So I went and got all impatient-like and put the Double Trio’s with whom you can be who you are up as a Bandcamp digital download way back on August 7 – the very day I received the master, and a couple of weeks ahead of the CD’s arriving. The CD did arrive, of course, and once again I was reminded of how much I like to unfold the cover and see the dedication and read the notes – all that nonsense. Call it old school if you like; perhaps I’m still at school.
I’ve talked a bit here and there already about the album, because it’s been a very big thing for me. Four years taken in the achievement of it – not exactly unbroken effort, because I did a couple of other things too, but that’s a fair while, really. Beethoven only took two for the Eroica.
And now I’m just being silly. Forget that, about Beethoven.
But then things do happen at strange rates. The recording and release of this album have taken place this year; it was recorded on April 5 & 6, and then it came home to be sorted out. I listened and listened and found the bits I liked best and even made some home edits. These impressed our engineer, Chris Lawson, who can obviously edit far better than I can; he was simply surprised I think that I’d have taken the trouble to tackle it myself. But I wanted to hear things all put together, something like what they’d be when it was all done, and I’d nutted out Audacity a good few years ago so it was no great trouble. Audacity being refreshingly uncomplicated, you know. Mastering, following mixing (which was a very collaborative enterprise, in the sense of ‘I like that but I’m not so keen on that’ [hence it goes back for another mix]) only took place on August 7. So – four months. Actually, not that long at all. But boy did it feel like an eternity. Because when you’ve made something you want to get it out there. You just do. (Probably improvising performers are the most impatient customers of all. It’s in the job description.)
I am, to be completely honest with you, ridiculously proud of this score. And outrageously proud of the band, and of the record we’ve made of our work. I have listened to it dozens of times, and I’m really pleased with the sound that Chris got from us in the studio, and of how we played this really quite challenging music. The session, too, was a blast. I like the progress from one track to the next, and Naomi’s concluding line at the end of ‘t.h.’ I think a most appropriate conclusion to the whole affair.
But enough about me. At Bird is the Worm, Dave Sumner kicked off the review game, placing with whom among the month’s best releases on Bandcamp. Quoth he: ‘Always in flight and immensely free, this lovely session from the trio of pianist Tim Stevens, bassist Marty Holoubek, and drummer Tony Floyd wouldn’t go soaring nearly as high were it not a collaboration with the string trio of Madeleine Jevons, Phoebe Green, and Naomi Wileman. Even when it’s the piano trio exerting [its] influence on a passage, the music flows with an effortless gait. But there’s no denying the fact that each piece grows wings and takes off when strings enter the mix. What’s particularly intriguing is that this isn’t really a typical jazz with strings session. It’s no simple a task for modern piano jazz to achieve a unity with a string trio’s fondness for chamber music structure, and yet the Melbourne-based pianist makes it seem nearly effortless. This is music that’ll uplift the spirits no matter how bleak.’
Barry O’Sullivan contributed a piece for Jazz and Beyond, writing that ‘Despite his incredible performing capacity and résumé, Stevens’s gifts have largely flown under the awards radar. This new recording has the potential to change that. The improvising trio meets the classical trio of strings and collaboration is the way forward to great things with the entire ensemble joining together supporting the piano melodies sumptuously and stylishly. The elements that shine through mostly are Stevens’s accomplished compositional ability and his commitment to integrity in performance. […] All of Tim Stevens’s past work has been thoughtfully rendered and artistically significant, but this recording of exceptional quality may just be his masterpiece and one that moves him closer to the jazz pantheon’ – and giving the album five (out of five) stars.
Perhaps you need more. Here is Dan McCleneghan, offering four and a half stars, at All About Jazz: ‘The compositions (Stevens calls them movements), all originals, are named with the initials of what Stevens’ describes as “dear friends of mine,” people “with whom you can be who you are.” Crafting a sound to capture the essence of individual human beings is certainly a tricky business. Stevens has, befittingly, created seven complex, multidimensional, compelling and purely beautiful movements, a suite celebrating the bright side of the human soul.
