transcendentalism and materialism: classical music and improvisation in the united states

8/14/2019 Transcendentalism and Materialism: Classical Music and Improvisation in the United States

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Transcendentalism and Materialism:Classical Music and Improvisation in the United States

Ryan Tanaka

In general, the materialist aesthetic of Free Improvisation sides

with jazz against the transcendental idealism of fine art and itsfetish of product over producer. (Watson, Derek Bailey and theStory of Improvisation, 169)

From Ben Watsons perspective, the relationship between composition and improvisationtends to be an uncompromisingly antagonistic one. Derek Bailey and the Story of Improvisationportrays themusic world as being divided into class-sects the institutional bourgeois and theproletariat working classes two groups fighting against one another over control of resourcesand power. Composers, due to their affiliation with the high arts, are depicted as serving thespecial interests of the elite, while improvisers are hailed as revolutionaries seeking to dismantlethe evils of the modern capitalist machine. Within this scenario, free improvisation, in itsrejection of notation and stylistic idioms, becomes the ultimate and most radical defiance againstthe status-quo.

Frederic Rzewski notes that, while composition and improvisation are instinsicallyrelated, they can be quite different, even contrary, mental processes. (Rzewski, 379) Rzewski,having been heavily involved in both activities, had spent much of his career trying to reconcilethe two approaches toward music-making. However, he eventually came to anacknowledgement that composition and improvisation often fulfill very different functions andrequire a switch in mentality when moving from one to another.

A composed piece can be said to be a theoretical idea (or series of ideas) written on score often through a learned language such as the Western notation system. The idea is passed ontothe performer, who is then expected to render it into its physical form, i.e. sounds. Thenotation itself, however, does not contain the experience of actually going to a liveconcert.

Composition is, in a sense, a product of knowledge a priori, independent of experience. It mayprovide instructions or information aboutthe sound-to-be, but lacks the tangible quality that thesound itself provides.

Improvisation, on the other hand, can be said to be an activity where the experience itselfbecomes the focusof the music-making process. Greater emphasis is placed on the personalexpression of the performer, the instrument, the environment, the audience what exists withinthe material world rather than lending one-self to the pre-constructed ideas of the composer.Where composition attempts to transcend, improvisation attempts to stay rooted within theenvironment in which it unfolds.

The sounds themselves, however, cannot exist without the will to make them manifest the idea that one should perform. Composition and improvisation, despite their apparentdichomatic nature, are instrinsically related and are ultimately reliant on one another to survive.Like the chicken-and-the-egg scenario, an inquiry into the matter raises numerous questions butultimately provides no definitive answer issues and arguments bleed into one another,contradicting yet complimenting, often mirroring each other in their similarities and differences.

Although Watsons statement is an overgeneralization of the issue (one which he freelyadmits), it manages to frame the issue in a succinct manner, serving as an useful model forexplaining the divergences between the processes of composition and improvisation in music.Watsons assertion is significant in that it ties materialism with improvisation, while connectingtranscendentalidealism with that of the fine arts (i.e. classical music). While there may be no


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of Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture. (Emerson, TheTranscendentalist, 18)

The dichotomy between composition and improvisation draws many similarities to thedialogues between Plato and Aristotle the philosophical discourse between rational thought andsensory experience. The former tends to emphasize the power of thought and will, providing

internalized perspectives into how the human mind works. The latter tends to place greateremphasis on the tangible and material what is empirical, what can be seen, touched, felt,experienced things which satisfy the demands of the senses. Western culture often stands incontrast with the rest of the worlds philosophies in that it creates (and at times, demands) aseparation between the mind and the body; a contrast that is also reflected in the music that itcreates.

