Interstitial Soundings: Philosophical Reflections on Improvisation, Practice, and Self-Making

Interstitial Soundings

Philosophical Reflections on Improvisation, Practice, and Self-Making

Cynthia R. Nielsen

INTERSTITIAL SOUNDINGS

Philosophical Reflections on Improvisation, Practice, and Self-Making

Copyright © 2015 Cynthia R. Nielsen. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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ISBN 13: 978-1-61097-254-3

EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-8011-2

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Nielsen, Cynthia R.

Interstitial soundings : philosophical reflections on improvisation, practice, and self-making / Cynthia R. Nielsen.

xii + 110 p. ; 22 cm. —Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 13: 978-1-61097-254-3

1. Music—20th century—Philosophy and aesthetics. 2. Jazz—Philosophy and aesthetics. 3. Postmodernism. I. Title.

ML3800 .N54 2015

Manufactured in the U.S.A. 09/14/2015

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Music as Ongoing Creative Activity: A Dialogue with Benson and Begbie

Chapter 2: Strategic Afro-Modernism, Dynamic Hybridity, and Bebop’s Sociopolitical Significance

Chapter 3: Foucault’s Polyphonic Genealogies and Rethinking Episteme Change via Musical Metaphors

Chapter 4: On Improvisation, Self-Making, and Practice: Foucauldian and MacIntyrean Resonances

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Although most of the material for this book, having been previously published, has already undergone a peer-review process, my colleague and friend Peter Dillard kindly read the entire manuscript and provided helpful constructive and critical comments. Thank you, Peter, for the time you gave to help me bring this text into being, and in a much-improved form. A hearty thanks is due, of course, to my husband, Will, and daughter, Ashley, for giving me the time and space to think and write. In addition, I want to thank the following journals for granting me permission to include previously published material in this volume. First, I am grateful to the editorial staff at Expositions for allowing me to republish a slightly modified version of my article, What Has Coltrane to Do with Mozart: The Dynamism and Built-In Flexibility of Music, Expositions 3 ( 2 009 ) 57 – 71 , which is now chapter 1 of the present work. Second, many thanks to Chris Tutill at Emerald Group for granting me permission to republish Strategic Afro-Modernism, Dynamic Hybridity, and Bebop’s Socio-Political Significance, from Music and Law , edited by Mathieu Deflem (Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2013 ). Third, a hearty thanks to Eric Lee and Christopher Simpson at ROTPP for their permission to republish Foucault’s Polyphonic Genealogies and Rethinking Episteme Change via Musical Metaphors, Radical Orthodoxy: Theology, Philosophy, Politics 2 ( 2014 ) 1 – 50 .

Introduction

Given that my book consists of previously published articles written at different stages of development over the course of five years, the reader will find many of the same concepts discussed, reworked, and expanded throughout the book. Chapter 1 , which was originally published in 2009 in the journal Expositions , under the title What Has Coltrane to Do with Mozart: The Dynamism and Built-In Flexibility of Music, has been slightly modified in its present form. Chapters 2 and 3 , which are also previously published articles, have not been substantively altered (see the acknowledgments page for publication details). Chapter 4 , On Improvisation, Self-Making, and Practice: Foucauldian and MacIntyrean Resonances, is a new piece that I completed in the summer of 2 014 . Although I have written a handful of articles on Foucault and self-technologies, this is my first public foray into MacIntyrean territory and one that I found quite rewarding. Below I provide brief sketches of each chapter.

In chapter 1 I discuss and analyze several concepts, theories, and practices that challenge us to rethink the nature of music and the roles of composers and performers. In particular, I focus on what Bruce Ellis Benson calls musical places of indeterminacy, and what I call built-in flexibility and music’s flexible or dynamic ontology, and argue that this open nature of a musical work is found not only in jazz improvisation, where one might expect it, but also in multiple musical genres, including classical music. If such is the case, then commonly held views of composition and improvisation are in need of revision. That is, we should understand composition and improvisation as overlapping, situated on a continuum, and expressed in degrees rather than as distinct and unrelated practices. This recognition of music’s flexible ontology and the overlapping and interrelated character of composition and improvisation opens up a new paradigm for understanding what music is. In other words, a musical piece is not a static product created (once and for all) by a single composer. Rather, a musical piece is dynamic and is (re)created by many performers qua co-composers. Consequently, music is also profoundly communal. That is, it comes into being and is maintained in existence through practices and traditions that themselves develop and change. Yet, as I argue, to acknowledge a musical work’s flexible and dynamic ontology does not destroy or nullify its identity, as certain melodic and harmonic relations structure the piece while simultaneously allowing for multiple instantiations and diverse interpretations.

