| dc.description.abstract | Introduction - The musical world divides artistic practices into three main categories: composing, performing, and improvising (Borgdorff, 2007). Correspondingly, music programs offered in higher education around the world draw similar distinctions, often dividing students up into “composers” and “performers”, and largely excluding “improvisation” (Lebler 2010). Indeed, it is not unusual for degree programs to place a strong emphasis on the specialization in particular subjects, with some institutions even requiring students to ignore the rest of the musical world in order to succeed (Leech-Wilkinson 2020). An educational phenomenon often attributed to musicians' limited career opportunities, academic certification requirements, a focus on monocultural educational profiles, and an emphasis on western classical music genres (Isbell 2007; Kruse 2015).
This dissertation will demonstrate how improvisation can be employed as a structural route to composition. To achieve this, it will investigate the uniqueness of improvisation and composition concepts in order to rebuild and enhance their compatibility as two branches of music practice. In doing so it will then go on to argue that improvisation is not simply an optional methodology for composition, but, in fact, an unavoidable condition of every musical practice. Through this process, the deprecation improvisation of will be challenged, elevating improvisation as a method of and inherent part of composition. | en_US |
