- 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 Corinne, or Italy 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 THEM
- 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 Impromptu, 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
A posited definition of improvisation encompasses such a broad range of human actions that it is helpful to consider both improvisation and rhythm in terms of embodied cognition and a notion of bodily empathy. This suggests a possible (though unstable and inconclusive) connection to action understanding, empathy, and mirror neurons, while acknowledging the latter’s disputed status. With or without mirror neurons, the concept of action understanding offers a reconsideration of improvisation and music cognition with or without bodies (i.e., live or recorded). The relationship of improvisation, rhythm, and embodiment to contemporary theories of expectation, speech, and the evolution of music are considered. Action understanding is posited as the foundation of both music cognition and the perception of improvisation, marking both processes as inherently intersubjective, even whether the other’s body is absent or fantasized (as is the case with recorded music).
Keywords: improvisation, music, neuroscience, mirror neurons, action understanding, empathy, race, perception, embodied cognition, experience, rhythm, the body
Vijay Iyer, Harvard 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 Corinne, or Italy 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 THEM
- 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 Impromptu, 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
