This essay in musicology is combined with a CD-recording of piano improvisations. Its purpose is, on the one hand, to examine some of the ideas permeating piano improvisation during the first part of the nineteenth century, and, on the other, to find ways to apply these nineteenth century ideas of improvising to modern piano playing. The artistic part of the work is as important as the theoretical, and the two strands are supporting and reinforcing each other. The first section of the text focuses on preluding – that is, a genre of improvisation. The second section investigates some aspects of the improvising of Franz Liszt – that is, different types of improvisation as practised by an important nineteenth century musician. The instructional music literature written by Carl Czerny is the basic source of reference in both portions. The text and the recordings of my piano improvisations aim to show that monothematic strategies are simple and useful tools for improvising, regardless of tonal language used. Half of the recordings consist of improvisations of separate pieces in a contemporary musical language. The other half are preludes, interludes and a cadenza improvised in the context of compositions by Liszt, Chopin, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Grieg.

This research investigates a microcosm of the free jazz/free improvisation environment of the 1970s in "Waterfall," from the album Dave Holland/Sam Rivers Vol. 1. This recording features Dave Holland and Sam Rivers exhibiting highly developed improvisational language and effortless interaction. The purpose of this investigation is to create pedagogical material for bassists who are unfamiliar and/or uncomfortable with performing in an improvisational style that exists separately from the rigid, instrumental role hierarchy of common practice jazz. An analysis of musical elements including melody, rhythm, form, and energy through systems of musical contour, musical forces, and form analysis reveal constituent patterns that can be isolated. These patterns are codified and presented as pedagogical suggestions to assist in the practice of free improvisation.

No description available.

Improvisation is an art form which has arguably been present since the existence of music itself. Inventing music on the spot, like spontaneous speech, is a common expression of artistry throughout history and across musical boundaries. While improvisation has maintained its importance in jazz, classical organ music and the music of many eastern cultures, this dissertation will focus on the presence of improvisation as acceptable performance practice within the tradition of western classical music. At several points in history, this musical tradition was encouraged and even expected to be a regular part of a musician's life, and yet in the classical music tradition of the twenty-first century, improvisation is rarely, if ever, heard from the concert stage, nor is it regularly included in the general education of the conservatory student.

Der Beitrag würdigt die Improvisation als eine die interpretatorischen und analytischen Verfahren ergänzende Perspektive des Werk- und Stilverstehens. Um die Erschrockenheit zu überbrücken, welche gemeinhin entsteht, wenn dem am Literaturspiel geschulten Instrumentalisten der sichere Boden des Notentextes entzogen wird, wird eine methodisch durchformte Improvisationsanleitung gegeben, die es ermöglicht, den neu gewonnenen Freiraum durch Begrenzung zu bewältigen, bevor es zum Überschreiten des zunächst gesetzten Rahmens kommt. Das Konzept gilt der tonalen Improvisation und orientiert sich an kompositorischen Modellen der Nach-Beethoven-Ära bis etwa 1850. Gleichwohl wird ein eher systematischer Ansatz verfolgt, der Übertragungen auch auf die Improvisation über Modelle der Wiener Klassik sowie eine Fortentwicklung zur Gruppenimprovisation, Akkordinstrument + Melodieinstrument(e)/Vokalstimme(n) gestattet. / This article addresses improvisation as a perspective complementary to interpretation and analysis in the explication of a work and its style. In order to bridge the shock that often results when an instrumentalist trained in playing literature leaves the safe haven of the printed score, a methodical guide to improvisation is offered that enables the player to conquer the newly won freedom by first introducing restrains before one eventually transgresses these initial boundaries. The method addresses tonal improvisation and is oriented around compositional models of the time following Beethoven, ca. 1850. At the same time a rather systematic approach is employed that allows crossover into improvisation over models drawn from Viennese classicism as well as extension activities involving group-improvisation and the combination of chordal instruments, melody instruments, and voice.

Master of Music / School of Music, Theatre, and Dance / Virginia Houser / This Lecture Recital, given in lieu of a Master’s Report, was on the use of improvisation as a teaching aid in the private piano lesson. The lecture and supplemental handout included an historical overview of the role of improvisation, research on its educational benefits in regards to student learning, and a review and demonstration of current piano method books designed to teach the concept of improvisation. A bibliography of sources used in the presentation, as well as reviewed articles, books, and websites were included in the handout. The piano method books reviewed are Scott McBride Smith’s American Popular Piano, and Pattern Play, by Forrest Kinney. This graduate lecture recital was given in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Music degree in piano pedagogy on February 25, 2015 in Kirmser Hall at Kansas State University. It featured demonstrations with the aid of Leah Harmon on piano.

This paper is an exploration of the concept of theatre as education and what I learned about teaching, transformation, and failure through my thesis project. In order to explore these ideas, I reflect on my experience creating and performing a short play with a group of eight 2nd and 3rd grade students over the span of nine weeks. I pinpoint the parts of the process that worked well and discuss how these techniques and activities could be used to enhance curriculum and learning in the classroom. I also discuss which parts of the process failed and what I learned from those experiences. I hope that the paper may serve as a guide for teaching artists undertaking similar work and a resource for teachers looking to incorporate theatre arts into their curriculums.

