Dove e quando

Talk by Alessandro Bertinetto (University of Turin)

ABSTRACT

In this talk, I argue that musical improvisation involves at least three distinct forms of twofoldness. First, improvisation is both composition and performance: the creative and the performative dimensions coincide in a single unfolding process. Second, improvisation unfolds within a tension between habitual dispositions and unexpected developments. Improvisers rely on embodied, stylistic, and aesthetic habits; yet what gives improvisation its vitality is the emergence of events that cannot be fully anticipated. The capacity to respond aesthetically in real time depends precisely on the interplay between sedimented patterns and surprise. This dynamic tension constitutes a fundamental condition of improvisatory practice. Third, musical improvisation often displays a twofold structure of agency. The real-time interaction of performers engaged in sound production intertwines with the agency perceived in the music itself. As suggested by person-theoretical accounts of musical expressiveness, listeners frequently experience music as acting through sound. The real actions of improvising musicians and the virtual actions attributed to the music enter into a reciprocal relation: musicians respond to the agency they perceive in the unfolding music, thereby further articulating its agentive character.