Transcendentalism emerged partly as a reaction towards the second industrial revolution,believing that the mechanization of economy and culture greatlythreatened the quality of life inthe United States. As a result of new inventions railroads, steamboats, turnpikes, and canals civilization rapidly expanded into untainted territories, creating an influx of opportunities forresidential, business, and industrial settlements. While society made leaps and bounds in terms

of its technology and materialistic wealth, the Transcendentalists began to question if humanityscapacity toward higher ideals were becoming submerged in its quests for easy riches and creaturecomforts. Their rejection of the materialist aesthetic was also a rejection of capital, as economicgoods provided what was needed to satisfy the whims of the senses.2

The founder of New England Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, pledges hisallegiance to the cause of idealism in 1842, contrasting his point of view with the materialistaesthetic:

These two modes of thinking are both natural, but the idealist contendsthat his way of thinking is in higher nature. [...] Every materialist will be anidealist; but an idealist can never go back to be a materialist. (Emerson,18)

Transcendentalism would eventually come to influence a multitude of thinkers and artistsin American society, including Henry David Thoreau, Sarah Margaret Fuller, and NathanialHawthorne. Among musicians, the philosophy left a particularly great impact on Charles Ives,who would in turn influence many of the American modernist composers that came thereafter.Ives involvement with the cause is made clear in Three Places in New England [1903-14] andConcord Sonata [Piano Sonata No.2] (1920), where he makes specific references to names andplaces affiliated with the movement.3 Ives can be seen echoing Emerson in his rejection ofmaterialism, citing Thoreau as an example:

[Thoreau] sang of the submission to Nature, the religion of contemplation,and the freedom of simplicity -- a philosophy distinguishing between the

complexity of Nature, which teaches freedom, and the complexity ofmaterialism, which teaches slavery. (Ives, Essays Before a Sonata, 51)

This lineage can be traced all the way up to the works of John Cage, who was an avidadmirer of Thoreaus writings and eventually joined the Thoreau Society as a life member in1968. Thoreaus highly ideological demeanor, anti-institutional outlooks, and his appreciationfor nature would all find itself well-received within Cages anarchistic leanings.4 Two yearslater, Cage writes Mureau (1970), a text-based work that borrows phrases from Thoreausdiaries, applied through the chance processes of theI-Ching. With its heavy emphasis on


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individual liberty and freedom, Cages experimental music tradition can be seen as a revival ofTranscendental ideologies the ideal of human independence from all forms of servitude, rootedin the Founding Fathers ideas of all men created equal.

Gavin Bryars, a British bass performer and composer who had studied with Cage duringthe 1960s, speaks of his ideological opposition to improvisation:

Later, after going to America and studying with Cage, and returning [toEngland] and joining in, on live electronics, etcetera, some of the playingthat was going on around 1967 and 68 I was becoming more and moreideologically opposed to improvisation. I began to find improvisation adead end. I could only get out of improvisation what I brought into it. []It was not possible to transcend the situation I was playing in.

Now on the other hand, I foundthat by composing, I could. (Bailey, 114)

My position, through the study of Zen and Cage, is to stand apart fromones creation. Distancing yourself from what youre doing. Now thatbecomes impossible in improvisation. When I write a piece I dont even

have to be there when it is played. They are conceptions. Im moreinterested in conception than reality. (Bailey, 115)

Transcendentalist notions of progress emerge as a result of distancing ones self fromthe past transcending time, and, as a result,reality itself. As such, history and factualinformation were de-emphasized in favor of creating utopian visions as means of progressingtowardsthe future. These ideals helped to mobilize abolitionism and womens suffrage duringthe 19th century, while facilitating movements toward civil rights, gender equality, and religioustolerance during the 20th, pushing America closer toward its ideals of equality. Dr. Martin LutherKing Jr. cites Thoreaus Civil Disobedience(1849) as an important influence in his own quest forracial and social justice within the United States.

The philosophical movement, however, inevitably raised controversies and objections,

many of them also coming from liberal and left-wing thinkers. Emerson, in his dismissal of thematerialist aesthetic, regarded facts, history and circumstance as being unimportant for some,this outright rejection was not an acceptable clause. Composer/improviser George Lewiscomments on Cages musical aesthetic:

The elimination of memory and history from music, emblematic of theCageian project, may be seen as a response to postwar conditions. Seen inhistorical terms, the decline of improvisation in European music in thenineteenth and early twentieth centuries would seem to preclude anyidentification of exclusively or even primarily European antecedents forEurological improvised music. In such an atmosphere, the postwarmodernist emphasis of musicians such as Cage on the present,

deemphasizing memory and history, would appear to be a naturalresponse to the impossibility of discovering such antecedents on the partof those from whom the preservation of European purity of musicalreference would be a prime concern.

