Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T14:18:17.014Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Boulez, Cage and freedom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Jeremy S. Begbie
Jeremy S. Begbie
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

[I]mprovisation on the piano is a necessity of his life. Every journey that takes him away from the instrument for some time excites a home-sickness for his piano, and when he returns he longingly caresses the keys to ease himself of the burden of the tone experiences that have mounted up in him, giving them utterance in improvisation.

Alexander Moszkowski, writing of Albert Einstein

[J]azz is more closely related to the realm in which music occurs – time – than is European music … if music – as almost all philosophies of music hold – is the art expressed in time, then jazz corresponds more fundamentally to the basic nature of the musical than European music.

Joachim Berendt

Spontaneity … is but the outcome of years of training and practice and thousands of experiments.

Stanley Hauerwas

A flurry of interest in improvisation marks the current musicological landscape. Though many aspects of improvisation are only scantily understood, some major studies have established it as a serious field of enquiry. This is partly because of a growing academic awareness in the West of various forms of non-Western music, whose techniques are often more dependent on improvisation than music of European provenance. Relevant also is the explosion of improvisatory practice in the arts of the twentieth century, and conversations between different types of improvising artists.

Type
Chapter
Information
Theology, Music and Time , pp. 179 - 203
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×