In chapter 2 I show how jazz aesthetics and inflections of jazz such as bebop are socially conditioned, dynamic, and hybrid in character. Such a model, on the one hand, permits us to affirm jazz as an historically conditioned, dynamic hybridity. On the other hand, to acknowledge jazz’s open nature and complex lineage in no way negates our ability to identify discernible features of various styles and aesthetic traditions. (In this chapter I provide a specific historical example of some of the ideas I explore earlier in the chapter.) Additionally, my model affirms the sociopolitical, legal (for example, Jim Crow and copyright laws), and economic structures that shaped jazz. Consequently, my articulation of bebop as an inflection of Afro-modernism highlights the sociopolitical and highly racialized context in which this music was created. Without a recognition of the sociopolitical import of bebop, one’s understanding of the music is impoverished, since one fails to grasp the strategic uses to which the music and discourses about the music were put.

Chapter 3 is the longest chapter and focuses more on philosophical rather than strictly musical concepts, questions, and concerns. I examine the complexity of Michel Foucault’s thought through an analysis of the diverse philosophical traditions—from Kant to Nietzsche to Foucault’s phenomenological lineage via Cavaillès and Canguilhem—that influence his own distinctive project. In addition, I identify key Foucauldian concepts worthy of continued reflection and offer, as my own contribution to the dialogue, various musical analogies as hermeneutical and analytical tools that (1) illuminate and clarify Foucault’s ideas, and (2) provide a coherent way to understand episteme change.

In my final chapter I discuss several seemingly disparate topics such as the practice of jazz improvisation and how jazz musicians develop a musical voice, Michel Foucault’s later work on active self-formation, and Alasdair MacIntyre’s notion of what constitutes a practice and how one might understand the internal and external goods of a practice. Although many might see these thinkers and topics as utterly unrelated and ultimately too dissimilar to bear any legitimate fruit, I have shown how at various points their work and ideas can be harmonized and how creating a dialogical fusion among them advances our understanding of the relevant topics. For example, the activities in which jazz musicians engage in order to shape their own musical voices and styles is quite similar, as Foucault’s later writings make clear, to Seneca’s description of self-craft. In addition, MacIntyre’s account of practices complements and deepens my analyses of the practice of jazz improvisation and creating one’s musical voice and enriches Foucault’s study of Greco-Roman self-making. Lastly, I show how aspects of MacIntyre’s notion of virtue development as it relates to acquiring a practice and maintaining its integrity, as well as his distinction between a practice’s internal and external goods, can be brought into fruitful dialogue with Foucauldian resistance strategies.

1

Music as Ongoing Creative Activity

A Dialogue with Benson and Begbie

As Bruce Ellis Benson explains in chapter 2 of his book The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue , we tend to think that a musical composition is finished once it is written down in its final version. However, this conclusion rests on several assumptions worth questioning. First, why assume that a process of revision always leads to a better version, much less to the best version? Beethoven, for example, was known for ceaselessly revising his works, offering multiple variants for musical passages and even entire sections of his symphonies. Even if we grant that his revisions generally improved his work, why should we necessarily conclude that they always did? Second, is it not the case that imposed deadlines, familial duties, economic strain, and a host of other external pressures co-determine when a work is, so to speak, completed? That is, the artist may be forced to bring her work to a close and may in fact be dissatisfied with the final version. In such cases, the artist, author, or composer is aware of undeveloped or incomplete aspects of her work—those places that at some future date, if given the time, she would want to modify or develop further. Third, does a composition become rigidly fixed when written down, or does a certain indefiniteness and open-endedness remain even after a composition is written and proclaimed finished by the composer? Arguing for the latter, Benson states that although composers have reasonably definite intentions, it would be impossible for their intentions to encompass all of the details of any given piece. ¹ In other words, often or perhaps most of the time, the composer is unsure exactly how every aspect and detail of the work should sound until the piece is actualized—that is, performed in real time by an actual musician or group of musicians and with specified instrumentation. In fact, it is not uncommon for a composer to present his or her work to fellow musicians, asking for critical input on various aspects of the piece. In my own experience as an amateur jazz musician, such was often the case. For example, my jazz ensemble director, an accomplished composer and arranger, frequently presented our group with his scores, only to make numerous changes during our rehearsals—changes he could not foresee until the music was performed.

In this chapter, I hope to make manifest a number of interconnected themes, all of which challenge us to rethink the nature of music and the roles of composers and performers. As I shall argue, what Benson calls musical places of indeterminacy, and what I call built-in flexibility, are present not only in jazz, where one might expect it, but also in multiple musical genres, including classical music. If this is the case, then the lines between composition and improvisation are fluid rather than fixed. Recognition