Improvising Improvisation: From Out of Philosophy, Music, Dance, and LiteratureThere is an ever-increasing number of books on improvisation, ones that richly recount experiences in the heat of the creative moment, theorize on the essence of improvisation, and offer convincing arguments for improvisation’s impact across a wide range of human activity. This book is nothing like that. In a provocative and at times moving experiment, Gary Peters takes a different approach, turning the philosophy of improvisation upside-down and inside-out. Guided by Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and especially Deleuze—and exploring a range of artists from Hendrix to Borges—Peters illuminates new fundamentals about what, as an experience, improvisation truly is. As he shows, improvisation isn’t so much a genre, idiom, style, or technique—it’s a predicament we are thrown into, one we find ourselves in. The predicament, he shows, is a complex entwinement of choice and decision. The performativity of choice during improvisation may happen “in the moment,” but it is already determined by an a priori mode of decision. In this way, improvisation happens both within and around the actual moment, negotiating a simultaneous past, present, and future. Examining these and other often ignored dimensions of spontaneous creativity, Peters proposes a consistently challenging and rigorously argued new perspective on improvisation across an extraordinary range of disciplines. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 7 | |
Kant and Hegel on Certainty | 10 |
Lol Coxhill In Memoriam | 28 |
The Recedents Lol Coxhill Roger Turner and Mike Cooper | 38 |
Heidegger and Arendt on Singularity and Solitude | 46 |
A Deleuzian Perspective | 54 |
San Sebastian Jazz Festival July 2025 1980 | 63 |
15 Improvisation and Habit | 113 |
Jurij Konjar and Steve Paxton The Goldberg Variations | 117 |
Rehearsing Practising Improvising | 140 |
The Woburn Pop Festival 1968 | 169 |
Jimi Hendrix | 175 |
Schoenberg and Beckett on Duty | 182 |
Derek Bailey and the Improvised Situation | 197 |
Miles Davis Royal Festival Hall July 1984 | 226 |
Bernard Pretty Purdie | 70 |
Developing Derek Baileys Concept of Improvisation | 76 |
Borges and Deleuze on Repetition | 89 |
Bluegrass in Cheltenham | 96 |
The Del McCoury Band | 99 |
Deleuze and Bluegrass | 104 |
14 Deleuzian Improvisation | 108 |
Cyndi Lauper Time After Time | 230 |
Conclusion | 242 |
Notes | 247 |
| 261 | |
| 267 | |
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Improvising Improvisation: From Out of Philosophy, Music, Dance, and Literature Gary Peters No preview available - 2020 |
Common terms and phrases
absolutely actual aesthetic judgment affirm already Arendt artist audience Badiou Bailey's band Beckett become beginning Bernard Purdie Blanchot Borges certainly certitude chance choice commitment concept create creative Cyndi Lauper decisive Del McCoury Band Deleuze Derek Bailey Derrida describes dialectic Difference and Repetition discussion essence essential existential experience fact fixed idiomatic form of improvisation free improvisation freedom gestures Gilles Deleuze guitar habit happen Hegel Heidegger Heidegger’s Ibid idea idiom idiomatic improvisation imagine impro improvisatory improvised event infinite jazz Jimi Hendrix Jimi Hendrix Experience Kant Konjar Lol Coxhill Malabou Martin Heidegger McCoury Menard Mike Cooper Miles Davis movement ness Nietzsche ontological origin originary Paxton performance perhaps Phenomenology philosophy playing possible practice precisely predicament produced Purdie question rehearsal remains Schoenberg sense singular solitude solo song space speak Steve Paxton surprise thing thinking thought tion trans truth understood unfixing Veryan Weston virtual writing