On the other hand, the African-American improviser, coming from a legacyof slavery and oppression, cannot countenance the erasure of history.(Lewis, 233)


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Lewis argues that the Cageian aesthetic has a tendency to become exclusive due to itsdismissal of history, which includes that of the African-American experience of slavery andoppression. Due to its heavy emphasis on ideals and perspectives oriented towards individualsubjectivity, the philosophy develops a potential to create a dehumanized perspective:

Mind is the only reality, of which men and all other natures are better orworse reflectors. Nature, literature, history, are only subjectivephenomena. (Emerson, 19)

The peculiarity of Cages ideology lies in its advocation ofnon-action and non-involvement to be free of obligations and ties to any established order while at the same time,giving individual the mobility to gowhere they may please. The aesthetic can be seen as anevocation of the pioneering front: experimentation in music being equated to the idea ofexploring new lands, the search for new territory becomes that of freedom in itself. Lewis arguesthat Cages experimental music tradition pays respect to the quintessentially American myth ofthe frontier, where that which lies before us must take precedence over the past. (Lewis, 233)

Exploration was not without consequence, however. With American expansionism

resulting in the decimation of the Native American population, an in-depth look into thephilosophy reveals a darker, destructive side to its conceptualizations.5 With its ability to do bothextremes of good and bad, Transcendentalisms ideological double-edged sword ultimatelycontributed to the bests and the worsts of American history, with its conflicts and resolutionsoften springing from the same source. While Emerson idealized the genius of the Americanrugged individual, the solitary lifestyle of the pioneerreveals feelings of paranoia, anti-socialbehavior, self-centeredness, and alienation. Genius came at the expense of everything else:

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one ofits members. (Emerson, Self-Reliance, 46)

I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me.

[] Expect me not to show cause for why I seek or why I excludecompany. (Emerson, 48)

do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poormen in good situations. Are they mypoor? (Emerson, 48)

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. [] It iseasy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude tolive after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowdkeeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. (Emerson,49)

As such, Emersons writings can be seen as a prelude to the psychological conflicts of20th century Americana, touching on subjects and themes related to the existence of human kindwithin the modernized world. Through juxtapositions of styles and quoted materials, theseclashings manifest itself through the music of Ives, in his attempts at coming to terms with hiseclecticism, experimentalism, and individualism within his work. The subsequent dissonancesthat emerge as a result exemplifies the paradoxes that emerge from the American experience the unresolved tensions between liberal ideals of social progress and the right toward individualautonomy.


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As Marxism began to grain traction within the intellectual spheres of the 20th century,Marxs dialectical materialism served as a critique of the idealization of the individual bypointing out societys obligation toward the proletariat working classes.6 The Americanexperimental music tradition, due to its heavy emphasis on individual liberty, often found itself atodds with serialisms socialist undertones as well as the populism of the Neo-Classicists andNeo-Romantics, due to the latters acceptance of formal systems and the musical vernacular.Improvising musicians, on the other hand, disagreed with classical music on a broader, morefundamental level against the idealism of the notation in itself.

Materialism Facts, History, Circumstance

Because improvisation resembles ordinary real life in itsprecariousness and unpredictability, it contains a necessary element ofrealism, with which many people can immediately identify, even if themusical language is strange to them. [] Because improvisationresembles real life, it can illuminate this real life. It can make usaware that the surfaceof rationality that covers this reality may be onlyan illusion. This reality that seems to flow smoothly along familiarlines, behaving predictably in accordance with familiar casual patterns,may be only a small part that part that I choose to percieve of agreater reality in which most things happen without cause. (Rzewski,383)

Audiences will sometimes remark about how music has moved them emotionally, and theword they might use to describe their feelings is that the experience was somehow real. Inmany cases the feeling is a matter of recognition in works of narration, the audiences attentionis captured by creating characters that they can identify or empathize with, and this allows themto immerse themselves within the plot and act as if they were part of the story. In music,particularly in popular and folk idioms, this function is often provided by its lyrics. The listener

identifies something as being real when the words speak of something that they believe to betrue. The lyrics found in many blues songs, for example, speak of the hardships which areoften encountered in the day to day toils of existence the resonance with its audience being thatof a commonality in experience.

