The Improvisation Piano Manifesto

Why do we go to concert halls and hail great pianists, making their work worthy of preservation on vinyl and CD? What separates the performances of Rubenstein, Gould, Arrau, or Zimmerman from the performances of any competent pianist with a few years of rote training under their fingertips? It is not perfection that we look for in the performances, but rather, imperfections from the written music. We listen to the pianists as they interpret the composer's work in the performances, sometimes changing the tempo, sometimes deliberately or humanly make errors in the performance. We hear the performer as well as the composer in great performances. A perfectionist would abhor the muttering and whimperings of Gould in his Bach, but any machine and computer can play the music as it is written and inputted, but only one pianist can play it as he or she have uniquely imagined what the music would be played, and the uniqueness of this, the human element of music, is the siren's call from the concert halls to the connoisseur's ear.

Then, what about improvisational piano? What is improvised would be the culmination of both composition and performance, the combination of two creative forces in one mind. Yet, even traditional improvisational piano have been summarized and locked into certain conventions. There's jazz, whose soul was based on interpretation, now locked into a step-by-step phenomenon practiced by lots and even written down. The greatness of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker being taught? What separates that from Bach and Ravel? Merely the style. The true improvisational piano must not be able to be replicated, a true one-off work. Surely, it can be based upon the tenants of piano or music in general - major or minor keys, tempos, et cetera, but the actual music that flows out of the pianist's fingers must be unique and for this occasion only. Truly unique music, improvised and the most human and a culmination of creativeness in music, cannot be replicable in form, only in theme and gist.

How does a pianist achieve this? One must have intent as one plays the music, or it would be a wandering, rambling mess - although one cannot rule it out, as a wandering, rambling mess might be just the intent of the musician - yet structure that makes written music would make the music too replicable and too mechanical to fully express the impromptu emotion of the pianist. The pianist must have the right mindset. The mindset should be chosen from the most nebulous and disorderly of humanity - relationships and conflict. One can hardly ever predict the exact course of conflict, and it is this tension and uncertainty that makes it so human. Conveniently enough, unlike the violin or the trumpet, the pianist is gifted with two hands to engage in his act, two independent perspectives upon the keyboard on which to express two separate melodies. The two hands are actors in a human drama, and they must act as if they're engaged in a play or even better, a real relationship or conflict.

I must here clarify that relationships as we know are full of conflicts, but conflicts also embody greater forms - wars, negotiations, diplomacy - they can all be expressed by the improvised piano because the two hands - actors as I shall refer to them from this point - must have some sort of form of independence in their interactions. The music would almost be incidental, a product of how the interactions between the two actors have been acting, and reflects the nature of either conflict or cooperation. A sense of tension, then, would be everpresent in the music, which would make the music far more intriguing than a planned, pleasing piece prearranged and over-practiced. The music would change tempos, rapidly scale up and down, sometimes adding a sharp or flat where there shouldn't be one. There would be no more absolute "should"s in the music, as anything that can be explained and interpreted as a reflection of a progression of a conflict can be a part of the music. The only prerequisite of the music - and the separator of it from non-music - would be how the music progresses. The music must start at a point, a recognizable point, and progress to a recognizable end point, whether it be a harmonious one or one that is an entangled mess. Anything in the middle, the progression, would be up to the improvisation. To express a serious sense of terror or disgust or the carefreeness of light can easily be done by altering the keys and tempo, sometimes in a slow progression and sometimes in a sudden mood change, a swing worthy of a psychiatric patient. Music should no longer be limited to the conventional sanity of structured sonatinas and symphonies, but the madness of humanity that we repress but are ever-present nonetheless.

The pianist's emotions - or the emotions trying to be expressed, not necessarily as the pianist's own but merely as his creation of the tradition (see T.S. Eliot's suggestion for the depersonalization of the artist - a viable alternative but not an exclusivity in my opinion for the creation of art, but I digress) - should be able to be interpreted by the audience, but none is necessary. A play without an audience is still a play. The improvisation is raw emotions expressed on a keyboard. The hurriedness of retreat in a vie for dominance can be expressed via the quickening of the hands' advances on the scale and the fingers can even physically touch - a truly physical representation that turns a shouting match into a physical fight, creating a cacophony, not necessarily rational, as arguments and conflicts aren't either. Humans don't have to be rational, and neither does the music. The improvisation is based on a spur-of-the-moment expression, and it can be as outrageous as humanity allows it. The piece can be long and drawn out, overtiring, self-referential, or it can be short, to the point, and classical in all but the fact that it is only expressing a classical sentiment and not a classical piece.

In the end, really, improvisational pieces should create a specific mood. It's much easier to create discord, but harmony can also be created this way. The keys can change as quickly as the tempestuous mind of the pianist, and it makes for a wonderfully unparalleled and unique form of music. We can eschew obvious themes of music in the traditional sense, accomplished by repeating the same notes - by creating themes by creating the same sentiment to reinforce the meaning under a piece. Certainly, this freedom and raw humanity leaves open a lot of room for music that have too much tension and discord to be bearable by the listener - what we call bad music - and when this is unintentional, it would not be music but mere trash. However, when done properly, the combination of drama, emotion, humanity, and all the best elements of theatrics with the already graceful and expressive capabilities of the piano can make improvisational piano the most meaningful and intriguing form of piano. One should not merely shoot for "good" music, as music should aim to incite an adjective more than merely "good" or "bad" or something akin to that. Music can incite a revolution, create peace, and change the mood of the listener in ways the written word can never achieve in such simple and universal terms. The humanity of the pianist in improvisational piano have already provided the groundwork, and with practice in how to express such emotions, improvisational piano, in my opinion, would be the most appropriate and applicable as well as the most enjoyable form of piano music.