INTUITIVE MUSIC HOMEPAGE
about improvised, intuitive music, experimental music notations and related topics, webmastered by Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen, Denmark.
Last revision worth mentioning:| for Danish readers: SE UNDER DETTE LINK OM FESTIVAL FOR IMPROVISERET/ÅBENT NOTERET MUSIK I KBH. LØR 15.JUNI! |
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This Month's Quotation()
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Denmark's Intuitive Music Conference |
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Birdsong Guides CD-guide |
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Dansk: Koncerter(rev. ) |
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Revidiert: Japanese Section |
101205
100821 ___ World Improvisation day You are invited to participate in the first World Improvisation Day, which happens on Suturday, September 18, 2010. We, the Japanese association for the study of Musical Improvisation, are going to start World Improvisation Day. This is to celebrate all kinds of improvisations all over the world. For the first trial we temporarily have decided the day to be September 18, 2010 which is the first day of our annual meeting of this year. However, we hope to openly discuss which day to choose for the future opportunities; for example, 29 August is the birthday of Charlie Parker or 25 December is Derek Bailey's deathday. Today the conception “improvisation” is found in various fields needless to say from the arts fields like music, dance or theater but more over to the fields like psychotherapy or way of living. We like to invite all the improvisers in the world to share what the idea of improvisation can contribute to the world , through the events for improvisation. Here is how you can participate in World Improvisation Day: You can practice improvisaion at any style and venue you want. You can organize any educational opportunities which explore these concepts and practices of improvisaion. Other possibilities… Please give us the information on your projects to worldimpro@gmail.com to share your program at our web site; http://worldimpro.blog134.fc2.com/blog-entry-1.html. Also we like your corporation to pass this information to any improivisers you know. For more information contact: worldimpro@gmail.com For the imformation on The Japanese Association for the study of Musical Improvisaion: http://jasmim.net/english/index.htm. Yu Wakao President of the Japanese Association for the study of Musical Improvisation Composer, Improviser Professor of Kobe University, Graduate School of Human development and Emvironment. -- Yu Wakao - mail: wakaoyu[at]nifty.com |
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091228 This year in June, German composer and a pioneer for integrating composition and improvisation, Erhard Karkoschka, died at the age of 86 years. Karkoschka was influential as a professor of composition. His "new Music notation" is the best known book on new notations worldwide (German: "Das Schriftbild der neuen Musik", 1965; English: "Notation in New Music", London/New York 1972; Japanese: ZEN-ON Music Company Ltd., Tokyo 1978). Compared to other books that catalogue new notations, this has the virtue of presenting a number of music works in their entirety in the last section. In his article "Aspects of group improvisation" (first publ. in German as "Aspekte der Gruppenimprovisation" in Melos 1, 1971), he described how improvisation practise was at the same time connected to new sounds beyond those that could be written by traditional notation as well as to a liberation of both individuals and of the group. Read the article here, it's certainly still of interest! |
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090531 NEW, EXPANDED version of my mini-handbook with improv exercises here! |
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090216 Sorry for the interruption in previous weeks. My provider suddenly disconnected the old URL. Everything should now be up again here. If you read this, you have reached the new domain of my own - www.intuitivemusic.dk ! PLEASE UPDATE BOOKMARKS + LINKS and PASS IT ON! |
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090119 Stockhausen-studiekredsen FORTSÆTTER. Læs mere her! |
| 081128 Review of the two Stockhausen Aus den Sieben Tagen Concerts transmitted in BBC 3 "Hear and Now", on the 1st and 8th November 2008 under "Guides" at this homepage - direct link here ! |
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080619 De 12 forelæsninger på Folkeuniversitetet er blevet til 9 i en privat studiekreds og starter nu onsdag den 24.september. Læs mere her! |
080508
NEW BOOKS...
Agrell, Jeffrey: Improvisation Games for Classical Musicians. 500+ non-jazz games for performers, educators and everyone else, Chicago (GIA Publications) 2008.
As "500+" already suggests, this is a very large collection of improv exercises!
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Prèvost, Edwin: Minute Particulars. Meanings in music making in the wake of hierarchical realignments and other essays, Wiltshire (Matchless Recordings and Publishing), 2004.
This book invites to debate. Are laptop musicians antisocial in the way they play? Which is the current impact of consumer society on improvised music?
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Read on... See my full summaries of these books here - please scroll down to the categories "f1.1" (for Agrell) and "g3" (for Prèvost) or search for the authors' names.
