Volume 9, Number 2, July 2003

Copyright © 2003 Society for Music Theory

Peter Silberman

KEYWORDS: ear training, pedagogy, twentieth-century music, post-tonal music, improvisation

 
ABSTRACT: This paper presents an improvisation-based approach for teaching students to hear and understand aspects of
twentieth-century music. The improvisation exercises are based on concepts taken from eight commonly used twentieth-
century music textbooks. The paper ends with analyses of improvisations created by two undergraduates who were trained in
the author’s method. Recordings and transcriptions of these improvisations are included.

Received April 2003

[1] Post-tonal music is often a foreign language to undergraduates. In particular, students frequently have difficulty in
mastering sight-singing and dictation of atonal materials due to their unfamiliarity. Thus, one of the goals of a course in
atonal ear training is to familiarize students with pitch collections and rhythms that might be encountered in twentieth-
century compositions. An effective way to accomplish this goal is to teach students to improvise using atonal materials, so
that students can get simultaneous experience as both post-tonal performers and composers. Student improvisers must make
decisions about how to use twentieth-century musical materials, and as a result students gain greater understanding of how
twentieth-century composers constructed their music.

[2] Further, the National Association of Schools of Music has recently added improvisation to its guidelines for degrees in
music. Its most recent handbook, in a section entitled “Competencies Common to All Professional Baccalaureate Degrees in
Music and to All Undergraduate Degrees Leading to Teacher Certification”, suggests that students should acquire the
following skills during their undergraduate education:

1. Rudimentary capacity to create derivative or original music both extemporaneously and in written
form.
2. The ability to compose, improvise, or both at a basic level in one or more musical languages, for
example, the imitation of various musical styles, improvisation on pre-existing materials, the creation of
original compositions, experimentation with various sound sources, and manipulating the common
elements in non-traditional ways. (1)

Incorporating improvisation across the curriculum in order to teach students to improvise “in one or more musical
languages”, and to “[imitate] various musical styles”, entails teaching not only tonal improvisation and jazz improvisation, but
post-tonal improvisation as well. This article will suggest methods for doing so, and will situate improvisation in the aural
skills classroom so that students can work on improvisation while improving their ears and their understanding of post-tonal
music and compositional techniques.

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[3] Why improvisation? The real-time nature of improvisation, in contrast to composition, is a challenge for many students.
However, students benefit from real-time work in the long run, because they must master the materials and techniques under
study to such an extent that they are available at a moment’s notice. Steve Larson, in an article that discusses methods for
using improvisation in teaching about common-practice tonality, writes “knowing facts about music . . . is only useful if those
facts can be brought to bear as quickly as the musical situation . . . requires. Improvisation not only requires that those skills
be accessible, but also makes them available.” (2)

[4] Kate Covington makes the case for improvisation in aural training as follows: “Improvisation involves active learning, or
learning by doing . . . By necessity, improvisation occurs in ‘real-world’ contexts which possess more similarities to career
activities and professional needs than sitting at a desk and responding with paper and pencil.” (3) She goes on to elaborate on
the real-world nature of improvisation as opposed to more conventional classroom activities: “A . . . problem with traditional
aural pedagogy is that it primarily addresses aspects of pitch and rhythm, to the virtual exclusion of other music parameters,
such as texture, timbre, dynamics, and articulation. Improvisation . . . demands that the practitioner consider and integrate
these other dimensions into existing and developing concepts of pitch and rhythm.” (4)

[5] There have been few cognition experiments that involve improvisation, but one study conducted in Hungary in the 1970s
does suggest that improvisation can be a good test of performers’ understanding of musical structure. (5) Researchers Maria
Sagi and Ivan Vitanyi asked non-musicians to perform several tasks, including improvising melodies over chord progressions
and improvising continuations of melodic fragments. They found that the non-musicians were good at improvising when the
given chord progressions or melodic fragments were familiar. Subjects were best at improvising melodies over common
practice chord progressions and over modal chord progressions found in Hungarian folk music, and were best at continuing
melodic fragments that were diatonic or pentatonic. Chromatic harmonies and melodic fragments made of synthetic scales
gave the subjects much more trouble. Sagi and Vitanyi concluded that people can improvise only with materials that they
understand. This conclusion has important ramifications for using improvisation to teach post-tonal music. It suggests that
once students have learned to improvise successfully with post-tonal materials, they have internalized a sort of post-tonal
style, and made that style a part of their musical vocabulary. Hence, they are a step closer to understanding post-tonal music.