‘Stevens is a master improviser who solos with, by turns, eloquence and energy, with an introspective elan and a reverent, touching tenderness. His arrangements exploit the strings to perfection—the players are animated with an assured intensity and a joyous panache.
‘Those individuals Tim Stevens nods to with this music must be wonderful people. This gorgeous and irresistible music says so.’ [Ed.: They are.]
So the press reaction has been positive, at least so far. I have had personal messages too attesting to the affecting quality of the music, and these are enormously gratifying also.
The business of this post however is to draw your attention to the CD launch, at St Stephen’s Anglican Church, Richmond, on October 7 at 4pm. The double trio will congregate – with Ben Robertson standing in for Marty Holoubek – and play the piece all the way through. We don’t know how often we’re going to be able to do this, so we’d love to see you there. Bookings can be made here, so hop to it.
23/ix/2018
This morning I put Freehand (2002) on the stereo again; I can’t honestly tell you why because if I were honest I’d be admitting to all kinds of vanities and obviously that won’t do at all. If I were honest I’d say how now and then I need to go back and look at my earlier work and console myself that it isn’t a pile of shit. I’d tell you in absolute honesty how some days I can’t believe I took music as a career, even though it’s the only thing I come within a cooee of being able to do, and I need to feel that I haven’t completely wasted my time. (Although, you know, I still may have.) At any rate, on it went and I was reminded of how I’d written this autoethnographic (yipe! Me?! yeah) paper about one of the freely improvised pieces on the record and how the journals didn’t want it (fair enough) but how it still exists and so maybe I could put it on my own goddamn website because who gives a fuck what happens there.
So here it is. And here is a chart if you’d like one, and here is the audio.
Planning, stumbling, repetition and spontaneous organization in ‘Freehand ii’
‘Freehand ii’ is the second in a group of six improvised movements interspersed with pieces involving composed elements, on the CD Freehand, released in 2002.[1] As what is generally termed a free improvisation,[2] ‘Freehand ii’ takes its shape not from a provided model, such as a standard song form or an established model for developing music ex nihilo, but seeks to define its material and its form throughout the time in which it is being performed. At the same time, there is in ‘Freehand ii’ a certain degree to which the development of the musical ideas proceeds according to principles that can be determined by analysis and comparison. So this paper is an analysis both of the piece of music and of the process involved in its elaboration.
The paper operates, obviously enough, on the presumption that improvised music may be documented effectively on paper and that the document may afford an insight into the processes involved in its construction. Although it may well be argued (and in my experience, it often is) that improvisation prizes process over product, this paper begins from the conviction that subject to music being identified as such by ordering principles, process works towards product and the goal of the improviser is to create a satisfying piece of music. Put another way, while the experience of the listener in the creative moment – that is, the first time the piece has been heard, as it is being improvised – will differ markedly from that of the listener who has been able to hear the piece a number of times, there is no inherent privileging one above the other. Analysis of free improvisation might posit answers to questions of musical procedure and identity that investigation of more extensively considered composition might neglect. If we are to consider improvisation as an attempt at spontaneous composition, then the composition that results from improvisation must be subject to analysis.
Spontaneous composition has long been a conveniently succinct definition of improvisation, particularly of the so-called free variety. On one level it is perhaps a little simple, as though composition were one thing only – as though the finished work had somehow subsumed or even annihilated the laborious process of composing. On the other hand successful improvisation does exhibit many of the features of composition – excepting the capacity to revise or repair – within a radically abbreviated period of time. This examination of ‘Freehand ii’ seeks to demonstrate various levels at which anticipation and review are applied during performance, and the manner in which their consequences are accommodated and elaborated. So to the title, which gives several suggestions of procedure in improvisation. The planning of a piece such as this begins only in the instant before the playing begins, but continues throughout, and is always subject to change. Spontaneous organization is a minor modification of ‘spontaneous composition,’ and intended to suggest an approach to musical construction that might even operate in retrospect, as new ideas modify old ones. Stumbling is both the messing up of intended gesture and the clumsy move towards useable material – even the surprise at finding it. Repetition might be either a good or a bad thing, given its potential both to create formal unity and to betray a lack of resources. These four elements do not take place in any given sequence during performance, but rather may occur throughout. Nor is one is more significant or essential than any other, in the present writer’s opinion. There are others also, but these four seem an adequate summation.
