Improvisation and the Aesthetics of Sublime
Scholarly Research Presentation at the American Guild of Organist Conference in Boston, MA. Thursday, June 26, at 9:45. The Marriott Hotel, Copley Place at 110 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA.
Paper Abstract
The connection between musical improvisation and the experience of the musically sublime represents an oft-concealed thread between the very acts of spontaneous music making and the acts of listening. In my presentation I explore analogies between the embodied sense of indeterminacy and transience in improvised music and the aesthetics of the musically sublime. I examine the notion of the musically sublime as an attribute of the embodiment of musical creativity that can be evoked through the performative act of musical improvisation. I define musical improvisation as a process of creative awareness: a quest to understand how the mind and body contribute to the awareness of musical creativity. I draw on my experience as a keyboard improviser and empirical studies to describe how musicians, both consciously and unconsciously, seek to translate their musical creativity through improvisation. While the discussion unfolds around the notion of the musically sublime, in my presentation I also argue that compositional and aesthetic constraints become important catalysts in the production-realization process of the musical imagination. By evoking the sublime aspects of creative musical embodiment, I put forward a perspective that serves as a philosophical counterpoint to the performative and cognitive attributes of musical creativity.
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