In instrumental music, defining realism is more difficult, but several things can bepointed out immediately by observing the context of the concert setting itself. By interpretingthe word materialism in more or less literal terms, one could point out the materials thatexist in any given performance the space, the instruments used, the performers, and whateverelse may happen to be there. Each can be said to have their own history and background basedon the materialsthat have allowed them to exist in that particular point in time. Performancespaces provide information about the environmental surroundings, instruments reflect what sortsof resources are available in the area, and the performer carries with them the connotations based

on their physical appearance and experiential history. The ideas that arise out of animprovisation then becomes the result of the accumulation of all of these things, focused into asingular event the act of performance.

The aesthetic of free improvisation can be said to be a strong dedication to these typesof materialistic notions in its purest forms, idealism is avoided as much as possible. There areno themes to be developed, no agenda to be followed, no preconceptions of what the results ofthe performance may end up sounding like. The focus then becomes only on what is there, atthat particular point in time and space what exists in the moment. References to the past are


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limited to only that of what the performers bring to the table a personal, but not a systematizedtype of history.

As Emerson bluntly puts, the materialist aesthetic often concerns itself with facts,history, and other forms of tangibles. While Transcendentalism believes that the mindconstrues meaning through the individuals subjective interpretation, the materialist believes thatsubstance is derived from the world itself, understood through the acts of observation andexperience. During the 17th century John Locke posited the tabula rasa the notion that humanbeings are essentially born as blank slates to be inscribed upon through sensory experience.Kants Critique was, in many ways, written as a reaction against Lockes empiricist leanings.

While Kants formulation of the transcendental ideal attempts to reconcile aspects ofrationalism and empiricism, it leans toward the rational in its attempt to explain sensoryexperience as a form ofa priori categorization. In Kants view, the mind creates establishedcategoriespriorto the act of experience therefore what humans experience sensationally firstexists as a representation of their own mind. Emerson, impressed by Kants celebration of thehuman will, cites the philosopher as the only modern thinker who in point of originality isworthy to be ranked with Plato and Aristotle. (Hubbard, 5) Not surprisingly, many of thetenants of Transcendentalism have a tendency to be anti-Lockeian in its rejection of empiricism

and the materialistic world, despite the fact that both thinkers were highly influential on thedevelopment of American liberalism.7

From the Romantic period onward, notation in classical music became much more detailoriented due to a greater emphasis placed on the vision of the composer, which generallymeant having to include more and more instructions on the written score. Articulation markingswere used to specify types of attacks, hairpin dynamics were created in order to give greatercontrol over dynamic contour, and precise metronome markings were employed as a way tostandardize the rate of the beat. What used to be general speed indications gradually becameemotional and evocative (allegro grazioso, dolce tranquillio, molto expressivo, etc.) as if toinduce the performer into feeling a certain way when they play.

Even as graphic and aleatoric notation attempted to rebel against the notational practicesof its day, the composer retained their position of the mastermind of the musical experience,enforcing the notion that meaning was something to be derived from the abstractions a priori.While language may have been altered or even destroyed, classical musics formalities andperformance practices remained in tact, reaffirming the hierarchies and social structures ofWestern society. By deducing musical concepts into its basic formalities, Cages 433 (1952)used silence as a way to dissolve the spectacle of the concert experience, exposing it for what itreally was.

