improvisation

Hstick aboard...listening to Bach a lot lately has got me to thinking
about how he could possibly write such a huge quantity of music, much
of it astonishing...simply, how did he do it? Where did he find the
time to write all that, much less have 20 kids, teach, and hang out
at coffee shops? Well, it's obvious that he could improvise on a very
high level, than go back and jot down a close fascimile...endless var-
iations, at an incredible level of physical execution. My feeling is
that many of Bach's pieces would have sounded slightly different if
written, say, one day later...I don't think those Baroque (an "academic"
term) dudes was too picky about their pieces at times. They were skilled,
I believe, in a much more complete and integrated way than most musicians
are today. They were master improvisors, who could also read and write
music very fluently, and they were expected to be able to do many various
functions, from arranging to playing funerals...Bach was a freelancer,
who stayed alive by hustling all sorts of gigs, from the most Sacred
of cantatas to pop tunes in the coffee shops.

It's the improvising part, I suppose, that most attracts me, because
that's exactly the tradition I come out of, starting when I got into
blues in the late 1960's...blues and jazz and other American idioms
put a huge burden on a player to be a composer who comes up with their
OWN thing within the dictates of a style...thus, all blues players are
composers, in a sense...a jazz guy (or gal) is composing every time
they pick up their axe., but from an endless pool of riffs and rhythmic
patterns that are part of the basic language. Believe me, blues is a
very tough art form. I am only happy playing these days when I come up
with riffs that I have never played before.

Anyway, I think improvisation is a subject that has rarely been touched
on in this forum...so, it makes me wonder about Partch's compositional
style...how did he compose his works? Did he sit around messing with his
instruments and seeing what happened, or did he work things out in his
head first, and then write down those ideas? Did he write fast, slow,
did he make a lot of corrections, did he agonize over a few notes (as
Miles said Gil Evans would do), or did he think the idea had precedence
over a certain way of expressing that idea? In that regard, I read in
the liner notes to a Bach Lute album that Bach (or others in that period)
would sometimes write things that were idiomatically incorrect for the
Lute, but he knew that the lutenist would take care of it, and adapt it
for his own axe...they were expected to be able to do this...thus, a few
notes here and there were not the issue...the performer was now actually
INVOLVED in the compositional process in a way that is conspicuously
absent from many players of the European orchestral repertoire.

As I said, I learn a lot from the people on this forum, and the inter-
action makes me evaluate what I do in serious ways. I AM an improvisor,
and it is a natural language for me...my band works best when we impro-
vise, too. And I don't believe I've ever seen ant info on the inner
workings of old Harry's writing style...seems like it would be an inter-
esting subject. Also, there was a great article on Partch in the June
1990 issue of Keyboard mag...Hstick

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