Context
The recording session for Freehand took place over two days,[3] in which time twelve improvised movements were recorded. Of these, ‘Freehand ii’ was the sixth.[4] If there is a basic planning principle in the improvising of a piece in this context, it must surely be to make it differ from the one that preceded it. The overall objective with Freehand was to assemble a group of distinctly differentiated improvised movements to complement the other pieces, some of which were completely composed, others of which blended composition and improvisation. In the sequence of improvised movements, ‘Freehand ii’ (or ‘Free #6’ as it was logged) followed another which appears on the finished album,[5] although the next two were deemed unsatisfactory and rejected. Differences between ‘Free #5’ (‘Freehand i’) and ‘Freehand ii’ are considerable, and of the most basic variety. ‘Freehand i’ is slow, chordal, and mostly quiet. ‘Freehand ii’ is jerky, mostly in two parts, highly chromatic, and fairly quick. ‘Free #7’, not used, revolves like ‘Freehand i’ around tonalities of F-sharp, but lacks either melodic distinction or any particular commitment to material or mood.[6] It is one of those pieces that seem to try too hard to find focus, and in so doing become tedious. ‘Free #8’ is a similar affair, a prolix movement dealing with the very pianistic and much overused repeated-chord technique, and making a long overdue homecoming to E-flat major. ‘Free #9’ appears on the finished CD as ‘Freehand iii’ and is a very brief, not entirely tonal movement, probably influenced by Franz Liszt’s Nuages Gris. So the first three ‘Freehand’ movements on the disc were recorded in the sequence in which they appear, although not in immediate succession.[7]
Analysis
‘Freehand ii’ demonstrates the search for form in real time. An initial motive is examined and varied, and among the several shapes it takes one emerges that will become something of a touchstone throughout the piece (bar 9): a falling figure from C-flat via B-flat to G, placed rhythmically as a dotted crotchet, a quaver, and a crotchet. Freer working with this motivic material alternates throughout the piece with periods of clearer harmonic centredness, initially at bar 88 (1’52”), then at bar 116 (2’26”), bar 136 (2’48”), and finally into E-flat major, first suggested at bar 179 (3’36”). There is a certain concision of material despite the apparently rambling nature of the right hand, and movements towards particular key centres are the result of voice leads inherent in both right and left hand, usually in some way relatable to the original motivic material.
The opening of the piece is a falling minor third and a falling semitone, a motive which covers the overall interval of a major third (or a diminished fourth, in my transcription).[8] These are phrased as two quavers and a crotchet, beginning with an anacrusis in common time. This will be identified as the ‘A’ version of the motive, and is answered in the left hand with two notes, spread over three beats, and covering a semitone. The left hand reply might be said to be a fragment of the inverted ‘A’ motive inverted, but it’s probably too small a detail to be of any real importance. What is more significant is that for the first 14 bars of the transcription, the higher and lower parts work antiphonally and, within each exchange, in contrary motion. The left hand’s reply in bar 3 to the second statement of the ‘A’ motive is in fact its retrograde version, and this in inverted in the following bar to create what will be termed the ‘B’ version of the motive. Such relationships within so small a motive are not entirely unexpected, given its narrow symmetrical range (a minor third and a minor second in either order constituting a major third), but it seems that they do bring a sense of structural unity to things as they are worked out. The terminal note at the beginning of bar 5 is the same as the one with which the piece began, albeit down an octave, and the resolution to this note is re-established in the following two bars, with a figure including both the ‘B’ motive and the initial left hand reply, coupled in such a manner as to suggest even an overlapping of the former with a reordered version of the ‘A’ motive (a falling major third with a rising semitone).
