1 Introduction

Artistic performances, we have seen, play one, and sometimes both, of two

roles in the appreciation of artworks. Some performances are themselves

artworks, and many performances contribute to our appreciation of the

performable works of which they are performances. Indeed a performance

may be at one and the same time both an artwork and a performance of

a distinct performable work. In Part One we looked at the ways in which

performances bear upon the appreciation of performable works. In this and

the following chapter, I focus on certain distinctive features of performances

themselves, features that distinguish the performing arts both from singular

arts like painting and sculpture and from other multiple arts like film and

literature.

We have already introduced improvisation, one of the topics of this chapter.

We looked at the contribution that improvisation can make in determining

the appreciable qualities of a performance, and at how a pure improvisa-

tion can itself be an artwork. In this chapter we shall ask a more fundamen-

tal question regarding the nature of improvisation, and examine different

roles that improvisation can play in artistic performance. Improvisation

might be thought to contrast with another feature of most performances

in the performing arts – their being preceded by rehearsals involving the

performers. We might think that it is a precondition for something to count

as an improvisation that it not have been prefigured in rehearsal. But improvi-

sation and rehearsal raise some similar issues bearing upon the understanding

8

Elements of Performance

I: Improvisation

and Rehearsal

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