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Improvisation and Ethnomusicology

Howard Spring

Published: 2010-09-02

An overview of improvised musical practices across a broad range of cultures, and a historical analysis of scholarship on improvised music. This piece offers a lengthy and attentive definition of the term 'improvisation' and discusses its varying forms and meanings across time and cultures.

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Listening itself, an improvisative act engaged in by everyone, announces a practice of active engagement with the world, where we sift, interpret, store and forget, in parallel with action and fundamentally articulated with it ("Mobilitas Animi" 113).

– George E. Lewis