[6] Teaching post-tonal improvisation, and then using it in a music theory or aural skills class, can be difficult. There are
comparatively few method books in post-tonal improvisation, and no established pedagogy. In contrast, there are probably
hundreds, if not thousands, of method books on tonal improvisation, mostly jazz, with a smaller selection of works in the
“classical” music tradition for organists and continuo players. There are even a few tonal improvisation books and articles
written for use in the music theory curriculum, such as Wittlich and Martin’s Tonal Harmony for the Keyboard, Berkowitz’s
Improvisation Through Keyboard Harmony, and the Larson and Covington articles cited above. (6) Tonal improvisation is easily
adapted for use in classroom settings. Tonal music has clearly defined rules and a well-established syntax, and wrong notes
stick out like sore thumbs, allowing improvisations to be evaluated relatively easily.

[7] Post-tonal improvisation is quite different. How can one teach and then evaluate what seems to be an “anything goes”
style of improvisation, without pre-established chord progressions, melodies, or forms? Example 1 shows an analysis, based
on analyses by Steven Block and Tom Darter, of a brief section of an improvisation by Cecil Taylor, which will suggest some
answers to this question. (7) (8) This passage is from an improvisation entitled “Air Above Mountains (Buildings Within)”, and
is from the CD Air Above Mountains. (9) Taylor juxtaposes three types of collections of notes — chromatic, represented by set
classes [0123] and [01234], whole tone, represented by set classes [026], [0248], and [02468], and diatonic, represented by set
class [027]. Taylor usually plays the same pitch classes when each collection returns. Further, this whole passage can be
considered to be a giant expansion of the initial chromatic motive, containing pitch classes C , D, D , and E, labeled “X”.
“X” reappears twice, but more significantly comprises the upper and lower bounds of later collections, which have E or D
as highest notes, and D or C as lowest notes, as shown by the stems with flags. The one exception, the high F at the end of
the second system, may be a finger slip, as there is an E directly below it.

[8] Taylor’s improvisation suggests three strategies for structuring a post-tonal improvisation, each suitable for classroom use
— intervals (in this case the progression from half steps to whole steps to perfect fifths), pitch class sets (in this case the
juxtaposition of chromatic sets with whole tone and quintal harmonies), and scales (in this case the use of chromatic, whole
tone, and diatonic scales as sources from which pitches can be selected). These topics are shown below in a brief survey of
pitch-related subjects presented in post-tonal music theory textbooks. (10) Each listing of these topics is preceded by an
asterisk.

    Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory by Joseph Straus

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 *Intervals
*Pitch-class sets
*Referential collections [scales]
Serialism
Operations (T, I) and other relationships (complement, invariance)

    Materials and Techniques of Twentieth-Century Music by Stefan Kostka

*Chords and simultaneities

*Scale formations
Serialism
Melody and voice-leading
Harmonic progression and tonality

    Theories and Analyses of Twentieth-Century Music by J. Kent Williams

*Intervals
*Set types
*Scales (in several chapters)
Serialism
Operations (T, I) and other relationships (symmetry)
Neotonality
Minimalism

[9] Joseph Straus’s text has chapters on intervals, pitch-class sets, and referential collections (in other words, scales). Stefan
Kostka’s text also has chapters on pitch class sets, which he calls “chords and simultaneities,” and scales. Kent Williams’s text
has sections on intervals and set types (in other words, pitch class sets), and covers scales in a variety of different chapters.

[10] The above list demonstrates that these topics are commonly presented in textbooks. These textbooks could be used as
supplementary material for a course unit on post-tonal improvisation. Likewise, improvisations built on intervals, pitch class
sets, and/or scales, could easily be introduced in a course using any of the above texts. The same pitch-related topics appear
in three sight-singing and ear training texts that deal with twentieth-century music, shown below. (11) Again, these textbooks
could be used to supplement instruction in improvisation, or improvisation could be introduced in a course using any of
these books.