In improvised musics, however, notation plays a fundamentally different role in how it isapplied. Although harmonic progressions, melodic cells, fragments of ideas, conceptualschemes, and formal constructions are often used to guide the process of improvisation,substance is derived primarily from the performer rather than the composer. Notation is treatedas an aid to ones memory rather than an object to be revered a useful, but not necessarily

sacred, tool. This mentality generally comes from the belief that what speaks the loudest is whatcomes from within the experiences and history of the performer which results in therealism that comes out of the performance process. Improvisers talking about music oftenreveal materialist leanings when talking about their relationship to their work, placing anemphasis on the importance of experience:


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Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you dontlive it, it wont come out of your horn. (Charlie Parker quoted in Levin andWilson 1994, 24) (Lewis, 243)

Over all, I think the main thing a musician would like to do is give a pictureto the listener of the many wonderful things that he knows of and senses

in the universe. . . Thats what I would like to do. I think thats one of thegreatest things you can do in life and we all try to do it in some way. Themusician is through his music. (John Coltrane quoted in Simpkins, 151)

One important aspect of Afrological improvisation is the notion of theimportance of personal narrative, of telling your own story. [] Notionsof personhood are transmitted via sounds, and sounds become signs fordeeper levels of meaning beyond pitches and intervals. (Lewis, 241)

Realism and the improvisational idea of being in the moment share an intrinsicrelationship in that the performers attention shifts to that particular point in time and space. Thegradual breakdown of abstract thought creates contexts where the performer no longer

reminisces of the past, while at the same time preventing them from projecting their ideas too farinto the future. Some see it as an acknowledgement of what is merely there what is thereality of the performance space, performers, the instruments, the audience, and the sounds .

The musical experience of improvisation, however, cannot simply be reduced to the ideathat it is an act of realism. Improvised sounds are often captured on recordings and havebecomethe primary means in which improvisers document their work. This, however, has leadto situations where learning musicians will attempt to imitate what they have heard in recordedmediums, creating copies or duplicates of a previously done work. This dilemma creates anapparent contradiction in the materialist aesthetic, since it seems as if the recording, originallymeant to be a form of documentation, becomes used as a form of ideal.

Every materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go backward

to be a materialist. (Emerson, 18)

While seemingly a pithy statement by Emerson, it is not without some merit whileMarxs dialectical materialism emphasized the realism of the proletariat working-classes, inthe end it had also created similar utopian visions of its predecessors, in which one would strivetowards as an objective. Philosopher Hans Robert Jauss refers to this contradiction as theidealist embarrassment, which poses a large problem for the materialist aesthetic in itsapparent negation of the philosophys emphasis on realism.

In theory, improvisers should not be trying to imitate any of the past greats, but speakdirectly from their experience in order to create a true vision of themselves. But as most artistswould admit, art does not exist in a vacuum and inspirations are drawn from previous ideals allthe time. Even in cases where recordings are absent, a musician is inevitably influenced by theirfamily, teachers, and peers abstract ideas which are stored in the form of memory. Althoughthe people themselves may be real, ones depictions, recollections, and expressions of themhappen purely within the realm of the abstract, leaving one to be influenced by ideas a priori.The plausibility of realism in itself then becomes very dubious.

It may be that the idea of real music is a misnomer in itself after all, something couldbe said to be realistic or contain aspects of realism, but it will never be able to fully replicatewhat is actually real. While the materialist aesthetic has the capability to reproduce or representsomething which had existed previously, it is still reliant on the idea that an abstraction might


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contain elements or resemblances of the tangible world. Music being something that dissipatesas soon as the performance is over, one could argue that it is something that has no real physicalmanifestation therefore it is something that doesnt actually exist. Music, therefore, issomething that cannot possibly be real.

Music as a Map

The fabric of existence weaves itself whole. You cannot set art off in acorner and hope for it to have vitality, reality, and substance. Therecan be nothing exclusive about substantial art. It comes directly out ofthe heart of the experience of life and thinking about life and living life.(Ives, qtd. in A Life With Music, 207)

Despite Ives embracement of Transcendentalism, many of his written sentiments onmusic contain ideas derived from the materialistic aesthetic to write music from onesperspective and experiences. On the other hand, improvising musicians will often speak of theirperformance experiences as being transcendental, even while emphasizing the need for personalexpression. Upon closer inspection, one finds that neither the Transcendentalists nor the

materialists were able to stay 100% true to their own ideological conceptions as a result, manymusicians eventually turned towards the other end of the spectrum in search for inspirations andideas.