080303 NEW BOOK ON RECENT IMPRO MUSIC HISTORY AND THEORY
David Borgo: Sync or Swarm. New York (continuum), 2005 - looks like an important book in our field ... see excerpts of my summary right here below. At the end, you will find a link leading to the full summary.
... the second chapter titled with the poetic circumscription “Reverence for Uncertainty” deals with the history of improvised music and discusses some issues of essential interest: the views of performers, of listeners, and issues related to recording and to criticism....These 22 pages seem to be one of the best introductions written so far to this field of music for students and other interested readers. Starting-point is jazz and how its improvisation aspect has been both restricted and re-activated during history. The author moves on to mentioning developments of composed music since Schoenberg, extending into Cage’s ‘indeterminacy’ and Stockhausen’s ‘intuitive music’.
...The author next plunges into an extensive discussion of the diverse existing views of improvised music and its culture. One of the many comparisons made is between Evan Parker and Derek Bailey, bringing up issues which concern how much the music should assert an individual style and the cultural context with which the improviser identifies himself – and how much an aesthetic exploration in its own terms.
...The subsection “Experiencing Uncertainty” deals with listening to improvised music. Reference is made to several views stressing the importance of shared knowledge between performers and audience that the music is created here and now. Other views concern the absence of form references and the creative role of the listener following from that, the description of different basic kinds of listening, the importance of listening with a non-traditional focus (which could be textures or the changing appearances of figure/ground/field), and discussions around the terminology with which to describe the multi-cultural, pluralist interaction aspect.
...Next subsection “Documenting Uncertainty” deals with recording practise. The reservations made by many improvisers are mentioned, and contrasted to Martin Davidson’s view (director of English Emanem Records) that improvisation (probably because not being repeatable) deserves and needs it more than composed music. Mention is further made on different attitudes among improvisers on editing and adding recorded material. And of the practical advantages of recording – keeping up a tradition, getting to know each other and making understanding easier because it allows for repeated listening. Improvised music may be seen as a “post-literate”, oral tradition. Missing copyright and royalties recognition is mentioned here as an example of how improvised music is still not recognized by the common cultural norms.
...At the end of these 22 pages on improvised music (“Reverence for Uncertainty” with subsections), its general development and some main areas of discussion specific to it, we find a final subsection on written improvised music criticism, “Evaluating Uncertainty”. Ensemble rapport and general formal properties of the music may appear as criteria employed...
See my full summary of this book here - please scroll down to the category "g1.1" or search for "borgo".
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071207
Karlheinz Stockhausen, born 1928, died Wednesday 5th. Besides being a pioneer of electronic and note-written experimental composition, he played a decisive role in the development of a new instrumental performance practise within European composition, in which choices and creative collaboration was left to the performers. This began in Klavierstück XI in 1958 and became elaborated in works of the sixties such as Adieu and Zeitmasse and was continued in the works with "plus-minus" notation later in the same decade like Plus-Minus, Kurzwellen and Sternklang. These works still are a challenge to composers, as they show examples of how musical ideas can be notated in outline without sacrificing contemporary ways of musical collaboration in a teamwork. This is even more true of the verbally notated collections From the Seven Days and For Times to Come (1968 and 1970, comprising 31 pieces in all) which do completely away with the arbitrariness of fixing many details. Instead, a flexible system ranging from describing strategic musical details to metaphors allowing for widely different individual interpretations with many steps in between were created and thus no less than models for compositional thinking which incorporated improvisors' way of thinking. For this, he coined the term 'intuitive music', because for him 'improvisation' was too loaded with pre-conceived ideas and cliches. He wanted so to speak "improvisation of a higher order" to happen. In the Group for Intuitive Music, we played many of these works - from the group's start in 1974 and on. In 1983 and 1996 we had long meetings with him. I am grateful for all the inspiration he has given me and others. It's hard to imagine what I would been thinking about experimental composition, had he not been there. Info on and around the open works of Stockhausen mentioned above is available at this and related sites under the following links: Bibliography: experimental improvisation and notation practise 1945-99 - see the special section G2.2 devoted to Stockhausen! Fixing/Circumscribing/Suggesting/Evoking. An analysis of Stockhausen’s text pieces (1997/2006) Festlegen/Umreißen/Andeuten/Hervorrufen. Analytisches zu den Textkompositionen Stockhausens (1997) Jerome Kohl: Serial determination and "intuitive music"(1978/2006) Artikel på dansk om Gruppen for Intuitiv Musiks møde med Stockhausen i 1983 Jørgen Lekfeldt: Stockhausens musik - utopien og teologien (1987) Carl |
| 060918 Here is the online version of my large paper "SOUND IS MULTI-DIMENSIONAL. PARAMETER ANALYSIS AS A TOOL FOR CREATIVE MUSIC MAKING" (Click on "her".) Besides theorizing, it features a BIG CATALOGUE of 33 selected open compositions by my students, created during the years 1985-2006 in the context of my teaching at Aalborg University. So this is also a large anthology of a very special composition form. Take a look! And you might also try to PLAY some of them (you don't have to content yourself with listening to those 126 MB (one hundred twenty-six megabytes) of sound files included) ... as the compositions are there in extenso with English translations throughout. |
