Pilot Experiment

Main Experiment

Apprehending Musical Form

A striking result from this experiment is that evaluative judgments were strongly different in the two listening conditions. Out of the 52 evaluative statements made by COMPO listeners, 43 were negative, while in the IMPRO condition only 29 evaluative statements (out of 71) were negative. Simply put, when experienced as a composition, the piece was almost unanimously judged negatively while evaluations were generally more positive when the piece was experienced as an improvisation, although there was some degree of variability in the listeners' evaluations.

The main reason invoked to ground such negative judgments in the COMPO condition was that the piece was judged to be missing any kind of formal organization on a large time scale (20 statements made explicit reference to this point). More specifically, listeners seemed to strongly regret the episodic structure of the piece, the absence of a rhetorical or narrative organization, or simply the lack of a clear direction in the long run:

"I'm hearing blocks of sounds that are juxtaposed one after the other, there are not really strong connections between them. And all these successive musical moments are not integrated in an overall structure" (C1);

"There is no overall conception on how to develop the musical material. The form is nothing else than a succession of episodes, that's not enough" (C3);

"The composer is in charge of creating a beginning, a middle and an end; here, it just feels like he's throwing his ideas one after the other" (C4);

"I had trouble hearing the form, there were not any signals or clear rhetorical markers" (C2);

"Maybe the piece adheres to an overall structure, but it's not very clear… Anyhow, the piece does not follow a discursive logic. There is no intention to narrate something: each musical object is encountered in its own situation but without any structural links with the other situations" (C1);

"I didn't understand the form, in the sense of a coherent temporal construct that is unfolding through time. It lacks a clear direction" (C7);

"There are a lot of variations on a short time scale but the overall form is surprisingly static, almost non-existent" (C5).

The highly episodic organization was also pointed out by the listeners in the IMPRO condition, but in most cases (10 out of 13 statements), this was perceived as a standard feature of improvisation and, as such, was not used to ground any negative judgments:

"I told myself that there was no pre-established form in this piece, there was a sort of "in-progress" quality to the music, as if the musicians were building the piece one sound after the other, one sequence after the other… which is not surprising since it's improvised!" (I6);

"The form is very linear…new ideas are found along the way and it changes the music bit by bit. So it's not very rich or interesting from a formal point of view but it's often like that in improvisation, that's not a real problem" (I4);

On the contrary, attempts made by the musicians to delineate a simple overall structure, whether by using silences to articulate successive sequences or by progressively transforming the initial musical material over the course of the piece, added to the piece's credit for certain listeners in the IMPRO condition:

"I think it's quite well done from a structural point of view. The overall progression is clear enough, you can easily follow the successive parts. And that's something that is not that easy to achieve in improvisation" (I2).

In that respect, clearly listeners were not expecting as much in the IMPRO condition compared to the COMPO condition, but that does not mean that the temporal unfolding of the music was of secondary importance in the IMPRO condition. After all, both composition and improvisation result in temporally organized musical sounds; as a result, it is not entirely surprising that, at a general level, shared criteria regarding the evolution of musical sounds through time should be used to evaluate both creative processes. 4 However, the comparison between the two conditions shows that these criteria were not applied on the same time scale: COMPO listeners were much more concerned with the temporal unfolding of the piece on a larger time scale than IMPRO listeners, who focused rather on what happened on a shorter time scale (e.g., fluidity of the transitions, clarity in the direction of a given musical gesture, unity of a short sequence, etc.). Overall, there were only 13 statements relative to large-scale organization in the IMPRO group, while 37 of their statements discussed the local organization of a given episode or sequence:

"I like how quickly the music shifts, here: there is a sudden rinforzando in the clarinet, the saxophone makes a glissando and, before we realize it, the music is already elsewhere" (I8);

"I really liked this crescendo, starting almost from nothing but clearly leading to this passage in the higher register" (I3);

"In the first minute, there is only one idea, and they explore the different manners to play with that idea, it's very pleasant to follow" (I6).

