1 Introduction: Spontaneous Performance in the Arts

in the Arts

On January 24, 1975, Keith Jarrett walked onto the stage of the Opera

House in Köln, West Germany, seated himself at the piano, played four

single notes that mimicked the house intermission bell, and then performed

uninterrupted for just over 26 minutes. After a pause, he again performed

uninterrupted for over 33 minutes, and then, at the urging of the audience,

performed for a further seven minutes. He did this without a score, and

without any prior planning or rehearsal relating to the form that this spe-

cific performance would take. The performance, which drew on a number

of different musical traditions such as classical piano, jazz, and blues, was,

almost as an afterthought, recorded by the sound engineers. The recording

was later heard by Manfred Eicher of ECM records with whom Jarrett had

done some earlier recordings. The Köln Concert was released on a double LP

later that year, and on a CD in 1980. Having sold more than 3.5 million

copies, it is the best-selling solo jazz recording of all time. Some years later,

Jarrett was persuaded to release an authorized transcription of the perform-

ance, but he stressed that it was intended to document the event, not to

establish a set of prescriptions for a performable work. Unfortunately, as a

brief visit to YouTube indicates, some have been unable to resist the temptation

to “ perform” the piece, in more or less listenable ways.

I have chosen Jarrett’s performance to begin the second part of this book

because it has both an iconic and an ambiguous status that fits well with

some of the questions we are going to examine. In the first place, Jarrett’s

7

7 Performances as Artworks

Philosophy of the Performing Arts , First Edition. David Davies.
© 2011 David Davies. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.