometimes it is necessary to play as previously arranged but always at some distance the good musician has improvised.

I have written elsewhere about the power of generative conversations  and that they do not have to be with people  to be conversations.  This is the fount of creativity, the discovery of new notes from old instruments, the wringing of new emotion from an old tune, the spontaneous emergence of a new tune from an old emotion.  To improvise is to be receptive.

Another way of looking at it is through complexity theory .  Complexity happens where chaos and order meet.  The movement from a new tune to an established, written melody and on again is a necessary dimension to creativity.  The exciting thing is we can pause anywhere and listen for something new.  Recorded music allows us to do this more than at any time in the past.

In this video Diana Krall speaks of her own creative processes.