View source for Ep18. Can improvisation be recognized by listeners?

===<span style="color:teal">'''Presentation of Vijay Iyer's Denial of Improvisation Recognition'''</span>===

[[file:JSTORJazz.png]] <span style="color:blue">[http://vijay-iyer.com/about/ Vijay Iyer] (b. 1971) [[file:VijayIyerWithHair.jpeg|link=http://vijay-iyer.com/about/]] commits himself to the impossibility of recognizing improvisations in his article [http://academia.edu/resource/work/44166052 "Improvisation: Terms and Conditions"] (2009).</span> 

<blockquote><span style="color:green">“Improvisation.  If we '''define it''' provisionally as '''real-time decisions and actions''', then '''what isn't improvisation'''?  We're improvising from the moment we acquire sensation and motion—you could say it's prenatal.  The process by which we acquire cognition—embodied action, situated in an information-rich environment—is improvisation itself.  There is a '''fundamental identity''' between '''improvisation''' and what we more generally call '''"experience."'''  They are one and the same.  Life begins at improvisation.  '''Life is a sustained improvisational interaction''' with the structures of the world, of the body, of culture.  '''Improvisation''' is a '''condition of being alive'''. </span><span style="color:blue">(p. 171) </span> <br/> 


<span style="color:green">Composition and Performance.   '''''Exceptions to the above immediately come to mind''''': for example, the composition of works to be '''performed to the composer's exact specifications''', and the performance of such compositions.  This '''composer-performer bifurcation''' is among the '''more peculiar hierarchical differentiations''' we have in culture. . . . However, this claim does reposition composition as highly unordinary in the scheme of things.  This phenomenon--the micromanipulation of the actions of others at the behest of a single composer-ego—is accepted unproblematically as a structural necessity of music, dance, and theater in the West.  We swear by this order of things, so much so that '''we tend to view improvisation as a rare and dangerous behavior'''. We tend to '''forget''' that the '''performance of fully composed works is an "extreme occasion,"''' to use Edward Said's phrase, whereas '''improvisation''' is '''not only everyday and ubiquitous''', but moreover an '''utterly central phenomenon in our lives, fundamental to who and what we are'''. </span><span style="color:blue">(pp. 171—172 with the following six paragraphs omitted) </span> <br/> 

<span style="color:green">A '''recurring conceit''' among classical musicians, critics, and listeners is that the '''best performances of composed works''' are those that '''"sound improvised."'''  ('''''What''''', I always wonder, are the '''''hallmarks of that sound'''''?  '''What exactly does improvisation sound like''' and '''how do we know that it's occurring'''? The '''''short answer, it seems to me, is that we don't'''''; '''more on this below'''.) </span><span style="color:blue"> (p. 172) </span> <br/> 

<span style="color:green">The "Whether" Question.  It is common to ask '''"whether" a musical act was "truly" improvised'''. . . . '''Another complicating factor''' is that '''''there's nothing inherent in musical improvisation that "sounds" improvised'''''.  It's '''easier to identify things that "sound composed"''': ensemble synchronies and unisons, '''very difficult to achieve spontaneously''', typically signal to a listener that something was planned.  In '''talking about improvisation''', witnesses tend to invoke '''performers' body language''', eye contact, visual cues, or of '''so-called "mistakes"''' to '''prove that these acts''' were (or were not) '''spontaneous'''. But '''short of such things''' (which are '''not essential attributes of improvisation''') it seems </span><span style="color:blue">(end of p. 173) </span> <br/> 

<span style="color:green">'''awfully difficult to pinpoint improvisation as such'''.  There are '''reliable attributes''' of a '''specific improvised idiom'''—culturally specific '''principles of variation''', '''parameters of expression''', and choices to be made—but '''''nothing in the sound of a musical action that announces, "Yes, I was 'authentically' improvised!'''''  You '''can tell just by hearing me''' . . . I came into existence in the moment that you heard me.  It was only just decided that I should exist.  My creator chose me over all the options within reach at that time."  And so on ad absurdum.  Listeners often want to decode the level of real-time agency in what they just heard, so they tend to ask questions like, "What percentage of that was improvised?"  This would seem to suggest that, at least to the uninitiated, it's '''''impossible to know just from listening'''''.  And '''if this is indeed the case''', then '''how does anyone ever really know'''?  There's '''certainly no point''' in asking '''what was "intended" in an improvisation''', or '''what an improviser was "thinking" at that moment'''.  And we still have that '''"impression" of improvisation''' discussed earlier, '''that improvised "quality"''' that is '''supposedly conjured by the best classical performers'''.  (It is also common, conversely, to praise improvisations for the apparent presence of compositional elements: motific developments, a "natural" arc, and so on.)  If a listener can knowingly allow himself to believe that a fully composed work has just been improvised into existence, or that an improvisation was instead composed, then of what use is the distinction at all?  But it is a '''valuable and meaningful distinction'''.  It brings us to a '''central paradox''': the '''drama of improvised music''' involves the understanding that '''those sounds were chosen and deployed at that moment by those people'''.  And yet, you '''cannot tell this to be true just by listening'''; you have to '''already know that this is happening'''.  It '''follows''' that you '''only really know''' by '''referring to something beyond the sound'''. </span><span style="color:blue">(p. 174) </span> <br/> 

<span style="color:green">Improvisation as a Condition.  What I submit (after George Lewis and others) is that '''we agree to understand improvisation''' '''''not as a quality but as a condition'''''. . . . '''Is "improvisedness" audible'''?  '''It doesn't matter'''.  To paraphrase Peter Falk's character in "Wings of Desire": '''I can't hear it''', but '''I know it's there'''.</span><ref><span style="color:blue">[http://vijay-iyer.com/about/ Vijay Iyer,] [http://academia.edu/resource/work/44166052 "Improvisations: Terms and Conditions,"] in Chapter 19 of ''ARCANA IV: Musicians on Music'', edited by John Zorn, (Hips Road, 2009), 171–175.</span></ref> <span style="color:blue">(p. 175)</span>  <span style="color:blue">(bold and bold italic not in original)</span>
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