The changes and adaptations undergone by this motivic material throughout the opening 50 bars (a little over a minute) of the performance can all be examined and explained in this fashion, as expansions, reductions, or slight variations of the same motivic material. With the rhythm of the statement of the ‘B’ motive at bar 9 there is a further conspicuous element introduced,[9] as mentioned above, and ultimately it is significant throughout the piece. It is important to remember however the composition was unprepared prior to performance, and that the ideas were proceeding from one to the next within the moment. Both consistency and irregularity need to be perceived as relative to the performer’s inability while improvising to check or to revise. Motivic concentration, while a tempting and possibly very satisfying avenue for investigation, is only a single element of the music-making, and arguably only of interest as it contributes to broader issues of compositional direction and the determination of form.
It is not until bar 17 that the left and right hands strike notes simultaneously. The alternating phrases of what has preceded have moved from short at the outset to longer, culminating in a rising, chained ‘A’ and ‘B’ motive passage in the left hand (bars 13-15). These have achieved a closer proximity in time also, after gaps of up to five beats nearer the beginning. All the same, throughout the next sections the strongest sense is of two conversing parts. It is at bar 17 that we hear again the ‘B’ motive as it appeared at bar nine, except that this time it takes its place on the strong beat of the bar. An insistence on this dotted rhythm emphasises its importance throughout the next 15 bars, with ten discrete iterations of it, and variations in the left hand at bars 17-18, 21, and 24. The opening ‘A’ motive, commencing on C-flat, and its answer commencing on C, are recalled in the coincidence of tones at bar 17, and the link is sustained throughout the next three bars, where C and C-sharp are heard in the left hand, and both the ‘A’ and ‘B’ motives are heard in the right. Bars 23-4 include both a version of the accompanying semitone figure, adapted so as to include a dotted crotchet and a quaver, and the original form of the ‘A’ motive, displaced by a beat. In three subsequent instances closely following – at bars 50, 60, and 72 – versions of the motive are placed above versions of the accompanying semitone figure. These serve to rein in what is evidently becoming freer invention, and it is hoped that their familiarity engenders a feeling of continuity and focus.
The familiarity of repeated motivic material on its own however is not sufficient to generate a sense of development, since repetition at this stage seems to re-establish what is already known. It directs focus towards material which, while significant, is at the same time book-ending an exploration that will need to be brought into sharper relief as a whole through the attainment of something divergent. Traditionally, this might be a second subject group. Here, it is the suggestion of a tonal centre. Repetition is instrumental once again, but in this case it is an immediate repetition, in the nature of an insistence on what has been reached.
Bars 55-9 contain the first clear suggestion of a tonal centre, with a movement (via the retrograde version of the ‘A’ motive in the left hand) to G. The continuing chromaticism of the right hand at this point means that it is only through the repetition in the left that the significance of G can be effectively conveyed, until there is briefly a more conventional establishment of G as a tonal centre, in bars 58-9. Resolution is becoming a priority: between bars 55 and 141 there are actually five points where the music pauses on a centre of some kind, and the significance of each is demonstrated largely through repetition. After the resolution to G at bars 55-9, freer treatment gives way again at bar 88 to a less tonal point of resolution; following this, at bar 103, a left hand figure resembling that from bars 55-9 appears, and during the course of its repetition it progresses to C, which then prepares for the reappearance of the original motivic materials at 113. Very soon after this, the music appears to be in F-sharp (bar 117), working away from tonic to dominant, and this moves (in a manner similar to bars 103-12) to C-sharp at the end of bar 120. So there is a sort of symmetry between these two last examples, in that each one resolves within itself to a point a fifth away, and one is the inversion of the other. Probably the most significantly sounding resolution to date however is the G pedal established at bar 136 and maintained until bar 142.
