A few weeks ago, I attended a concert by pianist Gabriela Montero. She has become one of the most prestigious active piano soloists; won the 2015 Latin Grammy for the best classical album and played at Obama’s Inauguration in 2009. Her popularity is due not only to her impeccable technique and interpretation qualities, but mainly because of a skill that is very rare in classical music nowadays: her enormous talent for improvisation.

It has become usual in her concerts to devote the last part of the program to improvisations. She selects a couple of people from the audience and ask them to suggest a popular melody that most attendants would recognize. That way, they will be able to appreciate how the melody is integrated into her improvisation. When we reached this part of the concert, Gabriela said:

Her statement is very accurate. For example, until the 19th century, cadenzas in concerts for soloists and orchestra were not written in the score. People would go to concerts in expectation, to see how the cadenza would be played. The popularity and perceived quality of a soloist was linked to his talent as an improviser when performing such cadenzas. Over time, cadenzas began to be written and became virtuosistic passages where the performer must follow the score. Nowadays, for example, no one would dare to modify the cadenza of a Bartok concert. Another example in classical music comes from the Baroque period. The “basso continuo” was a figured bass on top of which melodic instruments would develop melodies spontaneously; even organists and harpsichordists were allowed some liberty when building the chords defined by the figured bass.

As I have stated in previous occasions, progressive rock has many common elements with classical music, especially symphonic. The small amount of improvisation, is another common element. Of course, I’m not implying that improvisation is not present in progressive rock but I can firmly state that improvisation is not one of the most distinctive traits of the genre.

Why is this the case? Is it because of lack of technical ability of the musicians? Is it related to the type of music? Or is there another reason?

To look into these questions, let us pause to examine the various types of improvisation.

Free Improvisation

In this case, musicians have total liberty to play whatever comes to their mind. A motif can arise spontaneously and the musicians can use it to develop fantasies based on that idea. This type of improvisation has no predefined structure. There is no underlying harmonic base and musicians do not know beforehand what is going to happen. Some examples:

John Zorn Improv Marathon (The Stone, 16.10.2011) – part 1

Angel Ontalva & Vasco Trilla MUZENERGOTOUR 2014 (Live in Kemerovo)

Improvisation over a harmonic base

This is the most common improvisation and the key characteristic of jazz and its derivatives. This type of improvisation is also present in rock, World music, folklore, etc. In this case, the harmonic base is previously determined, as well as the duration of each improvisation. The performer knows beforehand what harmonic sequence will be used and, therefore, he can “plan” his interpretation. He knows what scales to use that will be compatible with the harmonic base or that will generate the type of tension that he wishes to create. This type of improvisation is less free and lends itself to the development of “templates”. For this reason, it is not uncommon to see the same soloist performing very similar improvisations, even in different songs.

The usual structure in jazz songs is to organize the piece around a harmonic sequence known as the “chorus”. The first time that the chorus is played, there are one or several previously written melodies. In other words, it can have the form A, or AB where B is a contrasting section. The first “chorus” is known as “head chorus” and has a variable duration (8, 16 or even 32 bars). When the “head chorus” ends, the improvisation rounds begin. In each improvisation, the harmonic base established in the “head chorus” is preserved. At the end of the improvisations, the piece ends with a reprise of the “head chorus”. Sometimes the song includes introductions or codas.

During the improvisations, usually there is total liberty when developing the melodies and frequently the improvisations are not based on the written material that was presented in the “head chorus”.

Chick Corea – Spain – Live At Montreux 2004

This pattern is very frequent in other genres, including rock. The famous “jams” follow this same pattern: a chord sequence on top of which musicians improvise. For example, the “Grateful Dead” jams were very popular in the 60’s.

Improvisation over a melodic base

This type of improvisation is much more difficult because, in essence, you need to create “on the fly” a theme and variations or a structured fantasy, using a specific melody as a starting point. This was the type of improvisation done by composers like Chopin or Liszt and has fallen into disuse probably due to its enormous difficulty. In exceptional cases, the thematic development and underlying structure are so rigorous that it is hard to tell whether it is an improvisation or a previously written song. The best way to describe this type of improvisation is with a couple of examples:

Gabriela Montero Improvisation Happy Birthday Heidelberger Frühling 2016

In this second example, the organist Thomas Ospital improvises over an ancient melody called “Puer Natus Est Nobis” (Christmas Day, Introit). This is the original melody:

This is Thomas Ospital’s improvisation:

Let us now explore the question of why improvisation is scarce in progressive rock. In the article Progressive Rock – A Misleading Tag, I argue that perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of progressive rock, that sets it apart from other genres, is:

“A structured approach to the development of thematic material”

The first two types of improvisation – “free” and “based on a harmonic base” do not lend themselves for this type of structured development. Only the third type of improvisation favors this type of development and, as we have seen in the last two examples, it requires an exceptional talent and technique, within the reach of a privileged few. For this reason, when improvisation appears in a progressive rock song, it is “free” or “over a harmonic base” to the detriment of a structured theme development. King Crimson was one of the few well-known 70’s progressive bands that embraced improvisation. Many of their songs were the result of “free” improvisation. Here are a couple of examples of improvisation in progressive rock:

