Principles of Piano Music Improvisation

Doctoral student: Mykolas Bazaras
Supervisors: Prof. Petras Geniušas, Prof. Habil. Dr. Leonidas Melnikas
Department: Piano
Intended duration: 2013–2018

Abstract

Mykolas Bazaras

„How to improvise?“ was always a topical question raised both by music performers and scholars. One can find methodical aspirations about „free extemporisations“, „ornamental cadences with propriety, taste, and regularity“, „improvised performance“, „art of preluding“ etc. in sources written by famous performers and composers already from the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Carl Phillipp Emanuel Bach (1753/1762), Leopold Mozart (1787), Johann Joachim Quantz (1780), Carl Czerny (1829), and Friedrich Kalkbrener (1849), among others.

In the second half of the 19th century, opus perfectum et absolutum took its peak and interest on extempore performance went down, especially among the performers. However, the 20th century gave birth to new genres in the world of music such as jazz, aleatoric music, serialism, indetermined music, rock, electronic music, in which piano music blossoms in new ways, though based on the same improvisation, constrained by various rules.

By using various sources, written throughout the history of piano music, as well as by interviewing contemporary piano performers and pedagogues, the author of the artistic project is seeking to unveil some essential differences and similarities between the variety of improvisational approaches in piano music and determine its evolution.