Improvising Improvisation : From Out of Philosophy, Music, Dance, and Literature / Gary Peters.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Peters, Gary, 1952- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Act (Philosophy).

Improvisation (Acting) in literature.

Improvisation (Music).

Improvisation in dance.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (284 pages)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

There is an ever-increasing number of books on improvisation, ones that richly recount experiences in the heat of the creative moment, theorize on the essence of improvisation, and offer convincing arguments for improvisation's impact across a wide range of human activity. This book is nothing like that. In a provocative and at times moving experiment, Gary Peters takes a different approach, turning the philosophy of improvisation upside-down and inside-out. Guided by Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and especially Deleuze-and exploring a range of artists from Hendrix to Borges-Peters illuminates new fundamentals about what, as an experience, improvisation truly is. As he shows, improvisation isn't so much a genre, idiom, style, or technique-it's a predicament we are thrown into, one we find ourselves in. The predicament, he shows, is a complex entwinement of choice and decision. The performativity of choice during improvisation may happen "in the moment," but it is already determined by an a priori mode of decision. In this way, improvisation happens both within and around the actual moment, negotiating a simultaneous past, present, and future. Examining these and other often ignored dimensions of spontaneous creativity, Peters proposes a consistently challenging and rigorously argued new perspective on improvisation across an extraordinary range of disciplines.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. I've Started, so I'll Begin: Heidegger's Other Beginning and the Origin of Improvisation

2. With What Must the Improvisation Begin? Kant and Hegel on Certainty

3. Memoir: Lol Coxhill (In Memoriam)

4. Case Study: The Recedents (Lol Coxhill, Roger Turner, and Mike Cooper)

5. Precision, Decision, and Accuracy: Heidegger and Arendt on Singularity and Solitude

6. Decentered Center/Displaced Periphery: A Deleuzian Perspective

7. Memoir: San Sebastian Jazz Festival, July 20- 25, 1980

8. Case Study: Bernard "Pretty" Purdie

9. Fixing and Unfixing Idioms and Non- Idioms: Developing Derek Bailey's Concept of Improvisation

10. A Different Sameness: Borges and Deleuze on Repetition

11. Memoir: Bluegrass in Cheltenham

12. Case Study: The Del McCoury Band

1.3 Virtuality and Actualization: Deleuze and Bluegrass

14. Deleuzian Improvisation

15. Improvisation and Habit

16. Case Study: Jurij Konjar and Steve Paxton: The Goldberg Variations

17. Habit and Event: Rehearsing, Practising, Improvising

18. Memoir: The Woburn Pop Festival, 1968

19. Case Study: Jimi Hendrix

20. Composition, Improvisation, and Obligation: Schoenberg and Beckett on Duty

21. Bits and Scraps: Derek Bailey and the Improvised Situation

22. Memoir: Miles Davis, Royal Festival Hall, July 1984

23. Case Study: Cyndi Lauper, "Time After Time"

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2017.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 22. Okt 2019)

Other Format:

Print version :

ISBN:

0-226-75927-X

OCLC:

988759136