Philosophy of the Performing Arts

158 performance as art
Improvisational composition
We noted above Alperson’s claim that there is an element of composition
in improvisation. He cites the New Grove Dictionary of Music , which defines
improvisation as “the creation of a musical work ... as it is being performed.”
Alperson has in mind the improviser’s responsibility for the musical struc-
ture of her performance on a given occasion, and his claim is that this per-
formance-event can itself be viewed as an artwork. But it is tempting to
think that the improviser may also compose a musical work in the more
standard sense – a performable work that lends itself to other occasions
of performance.^5 As I suggested earlier, we may term this “improvisational
composition”: we have a performance which is an improvisation but which
also serves at the same time as an act of composition by prescribing a set of
performance constraints for a performable work.
While improvisational composition represents a possibility in the per-
forming arts, there is some disagreement as to whether this possibility is
ever actualized, and, indeed, as to the conditions that would have to be satis-
fied if it were to be actualized. Obviously, the clearest proof that something
is possible is an actual example, and Peter Kivy (1983) has defended the idea
of improvisational composition in this way. He cites a famous occasion when
J. S. Bach was challenged by Frederick the Great to improvise upon a given
theme that the latter provided. Bach duly obliged and then later produced
a score for his improvised performance, the result being the performable
work known as The Musical Offering. Kivy insists that The Musical Offering was
composed by Bach in the act of improvisation, and that what he did later was
merely to transcribe the work he had already composed.
Critics less favorably disposed towards the idea of improvisational com-
position challenge Kivy’s description of this episode in two different ways.
First, they contest his account of the historical facts. There is some evidence
that the work notated by Bach that we know as The Musical Offering departs in
certain respects from the performance given for Frederick.^6 Such departures
might have been due to failures by the performer to play what he intended, in
which case we may still speak of the piece being composed in the process of
improvisation while denying that it was correctly performed in that process.
But they might also be due to the performer’s further reflections on what had
been improvised and his or her subsequent decision that the notated version
would be better than the performed one. The second, more serious, chal-
lenge to Kivy’s claim is conceptual. Thom puts this in terms of a distinction
between inventing music and constituting something as a musical work. He argues
that while Bach may have been doing the former during his improvisation,
a separate kind of activity is required to do the latter (Thom 1993, 66). To
constitute something as a musical work, as we have seen, is to prescribe that