Resolutions of this nature are opportunities seized. Four out of the five examined are tonal, and the fifth (from bar 88) contains a sort of progression that suggests a resolution within itself: the final chordal strike seems to suggest momentarily a tonality of F-sharp. They offset the freer treatment of the original motivic material in such a way that permits its recovery and further examination.
Variations in the presentation of ostensibly familiar material are a function of memory, and perhaps more the province of a musical psychologist than a musical analyst. Yet it is arguable that repetitions over the longer range are not actually designed or imagined to be exact, given the procedure of a piece towards greater degrees of complexity and the fact that growing familiarity permits or even invites variation. The reintroduction of the initial material at bar 50 is in the manner in which it was presented at the outset, in terms of the antiphonal relationship of the parts. Ten bars later, however, the material is presented again, with one part atop the other. Furthermore, the motive at this point can be said to have been embellished so as to include both the ‘A’ and ‘B’ versions in a single statement. This appears to be rhythmically motivated, both a result of the preceding phrase and as a reminiscence of that which opened the piece. The major seventh and the tritone, fundamental in this construction, are both dissonant and – particularly alongside one another – suggest no clear resolution. Avoidance of a tonal centre is thus a fairly simple business. Reminiscences of the ‘A’ or ‘B’ motive forms are administered liberally throughout the running right hand lines, either in the original configuration of semiquaver and minor third, or perhaps semiquaver and major third, or merely through an imitative rhythmic construction (usually two quavers and a crotchet, as at bars 64-5, or 69-70). Furthermore, once the more mobile line is established as the work of the right hand, the left accompanies it with rhythmically augmented figures based largely on the retrograde form of the ‘A’ motive. This appeared in the left hand as early as the third bar, but becomes a more significant element at the end of bar 53.
From this point on the rhythmic character of the piece is defined by the manner in which the angular rhythms in the left hand confound or complicate the quaver lines in the right. Obscuring tonality, obscuring time: such seems to be the object for the moment. Again it is repetition that provides respite, although the resolutions may not necessarily be tonal. As an example, a repeated pattern of a chord with a falling interior melody between bars 88 and 92 (beginning at 1’52”) has the feeling of something reached, and the last instance (bar 92) differs from the others, acting as a release to the tension of the repetition itself. This example is curious because the chords are struck at intervals of five beats, but only in the final case is the material grouped within a single 5/4 bar. The regularity of these chordal strikes is contradicted by other stresses within each group of five beats. Obviously the favouring of one rhythmic grouping or time signature over another is a matter of inference, but in making the transcription the goal was to preserve as much as possible where the stresses seem to fall as the piece is being played. Transcription is always an act involving such decisions.
It is not worth identifying every instance of the motive as the piece proceeds, but as an example of how this dialogue between the left and right hands is working the passage between bars 74 and 94, including the repetitive chordal passage outlined above, is sufficient. The left hand can be seen to be stating versions of the motive, and similar imitative figures based thereupon. These vary in duration from single statements of three notes (bars 74-5) to much longer instances where the motive and variations of it are chained (bars 78-83 and 84-88). In all these instances, the music has been transcribed so as to have the first note of each phrase on a strong beat. In the first two cases, the phrases finish on strong beats as well. The terminal note of an intervening phrase (end of bar 75-bar 77), metrically more complicated on paper than it sounds, is also on the beat. Elsewhere in this example however nothing in the left hand falls on the beat. This is not conventional swing feel either, where notes or chords struck off the beat act as anticipations of the strong beats, and what is written as quavers sounds as the crotchet and the quaver in quaver triplets. However the music is based on an understanding of the walking bass line and the regular metric character of 4/4 jazz, so that later when the bass line sounds in compound time (bars 94-7 and elsewhere) or briefly walks (bars 172-4 and elsewhere), the general referent[10] of jazz time is acknowledged. As to the right hand in this example, highly chromatic phrases predominantly comprising quavers and confined to the middle register of the piano are constructed with motivic fragments giving them shape and identity. Within bars 74, 75 and 76 there are three-note groupings that at least resemble aspects of the original motive: in bar 74 the second and third beats contain the ‘B’ version; in bar 75 the third beat leads to the first half of the fourth with a reordered ‘A’ version, and the first three quavers of bar 76 are a reordered ‘B’ version. These little scraps take their place within larger melodies and are perhaps barely noticeable, but they are there. So it is within bars 82 and 84, between bars 94 and 95, on the third and fourth beats of bar 97. and elsewhere.