More generally, while fluidity, tightness and consistency were taken as implicit norms of evaluation by the COMPO listeners – hence the very negative evaluations when they realized that the piece was not meeting these standards – they were only considered as ideal regulative objectives by the IMPRO listeners, something that the musicians should strive to achieve, while recognizing that they would fail to do so most of the time. However, when IMPRO listeners judged that the improvisers did meet these standards of fluidity, tightness and consistency, they praised the virtuosity and mental agility of the musicians who were no longer said to be improvising but rather "composing in real time" (i.e., improvising music that approached standards of perfection they did not routinely expect from an improvisation). In other words, one of the reasons the piece was judged as successful in the IMPRO condition was precisely that, in some respects, it could pass as a performance of a written composition – or, to emphasize the paradox, that it did no longer sound improvised:

"They're not simply improvising, it's like they're composing in real time, they're really trying to build a form. That's also what I like in this piece" (I8);

"When improvisation achieves results that seem to be only achievable in written music, for example when musicians are changing what they are doing in an almost perfectly synchronous way, I tend to be even more impressed by the musicians, and to feel an even greater pleasure" (I3);

"If I didn't know it was improvised, I would really feel that it is written out, because everything is so sharp, so clear with one musician responding as soon as the other stops playing. It's almost as if it was planned, or as if the musicians were reading from a score" (I1).

Imperfections, Improvised Feel, and the Ethical Appreciation of Improvisation

The excitement expressed by listeners in the IMPRO condition when they felt that musicians approached the level of precision and fluidity more traditionally associated with the performance of composed musical works, or the fact that they used terms such as "miracle" or "magic" to describe these passages, are in fact quite revelatory of improvisation being apprehended against the backdrop of its own potential failure. Indeed, in many ways, so-called imperfections that were routinely encountered in the piece – technical failures, drops in inspiration, inconsistencies, etc. – appeared to play a central role in its appreciation under the IMPRO condition. Of course, that is not to say that the improvisation is valued because of its inherently imperfect state. To quote Andy Hamilton (2000, 171), it would probably be "overly paradoxical" to consider imperfection as an aesthetic value. Rather, the listeners' comments in the IMPRO condition tend to show that there is a complex relation, almost dialectical, between imperfection and the appreciation of improvised music.

On the one hand, because of the specificities of the creative process in improvisation – creating music on an instrument, without any pre-established plans, in the course of an irreversible performance – IMPRO listeners were indeed expecting a certain number of imperfections in the resulting musical product, at least in regard to the norms of compositional practices (where one can plan ahead how the piece will unfold, modify at any time what is written without worrying at the same time about actually performing the piece); these imperfections were often regretted by the listeners but were nonetheless considered as "part of the trade" – a sort of necessary evil, the mark of "true" improvisation:

"This passage is maybe a little bit empty… it's often like that in improvisation, you just have to accept that some parts are going to be less successful than others. If that had been composed, I would have preferred that we skipped that part and that we arrived directly at that new part, with the softer sounds and higher pitches; but such exploratory passages where musicians give the impression of searching for a new idea are almost inevitable in improvisation" (I7);

"I really prefer the last third of the piece. It's more focused and they've found materials that work better together. If the music could have started there, it would have been really great; but hey, that's part of what improvisation is, there is often some trial and error before finding what to play" (I4).

But, on the other hand, these imperfections were judged as contributing to the emergence of certain aesthetic properties – instrumental impulse, fragility, unpredictability, openness, urgency, etc. – that appeared to be valued intrinsically and which, taken together, seem to be integral to the music's "improvised feel". The constant presence throughout the piece of complex and unstable sounds, such as multiphonics, provides a nice example of this link between imperfection and improvised feel. While being a staple ingredient of pretty much every score written for wind instruments since the 1970's, complex multiphonics are often difficult to produce and even more difficult to sustain for a long time in a controlled way as sounds become more unstable and start to change abruptly, something which indeed happened at some points in the piece.