“The city of living garbage” tours private houses in Austin transformed by their inhabitants into quasi-public places – art environments and permaculture systems made possible by urban waste. The creators of these micro-utopias collect and improvise with salvaged materials like roadside junk, greywater, unwanted animals, and half-forgotten cultural forms to cultivate habitats where undervalued things flourish. They revalue waste through a variety of practices like caring for, teaching, learning, enjoying, and tinkering. Becoming part of these relational patterns is a way to slow down and find wonder and pleasure in the ordinary, but also to act on ecological problems in the larger world. The landscape patches that emerge are lively but vulnerable assemblages that artists, activists, and their nonhuman allies belong to as local characters. By being open for tours, the places loosely connect publics that share modes of attention set on urban natures, salvageable garbage, and vernacular aesthetics. These informal institutions, non-profits, and vulnerable for-profit businesses are caught up in Austin’s current sustainable and cultural development strategies, but also share in an informal economy through their use of valueless wastes. Some articulate with contemporary localization movements that seek to reconfigure water, food, and energy production to decrease their precarious dependence on globalized economies. Others refuse the boundary between art and everyday life by recasting houses as never-ending aesthetic projects. Similarly, as wildlife habitats and urban gardens, they are thriving examples of cultivated places that disrupt an assumed antithesis between cities and ecosystems. These embodied critiques or dreams are small-scale manifestations of what urban natures might become. Borrowing from Deleuze & Guattari, Haraway, Latour, and Thrift, I attend to these places’ ecological and aesthetic relational dynamics that communicate directly through bodies, senses, and forms. This non-representational approach recognizes the contributions of nonhuman agents like plants, animals, microbes, and machines in composing affective landscapes. The writing strives to be a mode of research that is isomorphic with the phenomena it describes. It is impelled by a love of the places, people, and beings it researches; it aspires to preserve a little bit of them by redoubling their presence in the world. / text

This thesis deals with two related questions. The first relates to a critical inquiry into the processes of curriculum creation and formation within a medical school which has undergone a significant curriculum revision. I explore the notion that such processes can be understood as a form of practice in which the relationship between content and process is held together by what is explored in the thesis as an indivisible, paradoxical tension. Exploring curriculum as a kind of process is a novel approach in a school steeped in the traditions of the natural sciences. The common metaphors for curriculum in this setting refer to blueprints, models, behavioural competencies and objective standards. These are all founded on the belief in an objective observer who can maintain some form of distance between themselves and the subject in question. Issues of method are, therefore, central to my explorations of how we might, instead, locate curriculum in social processes and acts of evaluation involving power relations, conflict and the continuous negotiation of how it is we work together. The paradox of process and content in this way of understanding is that participants in curricular practice are simultaneously forming and being formed by their participation. In this way of thinking, it makes no sense to say one can either “step back” to “reflect” on their participation or that there is a way to approach participation “objectively.” The other question I address in this thesis has to do with the emergence of excellence. By emergence, I refer to thinking in the complexity sciences which attempts to explain phenomena which have a coherence which cannot be planned for or known in advance. “Excellence” is a kind of idealization which has no meaning until it is taken up and “functionalized” within specific settings and situations. In the setting of participating in curriculum formation, excellence may be understood as one possible outcome of persisting engagement and continuous inquiry which itself influences the ongoing conversation of how excellence is recognized and understood. In other words, excellence emerges in social processes as a theme simultaneously shaping and being shaped by curricular practice. This research was initiated as a result of a mandate to establish a program which could demonstrate excellence in the area of relationships in health care. The magnitude of this mandate felt overwhelming at the time and raised a lot of anxiety. I found that the traditional thinking regarding participation in organizational change processes (which, within my setting, could be understood as “set your goal and work backwards”) did not satisfactorily account for the uncertainties and surprises of working with colleagues to create something new. The method of inquiry can be read as another example of a process / content paradox through which my findings regarding curriculum and excellence emerged. This method involved taking narratives from my experience as an educator and clinician and a participant in varied forms of curricular processes and inquiring into them further by both locating them within relevant discourses from sociology, medical education and organizational studies and also sharing them with peers in my doctoral program as well as colleagues from my local setting. This method led to an inquiry and series of findings which was substantively different from my starting point. This movement in thinking offers another demonstration of an emergent methodology in which original findings are “discovered” through the course of inquiry. These findings continue to affect my practice and my approach to inquiry within the setting of medical education. The original contributions to thinking in medical education occur in several ways. One is in the demonstration of a research method which takes my own original experience seriously and seeks to challenge taken for granted assumptions about a separation of process and content, instead exploring the implications of understanding these in a relation of paradox. By locating my work within social processes of engagement and recognition, I explore the possibility that excellence can also be understood as an emergent property of interaction which is under continuous negotiation which itself forms the basis for further recognition and exploration of “excellence.” The social processes which shape and are shaped by “excellence” are fundamental to the practice of curriculum itself. Both curricula and “excellence” emerge within the interactions of people with a stake in the desired outcomes as the product of continued involvement and consideration of ongoing experience. Finally, a process view of medical education is presented as a contribution to understanding the work of training physicians who are comfortable with the uncertainties and contingencies involved in the humane care of their patients.

I detta projektarbete har jag med utgångspunkt i duon Invader Ace utforskat hur vi kan använda oss av improvisation inom ramarna för elektronisk dansmusik. Istället för att producera elektronisk dansmusik med hjälp av dator, har vi med våra instrument och olika typer av tekniska ljudresurser undersökt vad som händer när vi skapar musiken i stunden genom improvisation som huvudverktyg. / <p>I texten har jag valt ut exempel som jag hoppas kan ge en inblick i vad detta projekt inneburit och resulterat i. Dessa finns dokumenterade på tillhörande skiva, eller via länkar i den digitala versionen av denna reflektion</p>