 Excerpt from Mette W. Nielsen: Et døgn [“A Day and a Night”], (1999) |
| 060912 New contributions up at International Improvised Music Archive: Find them both here! |
| 060806 My bibliography Experimental Improvisation and Notation Practise 1945-1999. An annotated Bibliography - has just been updated. I've worked several hours with some corrections and amendments (MANY hours counting the time also for reading the new material), and yet the new entries are only approx. 1% of what was already there ... so it wouldn't even be fair to mention what was taken in now! If you don't know it, do take a look! Given some interest in looking at literature, there is an amazing big amount about both free improvisation and related stuff. And if you've seen it before, you may take another look. Even overlooking the classification system might be a challenge ... but take patience while looking at the first pages ...here it is... :-) |
| 060601 SE HER! Et dansk cand. pæd. - speciale om fri improvisation, af Felix Becker. Indeholder bla. interviews med Ivan Vincze, Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen, Randi Kjær og Helle Thun. Det er spændende læsning at studere sammenfatningerne herfra - ordnet i temaerne "Lyst", "Sammenspil" og "Frihed". |
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060406 PROUDLY PRESENTING ! International Improvised Music Archive (IIMA) now includes the entire archive of improvised music and related by Richard Cochrane 1995-1999 from the Musings website - approx. 240 reviews. A unique historical collection and documentation of releasing activity. I would love to list all the musicians reviewed here, but they're too many, and the collection almost certainly includes some of your favorites. See the index here |
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060122
Proudly presenting! SPECIAL JAPANESE SECTION following my 2005 Japan journey, with the aim of promoting contact between the West and Japan in my special field of improvised music. It links to: - original game pieces by Shiba Tetsu now published at IIMA site (both in English and Japanese!) - article on Makoto Nomura describing how he composes for improvising musicians, now published at IIMA site (both in English and Japanese!) - 2005 travel impressions by CBN, now published here - a number of Japanese organisations and individual homepages. |
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040319 PROUDLY PRESENTING! New important texts at International Improvised Music Archive (IIMA): Reacting. Pioneering article from 1970 which describes compositional work with the goal of making interesting challenges to improvising musicians. Vinko Globokar is a very well known European pioneer of improvised music with the group New Phonic Art and with related composition. It is beyond my understanding that, as far as I can see, this is the first time an article by him appears in English translation, despite almost countless releases, concert appearances, literature commenting his works and activities - and French, German, Italian and Mexican publications of his writings. It's time to read it, friends! It relates very closely to the kind of composition based on interdependence between musicians which might in the English-speaking world be better known with Chr. Wolff and John Zorn (and which CBN also cultivates...see my article Sharpening the Process, scroll down a bit...) Book: Wisdom of The Impulse. On the Nature of Musical Free Improvisation. 1998 (publ. by author), pdf version (IIMA) 2004. Part 1 (764 KB) - Part 2 (604 KB). Download. This comprehensive work deals above all with the analysis of typical phenomena and processes in free improvised music playing and it attempts to put up a consistent terminology to describe them. This set of concepts certainly deserves discussion! It's about alternatives and complements to such categories as theme, harmony, bass line, schematic form concepts etc etc which do often not suit the flowing and sound-oriented reality of free improvised music. For instance, 'transitions' (so typical of the music we make) between sounding 'identities' within the playing process are analysed into 9 categories, among which are 'feature overlap'. 'feature change', 'fragmentation' and more! - In addition, it provides insights into American free music life, including teaching of free improvisation, and a survey of improvisors maps opinions on questions of common interest. The book also features suggestions of exercises, both individual and group ones, which could carry on the conceptual discoveries, on a down-to-earth basis. Look here: http://www20.brinkster.com/improarchive/ (Click on the big "here" and you'll arrive at the table of contents...) |
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040220 FREE MUSIC HUMOUR Since long, Belgian visual artist Frank Maieu has illustrated the annual posters and flyers of the WIM Free Music Festival. Gallery here!! |
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040122 New Article by CBN: Sharpening the Process. On musical composition - interaction, communication, methods (2003). From the introduction: The text to follow was conceived of as some notes for my own purposes while reflecting on my own work over the years, but I also realised it would be exciting to speak out and discuss these matters with colleagues outside of the norms of scientific papers. It deals with composition as a way of sharpening the playing process and of intensifying communication between players, rather than prescribing details... The article was sent out, but only very few comments came back... |
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030910 ANNOUNCING INTERNATIONAL IMPROVISED MUSIC ARCHIVE - an initiative to make texts on improvised music available also for future generations...take a look !! |