When the piece was apprehended as a composition, these moments of instability were clearly identified as mistakes, ascribed either to the performers, who were deemed unable to play correctly what was supposedly written, or, more often, to the putative composer, who was accused of writing something that is impossible to play for the performers, or putting too much emphasis on the technical and instrumental means of production, to the detriment of the musical substance per se:

"There are too many mistakes in the passage: I can guess what the composer's idea was but it's ruined by the performers who can't control their sound" (C6);

"To go from that noisy sound to that very high pitch, he chooses to use a harmonic sound; but it's a very bad idea, it's too demanding, no clarinet player has enough breath to sustain something like that for more than a few seconds!" (C5);

"The music is so much focused on instrumental technique… it's all you can hear. That's also why the form is episodic, because it's guided by the instrument: it's one technique after the other" (C1);

"I found the piece a bit cold. It sounds like a technical study, where the composer tries to explore different instrumental techniques" (C7).

But these sounds were interpreted in a much more positive light by the listeners who attended to the piece as an improvisation, since they were then considered as part of the music's improvised feel; this may be because these sounds draw attention to the instrument and how the performer explores its possibilities, because they contributed to the piece's fragile and organic quality, or because they reinforced the music's unpredictability:

"I love the sound of the sax, here, it's so unique: you can really feel that they have practiced their instrument for twenty years, and that they have a way of using their instrument that is totally personal. You couldn't ask another saxophonist to play exactly like that, for example if you wanted to use that kind of sounds in a composition… it wouldn't work, it's really specific to improvised music" (I1);

"I love that this is not your typical sax sound; it's a very specific, individual sound that I must learn to know over the course of the performance… like discovering a new instrument" (I5);

"The music is organic because it is shaped by the musicians' breathing. When they are out of breath, the sound breaks… it's very fragile, very human" (I2);

"This rough multiphonic… it's not bad, this gives an organic quality to the music" (I4);

"I don't know if this sudden sound is voluntary or not. But in a sense, that does not matter. What is nice is that the musicians allow themselves to be surprised by their own sounds. When they play sounds like that, it's not always perfectly controlled, I guess. But they seize the opportunity to explore a new direction" (I7).

Overall, all 17 statements made by COMPO listeners referring to these specific sounds were negative statements, while 21 out of the 25 corresponding statements in the IMPRO condition were positive statements. How can we explain such a dramatic difference between the two conditions in the interpretation of these "imperfect" instrumental sounds? First, as said before, knowing that the piece was an improvisation strongly oriented the expectations of the IMPRO listeners; the imperfections they registered made sense to them because they were seen as deeply connected to the specificities of the generative process in improvisatory situations. In a sense, IMPRO listeners did expect some degree of instrument-dependency because, by definition, improvisation is always made with (or against) an instrument (including voice); they did expect some degree of formal indetermination because, by definition, it is generated without any pre-conceived plan; finally, they did expect some degree of fragility because, by definition, it is spontaneously generated, etc. In other words, they could integrate all these aspects into a coherent whole – an overall set of values and expectations – instead of being puzzled each time such an imperfection occurred, as was the case for the COMPO listeners.

Second, and maybe more importantly, IMPRO listeners' comments constantly oscillated between describing the music produced (in aesthetic terms of fragility, unpredictability, urgency, etc.), and characterizing the improvisers' actions (in terms of spontaneity, freedom, risk-taking, etc.). In other words, the listeners' appreciation in the IMPRO condition seemed to superimpose ethical aspects on aesthetic ones: through the resulting music, it was often the improviser's adhesion to the "regulative objectives" (Brown 2000) of improvisation that was appreciated. Describing a passage as "tense" or "fragile" could simply refer to the impression that the improvisers were taking a lot of risks in its realization; in other words, it was only described as tense because of the risk-taking involved, which explains why such aesthetic characterization simply disappeared in the description of the same passage in the COMPO condition:

"It's a bit like in poker: these sounds are very risky, because it can produce something awfully trivial, but if it works, the result is often excellent. I think you can really feel this tension here, it creates a certain fragility that is interesting" (I4);

"The sounds are really nice, very complex. But I don't know, something is missing… it's a bit too soft, there is not enough tension, not enough energy in this passage" (C4).

