A very short history of the improvisation


 
 
In the 10th century A.C., the Benedictine monk Guido d'Arezzo placed a milestone
         in the musical history: his notation score system at last allowed musicians to leave
         their creations to something more reliable than the oral tradition.
         A goal that fiction and poetry had already reached thousands of years before, with
         the invention of writing.
        Thanks to Guido's invention, nowadays we are able to know the thoughts of  artists as
         Palestrina, Bach or Mozart.

         But the origin of music is very much prior than d'Arezzo's time, lost and confused
         with the origin of  the human civilization itself.

 
Ancient Roman and Egyptian artists left us wonderful sculptures and paintings
         portraying people playing musical instruments, even though we know close to nothing
         about their music.
        We know a little more about ancient Greeks music, whose modes were taken as model by
         mediaeval monks for their Gregorian modes.
         And what about the Egyptian engineer Ktesibios, who projected and built an hydraulic
         organ in the 3th century B.C., or about that famous  Hittite bas-relief portraying a
         musician playing a guitar like instrument?
Music had always been a faithful companion of man, thousands years before its official
         birth.
         During that long period without historical memory, that music prehistory , musicians
         used to improvise for their and other's pleasure, on feasts or dances.
         All musicians had necessarily to be good improvisers.

         Even after the adoption of the modern notation, musicians kept improvising.

        We can't even imagine how much mediaeval music was born and died, without
         leaving any  print of it, for the simple delight of some aristocrat, of a company of friends,
         or of a woman.
 In the Rinascimento, a very great deal of manuals teaching the right way of improvising
         were published. The "tastar de corde" (trying the strings) was an improvisation form,
         as the "preludio" or the "toccata". The art of "diminuire" was the capability of
         improvising on the structure of a known air.
         A written piece wasn't played two times in the same way, and a musician unable of
         improvising was considered a bad one.

        And this attitude didn't change in the following centuries.

J.S.Bach used to improvise intricate fugues on the organ and the Musical Offering he
        dedicated to the prussian king Friedrich the Great, is a wonderful example of the Bach
        style of improvising.
        The music of that period was usually composed and played simultaneously, since every
        musician was also a good performer, and only a few compositions deserved the honor
        of being handing down to posterity, not necessarily the better ones.
        Most of lutists Sylvius Leopold Weiss or David Kellner music have an improvisation
        character.
 

Mozart was considered a  great improviser too, and this tradition went on in the
        following century with Beethoven, Paganini and List.
        Famous pianists as Thalberg or Dreyschock used to study even ten or more hours a day,
        just because they had to master improvisation, that was a fundamental attraction
        for the public.
        So they used to practice daily improvising formulas in every key, keep harmonizing and
        contra punctual techniques under their fingers, in order to  impress their audience.

        The "virtuosi", rather than musicians were considered heroes, and the concert pieces
        battles to win.
 Mozart was considered a  great improviser too, and this tradition went on in the
        following century with Beethoven, Paganini and List.
        Famous pianists as Thalberg or Dreyschock used to study even ten or more hours a day,
        just because they had to master improvisation, that was a fundamental attraction
        for the public.
        So they used to practice daily improvising formulas in every key, keep harmonizing and
        contra punctual techniques under their fingers, in order to  impress their audience.

        The "virtuosi", rather than musicians were considered heroes, and the concert pieces
        battles to win. 

With the gradual diffusion of the recital, born in the 19th century, and the consequent
        specialization of the role of the interpreter, composer and performer careers cease to
        live in the same person.  (Rachmaninoff was one of the last composers performers.)
        Whereas Bach, Mozart or Paganini played only their own music, the modern interpreter
        plays someone else music: he is a medium between the composer and the public.

        Nowadays, with the total separation between composer and player roles, the very
        knowledge of the improvisation is almost completely lost.
        Ancient treatises on improvisation still exist, but there are not schools teaching it.

 

 

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