    Modus Novus by Lars Edlund

*Sight-singing melodies by interval content

*Hearing chords by interval content

    Sight-Singing: Pitch, Interval, Rhythm by Samuel Adler

*Sight-singing melodies by interval content

*Hearing chords by interval content
*Scales

    Ear Training for Twentieth-Century Music by Michael Friedmann

*Dyads [intervals]
*Chords
Processes (T, I, R, invariance, contour relations)

[11] Both the Edlund and Adler texts teach students to sightsing melodies by interval content, and are organized accordingly
— melodies made up of seconds are introduced first, then melodies made up of thirds, then fourths, etc. These books do the
same thing with pitch class sets, introducing pitch class sets made of seconds, then thirds, then fourths, etc. The Friedmann
text, which is more of an aural analysis book than a sightsinging book, first has listening exercises comprised of intervals,
then proceeds to pitch class sets. The Adler text alone has a section on singing twentieth-century scales.

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[12] Intervals, pitch class sets, and scales have three things in common that make them good building blocks for student
improvisations. 1. They’re easy to remember, at least compared to, say, remembering a 12-tone row. Thus, they’re easily
repeated, so that, for example, an improvisation could be structured around one chord or one interval. 2. They are static —
it’s easier at first to improvise with things instead of with processes. 3. They lend themselves well to transposition and
inversion, two important operations that students will encounter throughout their music theory education. In contrast, a
difficult improvisation might be to improvise a serial composition using 12-tone rows, which meets only one of these three
requirements, that of transposition and inversion. Surprisingly, there is a book by Meyer Kupferman called Atonal Jazz that
presents a method for learning to play 12-tone jazz improvisations. (12) An improvisation of that nature would be beyond the
abilities of most performers without extensive study.

[13] Ed Sarath, in an article in the Journal of Music Theory, gives some cognitive justification for the use of small building blocks
in improvisation, as opposed to global processes. Sarath distinguishes between two types of time, one experienced by an
improviser, and one experienced by a composer. Sarath writes “. . .the improviser experiences time in an inner-directed, or
‘vertical’ manner, where the present is heightened and the past and future are perceptually subordinated. I contrast inner-
directed conception with the ‘expanding’ temporality of the composer, where temporal projection may be conceived from
any moment in a work to past and future time coordinates.” (13) Since the improviser focuses on the present, any
longer-range structure will be difficult to put into effect, and thus smaller events are a better match with the improvisational
process.

[14] So far, criteria for selecting pitch materials only have been discussed. What about rhythm and meter? I’ve found that,
especially in the beginning, it’s all that students can do to master the pitch dimension of improvisation. Therefore, I start off
by allowing them to perform improvisations without a pulse or meter, and without rhythmic requirements. I gradually
introduce pulse into their improvisation assignments, and eventually meter. Jeff Pressing, in an article in Music Perception,
concludes that the use of a pulse causes improvisations to be more motivically unified than improvisations without a
pulse. (14) This has also been my experience, and since I want students to work with intervallic, pitch class set, and rhythmic
motives, I make sure to require a pulse as my students become more comfortable with improvisation.

[15] In selecting rhythmic material, I try to stick to the first two of my requirements for improvisation building blocks — a
building block should be easy to remember, and a thing instead of a process. Topics presented in three rhythm textbooks that
have sections on twentieth-century rhythm and meter are shown below. (15) Topics that appear in all three books are preceded
by asterisks.

    Studying Rhythm by Anne Hall

*Changing meters
*Meters with unequal beats
Quintuple meter
Quintuplets
Metric modulation
Cross rhythms (2 against 3, 3 against 4)

    Sight-Singing: Pitch, Interval, Rhythm by Samuel Adler

*Changing meters
*Meters with unequal beats
Quintuple meter
Irregular subdivisions (quintuplets, septuplets)
Septuple meter

    Rhythm Reading by Daniel Kazez

*Changing meters
*Meters with unequal beats
Metric modulation
Polymeter
Ametric music

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[16] The topics common to all three books are changing meters and meters with unequal beats. One of them meets these
criteria — meters with unequal beats — and the other, changing meters, doesn’t. Short rhythmic figures or motives, for
example quintuplets or cross rhythms, also make good subjects for improvisation.

[17] As just discussed, one option in teaching improvisation is to start with pitch and add rhythm later. Another option is to
do the opposite and have students start improvising using rhythm alone, without pitch, and then gradually add pitch
elements.