Conversely, when IMPRO listeners commented on the lack of unpredictability of the music, it was not so much as an aesthetic characterization (the sense of surprise, originality or uniqueness we expect from most artworks) but more to point out the improvisers' lack of spontaneity or freedom:

"I need to feel that the music can go anywhere, even if it actually stays in the same place. I need to feel that the musicians are free. But here, after a few minutes of listening, I just know that they will continue to play in the same framework, as if they were imprisoned in something established before they started to improvise and that they were unable to go off-track" (I5).

Musical "imperfections" were then also valued because they served as acoustical proofs of the musicians' sincerity and of the improvisation's authenticity – proofs that the music was in fact improvised, with musicians using these imperfections as a springboard to display their ability to improvise, understood as the ability to react in relevant ways to unexpected events (for example by immediately responding to a flaw in the production of a given note). This aspect was clearly identified by several listeners as an important part of the pleasure taken in listening to an improvisation:

"I really love those small moments in improvisation: here, the clarinet's sound is breaking, but somehow the musician integrates that in his playing, by producing a kind of tremolo" (I3);

"I want to see how the musicians manage to continue when something goes wrong, that's always exciting. I'm here to see the musicians at work!" (I8);

"When I'm listening to an improvisation, I want to see how the musicians will cope with their problems; it's not really the same with composition, it's more comfortable, usually the problems are already solved before the performance!" (I1).

In short, while musical imperfections appeared to systematically prevent COMPO listeners in appreciating the piece, they played a central role in IMPRO listeners' appreciation, by confirming the improvisation's authentic status, fuelling the emergence of certain aesthetic properties, and providing more occasions for the listeners to apprehend (and possibly enjoy) the improvisers' real-time musical thinking:

"Part of the pleasure I take in listening to this music is also to follow the musician's thinking, to track his choices in real time" (I7);

"Here, I think there is an unexpected pause, which occurs because the two musicians breathe at the same time, and it's breaking a little bit the music's rhythm and energy. But instead of taking advantage of this coincidence to introduce a new idea, the saxophonist just repeats what he was doing before… it's not a smart move! I'm more excited when I can feel the improviser's intelligence, his sense of timing" (I6);

"I like imagining what the musicians are thinking: What are they trying to do? Why did they play that? Where do they want to go? That's the kind of stuff that I like about improvisation. And in the beginning, I thought it was very clear, that you could really follow what they were thinking" (I1).

A Relational Experience

Beyond the question of different values underlying the appreciation of improvisation and composition, the most striking result from this study is that people did not seem to listen in the same way across the two conditions. Of course, that does not mean that the musical sounds were totally different to their ears: in both conditions, the acoustical quality of the sounds produced by the performers was described in similar terms ("abrasive" (C3); "distorted" (I5); "harsh" (I1); etc.); similar images or metaphors were used to describe their iconic contents ("it sounds like a boat leaving the port" (C1); "it sounds like big machines spinning in the wind" (I2); "it sounds like elephants" (C5); etc.); and similar associations were suggested ("it sounds a bit like Pygmy polyphonies" (C2); "it's almost like an ethnic music" (I7); "sometimes the music is evocative of an exotic imagery, maybe African" (I4); etc.). But, in the IMPRO condition, the musical sounds produced by the performers seemed to acquire a whole supplementary layer of meaning, which dramatically altered the way listeners experienced the piece.

As one could expect, in the IMPRO condition, the music was perceived as a collective creative process – two musicians taking decisions in real time – rather than as the definitive product of a single mind.

"Naturally, when I'm listening to this, I'm more sensitive to the process, how the music is building, one moment after the other; there is no one overarching thought at work, here" (I7);

"The music is really being made by two people, in the sense that what you hear is the result of their interactions, the interferences that are produced by the encounters of their sounds" (I2).