“Free” Improvisation – King Crimson: “Starless and Bible Black”

Improvisation over a harmonic base – Jethro Tull: “Passion Play”

Progressive rock is a very good example of Art Music. Again, I refer to the article Progressive Rock – A Misleading Tag where I claim that another relevant characteristic of this genre is:

“A desire to evoke states of transcendence”

This is the ultimate goal pursued by the composer and, for this, he resorts to the structured development of ideas (melodic, harmonic, rhythmic) for the purpose of bringing the work to reach one or more climaxes. In other words, the construction of these climaxes is done through a process, sometimes artisanal, in which each step is conditioned by a conscious exercise of analysis and reflection. In the article of issue # 7 – May 2017 I will talk about the creation phenomena from my experience as a composer and I will expand on these considerations. For the time being, let’s keep the idea that, in progressive rock, climaxes are built “on paper”; they have been written beforehand.

Jazz lovers know that it is possible to achieve intense climaxes during improvisations. As the Spanish broadcaster José Miguel López says, when “there are elfs” in the concerts. Therefore, to reach an effective artistic communication it is not mandatory that the work be previously written, with no space for spontaneity and immediate creation. Of course, not everyone agrees with this observation. For example, the German philosopher Theodore Adorno in his essay “Aesthetic Theory” (to which I will refer in a future article), argues that art requires a certain “thingness”. According to Adorno, this “thingness” comprises a set of rational elements derived from the artist’s background, such as his cultural, social, and aesthetic sediments. These sediments, in combination with the artist’s “intuition,” create that which transforms the work of art into something that transcends both reason as well as the conditions of the environment from which it emanates. Adorno claims that the “thingness” is absent in improvisation or only present to a much lesser degree.

I believe that, as I will explain in my next article about the experience of artistic creation, “inspiration” goes beyond what Adorno labels as “intuition” because it brings with it a Superior intelligence from which the composer may or may not be conscious. During moments of great inspiration, the composer becomes an intermediary who transcribes a strong message that he is perceiving. The fidelity with which he embodies this message, depends on his technical ability.

In exceptional cases, like Gabriela Montero, technical competence is developed to a point where she is capable of transcribing “in real time”, with all sorts of details, a complex message that entails not only melody but a whole entity with all the structural elements of form, harmony, rhythm and dynamics already in their place. In most cases, however, what happens is that the composer lays out the ideas received from his inspiration in raw form, and then invests most of his time transcribing, structuring and refining it. During this process, the work of art can be complemented (or contaminated) by a rational process. This is the basis for the popular saying: “Composing is 10% inspiration and 90% transpiration”.

In the case of progressive rock, this refinement work is done “in the lab”: on paper as I previously stated, or as a collective effort. As Carlos Romeo explained in his article About Starless, often the pieces were developed from ideas, phrases, melodies, etc. that were contributed individually by band members. From that point, a team work process took place where the structure of the piece, the development of ideas, and climaxes were defined and fixed through successive iterations. Works of great complexity like Jethro Tull’s “Passion Play” were written from fragments from different sources. However, even though there are a few improvisatory passages, the end result is a song that was fixed down to the very last note.

We have a good example of this process in Genesis’ “Selling England by the Session” which provides access to recordings of some of the composition sessions of the band. Here you can clearly see that in many cases the ideas were refined through a cyclic process, until they were finally fixed in the form that we all know. This is the antithesis of improvisation. The objective is to take an initial idea and refine it through a series of iterations until you reach a version with which you are fully satisfied. In each iteration, a fragment of the idea could be fixed while the rest remains “unstable” and subject to additional experimentation (much of it improvised). The objective is to eliminate such “instability”, which is equivalent to saying that the objective is to eliminate improvisation. Let’s listen to some recordings related to the composition process (or “fixation”) of “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight”:

In this session, we can listen to Hackett experimenting with several ideas. Of all the material, we can see that only a small fragment made it into the final version:

In this very interesting take, we listen to Gabriel beginning to shape the melodies of the voice, with the support of Banks at the piano:

This third session portrays a much higher maturity of the ideas. The percentage of ideas already “fixed” is much greater. It seems evident that at this point the lyrics had not been written yet.

Therefore, we can see that, as a rule of thumb, the aim during the composition process in progressive rock is to fix the ideas. Pieces are the result of a refinement process, of “trial and error”, where decisions about what stays and what is discarded are taken consciously.

During this process of “fixation” of the pieces, many times improvisatory sections are determined. However, it is curious to see how some of these improvisations are reproduced almost identically during the concerts. In other words, what emerged as an improvisation, ends up being a “written” solo. To continue the analogy with the classical music world, it is similar to the cadenzas that started being a free section to gradually change into just another fragment of previously written music.

We can conclude that the scarce presence of improvisation in progressive rock is a natural consequence of the process that is usually followed when writing the songs. This process, in turn, is conditioned by the goal of achieving a structured development of thematic material which, as I already mentioned, is perhaps the most remarkable feature of this genre.