- The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors to Volume 1
- Introduction: On Critical Improvisation Studies
- Cognitive Processes in Musical Improvisation
- The Cognitive Neuroscience of Improvisation
- Improvisation, Action Understanding, and Music Cognition with and without Bodies
- The Ghost in the Music, or the Perspective of an Improvising Ant
- The Improvisative
- Jurisgenerative grammar (for alto)
- Is Improvisation Present?
- Politics as Hypergestural Improvisation in the Age of Mediocracy
- On the Edge: A Frame of Analysis for Improvisation
- The Salmon of Wisdom: On the Consciousness of Self and Other in Improvised Music and in the Language that Sets One Free
- Improvising Yoga
- Michel de Montaigne, or Philosophy as Improvisation
- The Improvisation of Poetry, 1750–1850: Oral Performance, Print Culture, and the Modern Homer
- Germaine de Staël’s <i>Corinne, or Italy</i> and the Early Usage of Improvisation in English
- Improvisation, Time, and Opportunity in the Rhetorical Tradition
- Improvisation, Democracy, and Feedback
- Improvised Dance in the Reconstruction of <i>THEM</i>
- Improvising Social Exchange: African American Social Dance
- Fixing Improvisation: Copyright and African American Vernacular Dancers in the Early Twentieth Century
- Performing Gender, Race, and Power in Improv Comedy
- Shifting Cultivation as Improvisation
- Improvisation in Management
- Free Improvisation as a Path-Dependent Process
- Musical Improvisation and the Philosophy of Music
- Improvisation and Time-Consciousness
- Improvising <i>Impromptu,</i> Or, What to Do with a Broken String
- Ensemble Improvisation, Collective Intention, and Group Attention
- Interspecies Improvisation
- Spiritual Exercises, Improvisation, and Moral Perfectionism: With Special Reference to Sonny Rollins
- Improvisation and Ecclesial Ethics
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
Freely improvised music lacks commonly used mechanisms (e.g., scores, conductors, shared performance practices) that serve to coordinate choices across performers in other musical genres. This chapter analyses problems and solutions of musical coordination in free improvisation through the lens of “path dependence,” an analytic framework used in economics to model situations in which agents perceive a high pay-off to coordinating market choices. Key results in the path-dependence literature are the likelihood of multiple equilibria and “lock-in” to inferior outcomes. The interpersonal skills identified as critical for coordination in free improvisation closely parallel the skills that have been identified by social scientists as essential for high-functioning group behavior in non-musical pursuits. This suggests a pedagogical role for improvisation in enhancing economic and personal well-being with regard to human capital formation and happiness.
Keywords: improvisation, economics, path dependence, coordination, multiple equilibria, human capital, happiness, pedagogy, musical genres, musical choice, group behavior, interpersonal skills
Jared Burrows, Capilano University
Clyde G. Reed, Simon Fraser University
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- The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors to Volume 1
- Introduction: On Critical Improvisation Studies
- Cognitive Processes in Musical Improvisation
- The Cognitive Neuroscience of Improvisation
- Improvisation, Action Understanding, and Music Cognition with and without Bodies
- The Ghost in the Music, or the Perspective of an Improvising Ant
- The Improvisative
- Jurisgenerative grammar (for alto)
- Is Improvisation Present?
- Politics as Hypergestural Improvisation in the Age of Mediocracy
- On the Edge: A Frame of Analysis for Improvisation
- The Salmon of Wisdom: On the Consciousness of Self and Other in Improvised Music and in the Language that Sets One Free
- Improvising Yoga
- Michel de Montaigne, or Philosophy as Improvisation
- The Improvisation of Poetry, 1750–1850: Oral Performance, Print Culture, and the Modern Homer
- Germaine de Staël’s <i>Corinne, or Italy</i> and the Early Usage of Improvisation in English
- Improvisation, Time, and Opportunity in the Rhetorical Tradition
- Improvisation, Democracy, and Feedback
- Improvised Dance in the Reconstruction of <i>THEM</i>
- Improvising Social Exchange: African American Social Dance
- Fixing Improvisation: Copyright and African American Vernacular Dancers in the Early Twentieth Century
- Performing Gender, Race, and Power in Improv Comedy
- Shifting Cultivation as Improvisation
- Improvisation in Management
- Free Improvisation as a Path-Dependent Process
- Musical Improvisation and the Philosophy of Music
- Improvisation and Time-Consciousness
- Improvising <i>Impromptu,</i> Or, What to Do with a Broken String
- Ensemble Improvisation, Collective Intention, and Group Attention
- Interspecies Improvisation
- Spiritual Exercises, Improvisation, and Moral Perfectionism: With Special Reference to Sonny Rollins
- Improvisation and Ecclesial Ethics
- Index