Performer’s perspective
Continuity of this nature is generated instinctively, through an intuition of where the music is able to proceed next. The understanding that form is an essential musical element oversees proceedings, but the nature of that form is only discovered as the performance takes place. In the improviser’s ability to anticipate and evaluate possibilities, and to execute the most satisfactory from among them, lies his or her chance of success in music that should resist predictability. The process takes place very rapidly as well. Consequences of the fallibility of this process are at worst boredom, on the part of either the player and the listener, or both, but include less troublesome situations such as missed notes or disruptions to regular time. Bar 76 of ‘Freehand ii’ is transcribed as a bar of fifteen semiquavers, but it is unimaginable that this was intended in performance. Rather the last note of that bar in the right hand slipped a little soon to the first one of the next bar, and the left hand coincidentally went with it. A momentary loss of focus or concentration probably produced this small mistake. It had consequences in the bars that followed, where a peculiar semiquaver appears in bar 79. Things righted themselves soon enough. Furthermore, the piece commences at a tempo considerably slower than that at which it ends. This is not an unusual situation in improvised music. Variations to the tempo are sometimes audible within this piece however, variations which are impossible to notate. At bar 258 (5’06”) a little passage commences in which a B major triad resolves to E-flat major. This is a sudden focus, the familiar major triad emerging from the chromatic playing of the last ten bars. E-flat is not unfamiliar as it had been reached as a fairly strong resolution in bars 201-226, and again at bars 241-3. But the movement from B is sudden and expedient, and proceeds smoothly. An attempt to repeat it for emphasis is not so successful, with audible variations to the timbre of the instrument and an uneasiness within the metre (a feeling of hurriedness between the end of bar 260 and bar 262) suggesting the idea getting away. This is a case of having stumbled onto something good, and then simply of having stumbled. Such things have to be borne, of course, and a compromise reached between the desire for perfection in music-making and the reality of the risks involved in improvisation.
On this point, the instances in ‘Freehand ii’ where the time comes into question are usually a result of an idea seeming to get away, or some point of focus having reached its capacity for providing interest and momentum. Bars 43-4 (from 0’57”) provide a case in point. The chordal figures in the right hand at bars 38 and 40, and their replies in the left hand, have acted in a sense as the culmination of a growing urgency from bar 33. The dotted rhythmic figure on which they are built has already been discussed. The following material is an attempt to maintain momentum while constructing slightly longer figures. The slight push in the time at bar 44 conveys a sense of nervous uncertainty. The three right hand notes from bars 46 to 47 are probably a misplayed attempt at the inverted form of the ‘A’ motive. A second attempt in the following bar corrects the wrong note. A passage between bars 194 and 196 is a further example of the manipulation of metre in the quest for reattainment of motivic material. These three bars are transcribed in 11/8, 9/8, and 5/4 respectively, but it is impossible to think of this as in any way intended in performance. The music at this point is moving back towards E-flat, and the awareness that it must get there causes interruptions to the regularity of the metre.