Though both aleatoricity and improvisation contain elements of chance andunforeseen-ness, the two share an inversional relationship in regard to their direction theformer starts with the abstract and attempts to render the idea into a material form8, while thelatter starts with the material objects then attempts to generate ideas out of the process. For theformer, randomness is the objective while direction is an incidence; for the latter, creatingdirection becomes the objective while randomness is a natural by-product of what emerges fromthe chaotic nature of its realism-inspired process.

As a social application, abstractions have, at least historically, fulfilled two types of

functions instruction and documentation. Written laws, technical manuals, guidelines, andmoral doctrines provide an instructionalpurpose for the perceiver; recordings, photographs, andwitness accounts on the other hand, serve a documentationalpurpose. To some degree, all formsof abstractions can fulfill both purposes depending on what kind of perspective is used lawsand religious texts can be looked at from a historical perspective, while documented informationcan suggest future courses of action based on its relationship with its context in the present.

The subjectivity involved in the interpretation of abstractions often come down to apersonal decision of what to do with the information provided as an example to imitate, or asan example to be acknowledged as representing something that existselsewhere. Even withshades of grey in between, in ordinary life there is a tendency for abstractions to strongly lean inone direction or another. One example: Do Not Cross vs. 30 Miles Until Boston.

Art more often than not blurs the boundaries between the two polarities, as its function is

categorically ambiguous in regards to this issue instructional artmay be found in the act ofcomposer-to-performer instructions or within narrative works which preach a moral code orlesson of some sort. Documentationalart, on the other hand, may include recordings oruntampered photographs which attempt to display or represent something in the world in anobjective fashion. As with idealism and realism, the two types of approaches may oppose oneanother, but at the same time are inseparable due to the fact that artworks have the capability tofulfill both functions simultaneously.


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American pragmatism has dedicated part of its efforts in attempting to resolve theidealism/realism dilemma, proposing a number of solutions to the issue based on the idea ofpractical application. John Dewey, inArt as Experience, explains his concept of art as theexpressive object:

The instance of the signboard may help. It directs ones course to a place,say a city. It does not in any way supply experience of that city even in avicarious way. What it does do is to set forth some of the conditions thatmust be fulfilled in order to procure that experience. [..] Statement setsforth the conditions under which an experience of an object or situationmay be had. It is a good, that is, effective, statement in the degree inwhich these conditions are stated in such a way that they can be used as

directions by which one may arrive at the experience. (Dewey, 89)

Experiences, in other words, are not acquired through the artwork itself, but through theactions of the individual living in reality. Notation, however, canpointthe individual in adirection which they may acquire newer experiences: not as a replacement of life itself, but as asignpost that provides guidance toward something that exists elsewhere. This analogy has strongresemblances to the idea of music notation as a map by composer/improviser StephenNachmanovich:

Korzybski, a philosopher in the early part of the last century, was famousfor the important epistemological statement that the map is not theterritory. The menu is not the meal. If you were to go downstairs to one ofthe restaurants that surround Carnegie Hall, and sink your teeth into themenu, youd be spotted as nuts. So the map is not the territory and thenotes are not the music. They have great usefulness, as do all maps, butthey are not music. (Nachmanovich, On Teaching Improvisation)

As with the 30 miles to Boston example, the signboard is a documentation of

something because it points toward something that exists in reality, yet at the same time it canalso be instructional in the sense that it provides directions for the traveler should they place faithin the idea that the message is trustworthy. Improvisers treatment of notation often resemblethat of travelers using a map while there may be certain locations people may want to travel to,the journey itself is largely determined by the will and methods of the performers.

Conclusion

Dewey states that while art can serve the type of functions described above, its powerswill always besuggestive since it cannot force people to take actions in of itself. The journey the creation of music requires the voluntary participation of the performer and audience inwhich they become a necessary part of the process. New maps become in demand in order to

better reflect the environment which is in constant shift as the worlds social and politicallandscape begins to change, as does the music along with it.

While Ives embracement of Transcendentalism and his idea of writing from experiencemay initially seem self-contradictory, it is not necessarily so. Early pioneers wrote diaries andmaps in order to document their travels while these mediums are initially derived from thematerial world of sensory experience, for its observers, the abstractions contain a transcendentalquality that allows them to see beyond their own existence.


