What roles can improvisation play in teaching and learning across all musical disciplines? How may it help in the development of musical personality? How can teachers put improvisation into practice?
Many conservatoire teachers are curious about the use of improvisation in lessons for classical students. This is apparent from programs at (inter)national conferences where, next to attention given to performance improvisation, the subject ‘improvising and teaching’ is increasingly raised. The teachers give support to their interest with a number of reasons: more freedom with the instrument, independence from focusing on the score, artistic development and flexibility with regard to the future employability of the student.
Historically, improvisation has been rule governed – not in the sense that the rules were written down but in the sense that they were shared by the community of practitioners who were engaged in a particular style of improvisation. Using the term ‘free’ improvisation suggests that it is not rule-governed in this way and that it is truly free. The question to free improvisers is therefore are there any unwritten rules? These rules might relate to the interactions between players, an unspoken agreement that there is musical communication between them, that each is sensitive to other participants. Alternatively, there may be other unwritten rules, perhaps not to contribute already well known tunes. So what exactly is ‘free improvisation’?
When we explore our list of teachers at the Royal Conservatoire from the ‘improvising and teaching’ perspective, a rich palette of styles and perspectives emerges from across the whole music world. Together with several of those teachers the lectorate ‘Teacher of the 21st century’ has organized five seminars on ‘improvising and teaching’ in 2009-2010. Furthermore, (inter)national guests such as Anto Pett (Estonia) who have developed a method especially applicable to ‘beginner situations’ in this field, were invited.