[18] How does one start students improvising? Many students already have experience with improvisation, particularly those
who have a background in jazz, rock, or folk music, or in composition. Also, some students have improvised with tonal
materials in aural skills and/or music theory classes, which is an excellent preparation for later work with post-tonal
materials. However, many students have never improvised, and may feel uncomfortable with improvisation. (16) Sample
beginning exercises are shown below. Some are my own, some are by others, and all gently ease students into improvisation,
without expecting much from them at the beginning. What all these exercises have in common is that it is impossible for
people performing them to play wrong notes. This is important because many students’ resistance to improvisation comes
from stage fright — fear of playing a wrong note, fear of the audience not liking them, etc. — so I start with activities in
which it is impossible to sound like a virtuoso, and there is little risk of failure.

One note (W.A. Mathieu) - Performers sit in a circle. One person starts by playing only one note of any pitch,
duration, and volume. The next person does the same, as does the next, and single notes go around the circle to form
a melody.
Two notes - Same as One Note, but performers now play an interval.
Ten notes - Same as One Note, but now performers must play 10 notes, no more, no less. Can each make his or her
own melody? Can each respond to the melody that precedes his or hers?
Ostinato exercise (David Darling) - Performers sit in a circle. One person starts by playing an ostinato (pitch and
rhythm). The next person joins with another ostinato that fits with the first one. When the third person enters, the
first person drops out. The ostinato duet goes around the circle.
Playing contours (Roger Dean) - Performer(s) play an improvisation based on shape. The shape can be realized as a
pitch, a rhythm, or anything else (dynamics, register, density, etc.).
Repeated rhythmic motive (David Darling) - Play any pitches using a repeated rhythmic ostinato — can be Baroque
dance figure, for example (sarabande, etc.).
Playing your name (John Buccheri) - Performers each play a musical fragment that matches the rhythm and inflection
of his or her name. (17)

[19] I’ll describe a couple of these exercises in more detail. I always start with “One Note”, an exercise developed by the
pianist W.A. Mathieu. Students sit in a circle. One person starts by playing or singing just one note of any pitch, length, and
volume. The person seated next to him or her then also plays just one note, again of any pitch, length, and volume. The
person seated next to that person does the same thing, and in this fashion notes travel around and around the circle.
Eventually some sort of melody emerges, and students start thinking and experimenting with ideas of continuation and
interruption. We then proceed to “Two Notes”, which works the same way, except that participants can play or sing just two
notes. This gets students to think about intervals — which are easy or hard to sing or play, which sound or don’t sound good
to them, which go together, which don’t, etc.

[20] Further, it’s important for instructors to demonstrate improvisation exercises first, so that students can hear a possible
result for each exercise. This also helps “break the ice,” particularly in situations in which improvisation is new for students.
Thus, any instructor incorporating improvisation into his or her classroom should improvise regularly, both in the practice
room and in front of students. Instructors with limited experience in improvisation can benefit by working through the
exercises in the books listed in footnote 17 above.

[21] I’ll now describe how I implemented the foregoing ideas. During the fall semester of 1999, I taught an advanced atonal
aural skills course at Oberlin Conservatory. Most of the students in the course were performance majors, with a few music
education or composition majors, and most were juniors. This course was not required of all students at Oberlin, only those
who had passed a placement exam and had been exempted from taking earlier aural skills classes. As a result, students in this
course had above-average skills. I do, however, believe that the methods described in this article would work well with other
student populations.

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[22] Improvisation was introduced after fall break, the first half of the semester having been devoted to more conventional
activities. Students were presented with five improvisation exercises of increasing difficulty at a rate of one a week. The first
improvisation exercise, which was assigned for homework, is shown below.

Form: ABA'
Length: 30 seconds to one minute
Directions: The A and A' sections use this contour 21043. The B section uses its inversion, 23401
Contour can represent anything - notes, motives, phrases, durations, dynamics, register, etc.