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Works Cited

Bailey, Derek. Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music. Ashborune: Moorland

Publication, 1992.

Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: The Penguin Group, 1934.

Emerson, Ralph W. "The Transcendentalist (Lecture Reading, Jan. 1842)." The

Transcendentalist Revolt Against Materialism. Ed. George Whicher. Boston: D.C.

Health & Company, 1949. 18-28.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays: Self-Reliance. Cambridge: Houghton, Milfflin and Co.,

1876.

Ives, Charles. Essays Before a Sonata (1920) and Other Writings. Ed. Howard

Boatwright. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1962.

Jauss, Hans Robert and Peter Health. "The Idealist Embarassment: Observations on

Marxist Aesthetics." New Literary History 7.1 (1975): 191-208.

Lewis, George. "Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological

Perspectives." Black Music Research Journal 22 (2002): 215-246.

Love, Andrew. "Improvising Their Future: Shamanic Hope in Ives, Schoenberg, Cage,

Cardrew, Rzewski and Messiaen." Tempo 60 (2006): 24-32.

Nachmanovich, Stephen. On Teaching Improvisation. 24 Feburary 2005. 12

November 2007 .

. The Discipline of Improvisation. January 2007. 15 November 2007

.

Parker, Theodore. "Transcendentalism." Christian Register (1840): 66-67.

Ross, Alex. The Rest is Noise: Listening to 20th Century Music. New York: Farrar,

Staus and Giroux, 2007.

Rzewski, Frederic. "Little Bangs: A Nihilist Theory of Improvisation." Current

Musicology 2002: 377-386.

Saunders, Frances S. The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts andLetters. New York: The New Press, 2000.

Simpkins, C.O. Coltrane: A Biography. Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1975.

Swafford, Jan. Charles Ives: A Life with Music. New York: W. W. Norton & Company,

1996.


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Watson, Ben. Derek Bailey and the Story of Improvisation. London: The Bath Press,

2004.


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1At times, this article may use some terms interchangeably: idealism with rationalism, or materialism withempiricism or realism. While the terms do not share exact definitions, they are closely related in that the former tendsto emphasize ideas in the abstract, while the latter on the substance of the world itself.

2Emerson, in The Transcendentalist, explicitly uses the phrase the capitalist in relation to materialism.

3Three Places in New England: I. The St. Gaudens in Boston Common; II. Putnams Camp, Redding, Connecticut; III.The Housatonic at Stockbridge

Sonata No.2 for Piano (Concord, Mass.: 1840-60): I. Emerson; II. Hawthorne; III. The Alcotts; IV. Thoreau.

4Thoreau became famous for the phrase: That government is best which governs not at all, in which Cage would latercome to quote as a statement for his political anarchism.

5Cornelius Cardew had argued that Cages appreciation of silence and emptiness became compatible with imperialist

fantasies of a depopulated world.

6Within the music community, the most famous example of this type of criticism comes from Cornelius Cardew, who

criticized Cage as serving capitalistic interests in his book, Stockhausen Serves Imperialism.

7John Locke is generally credited for conceptualizing modern-day liberalism, which in turn would come to influenceprominent historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Despite their apparentopposition toward another, American interpretations of Kant and Locke have both helped to progress liberal ideologiesthroughout the United States as an accepted social norm.

8Examples of this can be seen in the Avant-gardes attempts at turning the concert experience into something physical

through imitation of physical objects, such as Morton Feldman using Persian rugs as inspiration for his works, or through

the idea of a prolonged concert experience. Feldmans Viola and String Quartet (1985) lasts roughly 2 hours, and his String

Quartet II (1983)lasts for nearly six. John Cages most famous example of prolongation is found in his Organ/ASLSP (As

SLow aS Possible) [1987], currently being performed in Halberstadt, Germany and is scheduled to last 639 years. In many

cases, especially in the later conceptual works of Cage, the idea of duration is eliminated from the music as a way to turn the

music into an autonomous object.

transcendentalism and materialism: classical music and improvisation in the united states

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