Ending in E-flat
As mentioned above, the resolution to E-flat at the end of the piece was first suggested at bar 179. At that point, an elaborated ‘B’ version of the motive appeared in the right hand and the left moved towards the E-flat chromatically from below. This instance is very brief compared with those between bars 201 and 226, and from bar 269 to the end (bar 286), but it seems more than possible that the player’s recognition of a tonal centre as strong as this is sufficient for a bookmark to be placed, if it may be put that way, for future reference. In such a manner, obviously, form is established. The motive form at bars 9 and 17 was deemed distinct enough for its later reappearance to be a unifying or developing feature. So too the attainment of E-flat asserts itself to be filed for recall when the opportunity arises, taking its place within a larger progression towards outright, final resolution. What follows this initial E-flat episode is a lengthier excursion into D-flat major, a kind of parallel construction with the bass approaching the tonic from below, and this is sustained through varied repetition over eight bars (184-91, beginning at 3’42”). Interestingly enough, and for whatever reason (conscious or not), the motive does not feature at all in these bars, apart from the vaguest and most incidental rhythmic recollections. A concentration on the ninth means that E-flat is preserved in the field of audition, and the very significant B or C-flat is transferred to the chromatic line in the left hand. Repetition here builds tension, relieved by what is effectively a return of the motive (bar 193, 3’52”) in the right hand, with the bass three octaves and a major second beneath. The overall tendency of this three-part passage has been in expanding contrary motion, and towards dissonance, but with the return of the motive (bar 199, 4’00”) and the gradual reestablishment of E-flat major (beginning at bar 201), a return to the middle register of the instrument contributes to the sense of resolution.
Taken as a whole, the section from bar 179 until the end of the piece is an elaborate resolution, and the second, longer, E-flat passage discussed above (bars 201-26) is itself the setting aside of material for more emphatic restatement at the conclusion. Bars 201-21 are resembled by bars 269-86, and the latter bars are delivered in full acknowledgement of this – indeed, that is the reason they appear at all. The formal construction of which they are a part however is a function of memory, projection, and a spontaneous assessment of necessity. As ever, for the release from ambiguity and for a resolution in balance with the problem previously established, repetition is of central importance.
Within the two similar E-flat sections, versions of the motive are played in the right hand with a chromatically ascending and rhythmically problematic figure in the left. These are slightly out of phase, or appear to be so, because each is irregular. The right hand motive varies in shape from one statement to the next, and the material in the left hand, while usually off the beat, is of a varying rhythmic construction that usually defies the sense of a regular metre. Again, exceptions to this, such as bars 212-4 or 275-7, where exact repetition is maintained briefly in the right hand, serve a function of their own, mitigating against uncertainty. Instances in which the terminal note of the right hand figure (a G) occur simultaneously with that of the left hand figure (an E-flat), causing the sounding of a major third, are rare – but they do occur. They too emerge as exceptions to the chaotic tendency of the rhythmic manipulations taking place in both hands. Examples are at bars 201 (the final quaver, a coincidence quit rapidly as though almost to deny it), and bar 208 (on and occupying the first full beat, where it sounds more intentional). In the final passage, G coincides with E-flat at the beginning of bars 273 and 275, and at the end of bar 276. After that, there is only one incidental coincidence, in the middle of bar 288, and the meeting could not be effected another time for final resolution. Nonetheless, the piece ends.[11] While E-flat and G might eventually have sounded together as a result of the phasing in and out of the two parts, there was no guarantee that it would be in the right place – and by this I mean a larger-scale consideration than simply ‘at the beginning of a bar’. A subtle governing sense (but a strong one) of where a section will begin and end is not, I think, confined to the improviser alone, which is why listeners may feel let down or bored by too sudden or too prolix a resolution. I would argue that the section in 3/4 time beginning at bar 276 (5’27”) has settled things down in such a way that no further departures from this material and its eventual resolution are permissible.
Stricter comparison of the materials of these two E-flat sections provides a certain amount of interest: firstly, the second is shorter than the first. This is true both of the number of bars (18 later, compared with 26), and of the resolving gesture itself. Between bars 201 and 226, the left hand is playing a chromatic movement from C up to E-flat, but from bar 269 to the end this has been abbreviated and commences on D-flat. Curiously, the metre most prevalent in the latter section is 3/4, whereas earlier it had been 4/4. There are 17 resolving statements in the first passage, but only 13 in the second. G and E-flat sound together twice in the first case, but four times in the second. Within each passage there are two significant divergences from the basic resolving gesture, but the elongation in bars 222-4 is the most elaborate, and takes place during the first. It seems as though all these things were suggesting that the second resolution must be briefer – both more emphatic but also in the nature of a confirmation – than the first. After bar 276 the right hand figure has been further smoothed out, and is now a chromatic descent from C-flat to G. Yet there is again no way imaginable that the performer would have consciously organized so many details.