[23] This exercise is designed to give students a taste of improvisation without demanding too much of them. The
improvisation has a form — ABA — and a length — 30 seconds to one minute. Students were asked to improvise using one
contour only, and the sections differ in that the middle section uses the inversion of the contour. The contour can represent
anything — pitches, rhythms, dynamics, etc. — so that the assignment becomes very flexible. Some students are more
comfortable with rhythm than with pitch, or with other parameters entirely, and for the first assignment I wanted them to be
comfortable. Students could sing, perform on their main instrument, or play the piano if piano was not their main
instrument. As a homework assignment, they were asked to improvise a short work every day for a week, following these
directions. They were not allowed to write anything down, or to memorize anything other than the directions, so this
assignment did not turn into a notated or memorized composition. After a week of practice, I selected several students in
class to perform for a grade. I won’t say much about grading, except that I based my grade primarily on whether or not the
students could follow the directions and do everything I asked of them in their improvisations.

[24] The next improvisation exercise, which is more specific in terms of pitch content, is shown below.

Form: ABA'
Length: 30 seconds to one minute
Directions: The A section should consist primarily (but not exclusively) of a trichord and its transpositions. Choose from
013, 014, 015, 016, 025, 026. You can use this trichord as a harmony, as a melody, or as both. You may also use intervals
from that trichord, or larger chords or melodies that contain it. The B section should consist primarily of another trichord.
Use any except what you used in the A section and 037. The A' section should be a variation of the A section, except that the
trichord used in the A section should be used here in inversion.
Listeners: must identify each trichord used by the performer.

[25] Form and length are the same as exercise one, but now the students were required to base their pitch structure on
trichords. Students were provided with a list of trichords from which to choose for the A section. Students could use the
trichords as verticalities if they played a chordal instrument, or as melodies or motives if they did not, and could transpose
them to as many pitch levels as they would like. In order to have more flexibility, students were allowed to use intervals from
the trichords, or larger chords or melodies of which their trichord was a subset. Students were asked to use a different
trichord for the B section. The A' section used the same trichord as the A section but in inversion. Note that in this exercise,
as in all the succeeding ones, there is an assignment for the listeners, who must identify the trichords used by the performer
in each section.

[26] The third improvisation exercise is shown below.

Form: Variation form (A A' A'')

Length: 30 seconds to one minute
Directions: Consider the following relationships: contrast, complementation, conflict. Choose two trichords and improvise a
piece of music that uses them in one of the relationships. One of the trichords must be in inversion. Your relationship
between the trichords should stay the same in each variation.
Listeners: must identify the two trichords, and the relationship.

[27] Like the second exercise, the third exercise uses trichords but has a new form — variation form — and also has
directions for narrative content. I wanted students to start thinking more about the emotional or narrative aspect of their
improvisations. They were asked to select a relationship and illustrate it with two trichords. The relationships were contrast,
complementation, and conflict. I hoped that this would make students think about things such as which trichords sounded
good together, which didn’t sound good together, and which might be related and why. Again, the listeners were asked to
identify the trichords, and also the relationship.

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[28] The fourth improvisation exercise is shown below.

Form: binary (AB)

Length: 30 seconds to one minute
Directions: The A section should use any trichord except 037 and should have a steady tempo and a consistent meter. You
will then abruptly switch to the B section, which should have a tempo relationship with the A section of either 1:2, 2:1, 2:3,
or 3:2. The B section should use any of the tetrachords we’ve studied in class (0123, 0246, 0158, 0369, 0258, 0358, or 0148).
Listeners: must identify the trichord, the tetrachord, and the tempo relationship.

[29] Here metric requirements were introduced. The improvisation was required to have a steady pulse, and was in two
sections whose tempos were related by the tempo proportions we had studied and performed in class. The first section was
based on a trichord, and the second on a tetrachord. Listeners were asked to identify the trichord and tetrachord used, and
the relationship between the two tempos.

[30] The fifth and final improvisation exercise is shown below.

Form: ABA'
Length: 30 seconds to one minute
Directions: The A section will use any tetrachord from this list: 0257, 0347, 0237, 0167, 0268, 0134, 0235. The B section will
use any tetrachord from this list: 0123, 0147, 0158, 0258, 0358, 0369. The A' section will use another trichord from the A
section list. Both the A and A' sections will use accents in unusual places in the manner of Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Piano
Study in Mixed Accents.
Listeners: must identify the tetrachords used.