As a result, for the listeners in the IMPRO condition, perceived sounds were not just sounds simpliciter, at least not all the time; they were also perceived as intentions-in-sounds. The sounds produced by the musicians were heard as both the finality of the creative process and the mean through which the collective process was brought forward – i.e., the means through which the musicians communicated and interacted with each other. In other words, the sounds produced by the performers were not only apprehended for their "acoustical" content or for the role they play in the overall form, but also for their "communicational" or "intentional" content, and what they revealed about their producer's current intentions in the collective music-making process. For example, towards the end of the piece, the saxophonist played a new, quasi-vocal, type of sound for a very short period of time. The 7 COMPO listeners who discussed the passage were perplexed by this event, treating it as another inconsistency; they did not understand why the composer used a totally new kind of sound one minute before the ending, nor why he chose a type of sound that blended so poorly with that played by the clarinet:

"I don't understand why the composer chose to use that kind of sound here; that's something we've never heard before and, if I remember correctly, it will not be developed further before the end of the piece. To me, that does not make any sense!" (C5).

On the contrary, in the 5 statements discussing that passage, IMPRO listeners ascribed a clear communicational content to that sound, interpreting it as a means for the saxophonist to nudge the clarinetist towards changing what she was doing:

"Here, the music is a bit monotonous, it's been the same thing for too long, now. The saxophone player tries to bring something different so that a new part can begin but it seems that the other musician ignores him and it just fails" (I3);

"The saxophonist is trying something new, I like this sudden agitation which shakes things up a little bit, it was necessary, I think, but I guess the clarinetist didn't get what he was up to" (I4).

This difference in apprehending musical sounds led to two radically distinct experiences. In the COMPO condition, the piece was experienced as a sonic product, with, as discussed earlier, listeners paying great attention (in 71 of their statements) to the various acoustical effects achieved by the musicians and to the overall structure (or lack thereof):

"I've tried to follow the evolution of pitches throughout the piece, but the transformations in timbre were much more prominent" (C2);

"The overall idea of this part is quite clear: making the acoustical material more and more granular. But there, it's done too quickly, and I wasn't able to clearly apprehend the successive steps of the process" (C3).

But in the IMPRO condition, the music was not just an affair of instruments, pitches, durations and timbres; it was also an affair of intentions, attitudes and interactions. As such, it was more commonly described as a kind of relational process, with the listeners dedicating 61 of their statements to the description of the specific dialogic relation embodied in this improvisation, to the quality of the listening the musicians gave to each other or to the efforts they did (or did not) make to accommodate each other's (sometimes distinct) artistic personalities:

"They're really into a kind of mimicry, because they play with the same type of musical sounds. But at the same time, each musician is also trying to affirm his own identity" (I1);

"I like how the musicians interact, it's a bit strange, it's neither a dialogue nor a superposition of monologues. When I'm listening to this, I imagine two people talking to each other while not really listening to the other… and while still managing to say more or less the same thing" (I2);

"I would say that what I like in this passage, and maybe generally in this improvisation, is that there is a mix between a desire for a fusional relationship and the denial of such a relationship… a kind of dance between attraction and repulsion: on the one hand, they try to blend their sounds but on the other hand, they do so in a too brutal fashion for the sounds to actually blend" (I3);

"It's a kind of dialogue, a dialogue made with held tones… It's almost as if the two discourses were parallel and independent from each other but at the same time, they're stopping when the other is stopping, they're listening to each other. Their relation is really interesting, both disinterested and caring, making the effort to join the other in a common sound, but at the same time with a strong sense of their autonomy. That's what I find the most interesting in this recording" (I5);

"What I hear above all in this piece is two individuals with very different personalities trying to communicate and to co-exist in the same space. And when I'm listening to their piece, what I'm really attending to is the dynamics of these relations – how the space between these two individuals shifts in the course of the performance" (I6).

Such descriptions, which interweave music-specific terms and more broadly social terms, were never made in the COMPO condition; and even when the dialogic quality of the music was mentioned, it was never in such strong socio-relational terms. In short, a striking specificity of the IMPRO condition was that the piece was also crucially experienced as the sonic embodiment of socio-musical relations.