Chapter 19 Indeterminacy and Vagueness in Improvisation and in Experimental Music
Daniele Goldoni · 2024
This essay deals with a family of musical practices that are marked by similar features and grouped under the labels of "indeterminacy," "experimental music," and "improvisation."Although, according to John Cage, musical improvisation, experimentalism, and indeterminacy were originally motivated by different goals and concepts and characterized by different practices-although ethnic and "free" Western improvisation are also very different from each other-they all share a common trait in terms of their intention, the realization of their performances, or their reception, and that is to say: a certain unpredictability in their outcome.In one sense, some features of these musical gestures are "replicable," as evidenced by the perception of them as "genres" as well as by the existence of musical circuits and communities devoted to them.However, a performance of this sort is only considered successful by the composer, performer, or listener if something "unpredictable" happens.This apparently complex situation promises to be a fruitful field for better understanding and testing the concepts of "complete" and "incomplete" gesture and of "vagueness" proposed by Giovanni Maddalena, based on an investigation into "replicability" and the experience of time, place, and community in these musical practices.If a wholly or partially non-replicable practice is to be considered "incomplete," are improvisational and indeterminate musical practices incomplete gestures?