[31] Like the second improvisation exercise, the fifth improvisation exercise is also in ternary form, with the B section using
a pitch class set different from that in the A section, and the A' section using an inversion of the pitch class set used in the A
section. Unlike the second exercise, the fifth exercise uses tetrachords. Students also were asked to use an accent structure
like that in Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Piano Study in Mixed Accents. Seeger’s composition is in steady sixteenth notes, but has
accents that group the sixteenths into anything but consistent groups of four. (18)

[32] In addition to the improvisation exercises for performance, students were given listening assignments to familiarize
them with the works of well known improvisers, and with different styles and techniques of improvisation. They were asked
to listen to excerpts from the following recordings: Aardvark Steps Out, by the free jazz big band Aardvark; Heibel, by the
Willem Breuker Kollektief with Greetje Bijma, one of the few free improvisers who is a vocalist; and Deep Listening, by
Pauline Oliveros, one of the foremost figures in free improvisation. (19) Certainly, many other recordings could have been
chosen. (20)

[33] I will now discuss transcriptions of improvisations by two students who took the course described above. (21) Both
improvisations are realizations of the second improvisation exercise above. Both of the performers played melody
instruments, and so used the trichords as melodies, not as harmonies, and also used intervals from the trichords.

[34] Example 2 shows the first transcription. Soundfile 1 is the audio for this improvisation. The performer, Michael
Reavey, was a senior at the time of the recording, and took my course as a junior. He was a trumpet performance and music
education major, and had some experience playing jazz. In this transcription, as well as the next one, Tn set classes have been
used for trichord labels instead of the more familiar Tn/TnI set classes so that the difference between a trichord and its
inversion can be shown. The trichords Michael selected are listed at the top of Example 2. He used trichord 014 for the A
section, 012 for the B section, and 034, the inversion of 014, for the A' section. Instances of each trichord are labeled on the
transcription.

[35] In addition to using the trichords correctly, Michael also made use of intervals from the trichords. In the A and A'
sections there are a number of major sixths, labeled on the score as “M6th”. The major sixth is a member of interval class 3,
one of the intervals in the 014 trichord. Since Michael realized interval class 3 as a minor third each time he played an 014
trichord, the major sixths provided some much needed variety while staying within the intervallic constraints of the
improvisation. Another interesting feature is the use of the tritone to articulate phrase or section endings. This occurred at
the end of the second phrase, and also at the end of the B section. Michael also used a pitch center of sorts — the
improvisation begins and ends on C, and many phrases begin or end on C, E, or G. This C major triad seems somewhat out
of place in an atonal improvisation, but it is evidence that Michael was able to develop an overall structure. In addition,

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Michael developed rhythmic motives for each section of the work without any prompting from the directions. Rhythms in
the first and third sections consisted of mostly quarter and eighth notes, while 16th notes appeared in the B section. The
rhythmic motive from the A section, a long note followed by two short notes, appeared in retrograde in the A' section as two
short notes followed by a long note.

[36] After the recording, each student was asked to comment on what he thought of using improvisation like this in our aural
skills class. Michael commented: “When I play jazz, [20th century techniques] can open up another way to look at things.
[Learning these techniques] set a standard for this sort of improvisation when I hear it played. Before, I didn’t know what to
expect. Now I have a better ear towards it.” It is significant that Michael mentioned having a better ear, and further, that he
was able to use his improved understanding in his performing and listening.

[37] Example 3 shows a transcription of the second improvisation. Soundfile 2 is the audio example. The performer, Dave
Reminick, was also a senior at the time of the recording, and took the course as a junior. He was a “classical” saxophone
performance major, and was an experienced performer of post-tonal improvisation. The trichords he selected for each
section are listed at the top of the example.

[38] Dave mixed up a few of the trichords, which occasionally appeared in the wrong section. 056, which is supposed to be in
the A' section only, was also in the A section. These minor errors, however, are entirely offset by the musicality and
sophistication of this improvisation, shown particularly by the skillful embedding of multiple instances of the same trichord
in just a few notes. One example of this is the opening five notes of the improvisation, labeled motive “M”. “M” also
returned transposed to announce the beginning of the A' section. An analysis of motive “M” is shown in Example 3 beneath
the score. Motive “M” is a member of set class [0167], a set class that is saturated with the 016 trichord, which can be made
from any three of its notes. Like Michael, Dave created rhythmic motives for each section of the work without any
prompting from the directions. In contrast to Michael, Dave experimented more with register. Each section of Dave’s
improvisation had a characteristic register, and these registers were joined by the descent to the low C at the end.