Ideally, what the final resolution achieves is a position from which greater sense can be made of all that has preceded. The provided solution – resolution into E-flat major – may not have been the only one permissible, nor may it have been evident as the notes of the opening bars were sounding, but reflection can now concede that it might always have been possible and that it was contrived logically. So it has an organizing function, setting not only itself in order but (again, ideally) the entire movement, and this as it is being played for the first time. Transitions within the piece from one section to another have sought to avoid rupture while providing contrast and a sense of shape. The longer the performance continues, the more material the improviser must store for possible recall, although it seems that only part of this can be done consciously or methodically. The conclusion of ‘Freehand ii’ is in some ways abrupt, but the momentary decision that has placed it is a consequence of all the musical events of the previous five-and-a-half minutes.
Conclusion
The degree of detail being brought to bear upon the analytical act post facto is obviously out of balance with that being applied during improvisation. Yet there is an analytical process being undertaken in the moment of performance, and this is what gives the music its shape. A gesture – some melodic or rhythmic shape, or perhaps a harmonic tendency – seems to lodge in the mind’s ear as a pole of attraction, and is marked for re-use. Analysis demonstrates the various manners in which this is re-used, negotiated, and modified throughout the piece. The difference between the large-scale imaginings of the improvising musician and the variety and detail present in the improvisation generally comes as a surprise, at least as far as this writer is concerned, and the degree to which the piece is organized is, in the case of ‘Freehand ii’ both a pleasing and an unsettling thing. Pleasing, because it seems to demonstrate a consistent and reasonably well-directed musical organization, and unsettling, because it is difficult to feel entirely responsible (read: take credit) for this, not having consciously dreamed it up. But improvisers everywhere are settling for being pleased, and hoping things will go as well on subsequent occasions.
(2004)
[1] Tim Stevens, Freehand. Rufus Records, 2002.
[2] See Derek Bailey, Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music (New York: Da Capo, 1992): 83 for some alternatives.
[3] 8-9 January 2002, Sony Studios, East Sydney. Engineered by Ross A’Hern and produced by Tony Gorman.
[4] Logged as ‘Free #1’, ‘Free #2’, and so on, it was not until the tracks had been selected and the order established that the movements were renumbered, one to six.
[5] In strict sequence it followed four progressively more desperate attempts at a quick piece in 7/8, ‘Generating,’ which has a written head and improvisation on adapted chord changes.
[6] Perhaps, conversely, it is its commitment to F-sharp that is what makes it seem so stagnant.
[7] My thanks to Ross A’Hern at Sony Studios for sharing his session notes and helping me reconstruct the recording sequence.
[8] The implications of spelling for the understanding or the ascription of tonality might be worth investigating.
[9] In fact this rhythm first appeared in bar 3, but it is in bar nine, where it appears in the right hand, and commences on the C-flat with which the piece opened, that it is more strongly featured. It is in roughly this shape when it appears later, also.
[10] The concept of the referent in improvisation is explored by Jeff Pressing in his articles ‘Cognitive Processes in Improvisation,’ in R. Crozier & A. Chapman (Eds.) Cognitive Processes in the Perception of Art (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1984) and ‘Improvisation: Methods and models,’ in J.A. Sloboda (Ed.) Generative Processes in Music: The Psychology of Performance, Improvisation and Composition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
[11] I recall when playing this movement that the aim was to have G and E-flat coincide as the last event, but this is precisely the snap decision the improviser needs to make: when an elegant solution is prevented by the violation its contrivance will cause to some other aspect of the music.
20/vii/2018