030610 New department with CBN freeware compositions !
030522 DEUTSCH: Komposition und Musiktherapie - Voneinander lernen. Form und Inhalt in der Musiktherapie (2003) - neues Artikel von CBN.
| 030415 PROUDLY PRESENTING: Edition Text & Graphix from The Society for Publication of Danish Music. Dansk udgave her. |
030314. Oops + apologies - I forgot to update This Month's Quotation for March, is now corrected.
030220 DEUTSCH: Leserbrief für MusikTexte 96, 2003 - Demokratie, Interaktivität, musikalische Praxis.
030203 New interview with Carl Bergstroem-Nielsen.
021211 A server problem made email contact temporarily unavailable since sunday... this is now corrected.
021122 DANSK: SPOR Efterårsfestival 5-7/12 2002 - KOMPOSITIONSMUSIKKENS UDBRYDERE. 021122 DANSK: Anmeldelse af koncert med Ensemble Con Fuoco i Aalborg, 12. Oktober. 021010 020930 PROUDLY PRESENTING! The article "Free Collective Improvisation in Higher Education" from 1995 by Charles C. Ford - on improvisation as a common subject offered to all students at Thames Valley University, London. See the full-text article here! 020924 DANSK: Pressemeddelelse fra Ensemble Con Fuoco om koncert i Aalborg, 12. Oktober. 020908 Concert in Copenhagen with Bela Hamvas Group for Intuitive Music. 020904 DIMC page updated with a report of the 2002 Conference! 020820 DANSK: Con Fuoco, ny dansk gruppe under improvisationsgrupper 020816 CBN list of works updated with CD releases (both Danish and English list - see under Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen). 020626 DEUTSCH: Offene Komposition und andere Künste, Artikel von CBN,
jetzt online! Über dänische Gruppen, viele zum Teil ungekürzte Beispiele von CBN,
Jørgen Lekfeldt, Ivan Vincze, Max. E. Keller, Henrik Rasmussen, Niseema Marie Munk-Madsen. Beschreibung der
Unterricht offener Komposition im Fach "intuitiver Musik" an der Univ. Aalborg, Musiktherapie, mit Beispielen von den Studenten
Perla Leifsdottir und Line Normann. Auch
theoretische Diskussion.
READING ABOUT IMPROVISED MUSIC...
The English edition of my EXPERIMENTAL IMPROVISATION AND NOTATION PRACTISE 1945-1999 is now up here at http://hjem.get2net.dk/intuitive/legno1uk.htm!
I think I dare say it reflects my interest in reading and thinking about the music in addition to playing it, as well as my interest in mapping the territory. More than 650 entries, many annotated in length, so that the reader is informed about the contents of articles and books and about the ideas brought forward by them, not just the titles! Also included an overviewing text essay.
It is my hope to make access easier to this big body of literature for all those interested. Your comments are welcome. So are also any links (se direct addres above), and I would be happy to be informed of them in case.
Take a look!
Yours,
Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen
020626
Denmark's Intuitive Music Conference 2002 30th August till 1st September - programme is now up!020415
DANSK: Gamle misforståelser om Cage: 4'33". Læserbrev af CBN.020412
Vermittlungen - Musically speaking - online ressource of articles on improvisation teaching within music therapy training is now up!011222 Denmark's Intuitive Music Conference 2002 have now
dates .011220 CBN holder
foredrag om ny improvisationsmusik torsdag 17. januar 2002!Og NU er kæmpe-bibliografien oppe...:
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SÅ er min nye bibliografi: EKSPERIMENTERENDE IMPROVISATIONSPRAKSIS OG NOTATION 1945-1999. EN KOMMENTERET BIBLIOGRAFI udkommet også elektronisk på min hjemmeside: http://hjem.get2net.dk/intuitive/legno1.htm ! |
Yours, Carl. :-)
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