[39] Dave commented: “I felt like [these exercises] gave me a chance to actually do some hands-on work with the concept of
trichords, and actually work with them in real-time and try to link ideas together and think with them, and I just felt like it
promoted a better understanding.” I had a bit more time to talk with Dave, and I’ve included another comment from him
that I think is revealing. Dave was describing a new composition he had heard. He said, “[The composer] was basically using
the same trichord over and over again. [I said] ‘016, what’s going on here, it’s all over the place.’ The ear picks up quicker.”
Like Michael, Dave mentioned his ear, and had developed good enough ears to identify trichords in others’ compositions. He
also mentioned having a better understanding of twentieth century music, which is of course the ultimate goal of post-tonal
ear training.

[40] In summary, I have presented an approach that combines ear training in 20th century music with improvisation,
specifically improvisation that is based on 20th century pitch collections and the intervals that they contain. Recorded
student improvisations suggest that not only can undergraduates improvise successfully with these constraints, but that the
improvisations can strengthen the ears and minds of the performers, as evidenced by student comments.

[41] I’ll conclude by quoting the organist and improvisation specialist Gerre Hancock, who sums up my belief about the
value of improvisation. “[T]he chief reason to learn improvisation is simply that our musical personalities are incomplete and
underdeveloped if we are unable to express ourselves in a spontaneous fashion. The ability to improvise is central to our
musicianship; without it, musicians are simply not ‘compleat’.” (22)

Peter Silberman
University of Rochester
Department of Music
Rochester, NY 14627-0052
[email protected]

Footnotes

1. National Association of Schools of Music 2001–2002 Handbook. Reston, VA: National Association of Schools of Music, 2001:
83.

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2. Steve Larson, “‘Integrated Music Learning’ and Improvisation: Teaching Musicianship and Theory Through ‘Menus,
Maps, and Models’,” College Music Symposium 35 (1995): 80–81.
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3. Kate Covington, “Improvisation in the Aural Curriculum: An Imperative,” College Music Symposium 37 (1997): 54.
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4. Ibid., page 54. A more detailed discussion of “real-world” music learning activities, and the philosophy that lies behind
them, can be found in Kate Covington and Charles Lord, “Epistemology and Procedure in Aural Training: In Search of a
Unification of Music Cognitive Theory with Its Applications,” Music Theory Spectrum 16/2 (1994): 159–170. Earlier articles by
Covington and Lord apply these ideas to aural skills instruction and computer-assisted instruction. See Kate Covington, “An
Alternative Approach to Aural Skills Pedagogy,” Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy 6 (1992): 5–18; and Charles Lord,
“Harnessing Technology to Open the Mind: Beyond Drill and Practice for Aural Skills,” Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy 7
(1993): 105–117.
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5. Maria Sagi and Ivan Vitanyi, “Experimental Research Into Musical Generative Ability,” in Generative Processes in Music ed. by
John Sloboda, Oxford: Clarendon Press, (1988): 179–194.
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6. Gary Wittlich and Deborah Martin, Tonal Harmony for the Keyboard, New York: Schirmer, 1989; Sol Berkowitz, Improvisation
Through Keyboard Harmony, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975.
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7. Steven Block, “Pitch Class Transformation in Free Jazz,” Music Theory Spectrum 12/2 (1990): 181–202; Tom Darter, “Piano
Giants of Jazz: Cecil Taylor,” Contemporary Keyboard (May 1981): 56–57. For other transcriptions and analyses of Taylor’s
improvisations see Matthew Kiroff, “Caseworks as Performed by Cecil Taylor and the Art Ensemble of Chicago: A Musical
Analysis,” Jazzforschung/Jazz Research 33 (2001): 9–130; Steven Block, “Bemsha Swing: The Transformation of a Bebop Classic
to Free Jazz,” Music Theory Spectrum 19/2 (1997): 206–231; Lynette Westendorf, “Cecil Taylor: Indent — ‘Second Layer’,”
Perspectives of New Music 33/1-2 (1995), 294–326: and Ekkehard Jost, Free Jazz, Graz: Universal Edition, 1974: 66–83.
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8. I would like to thank Jonathan Atleson and Danny Jenkins for assistance in preparing the graphic and sound files used in
this article.
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9. Cecil Taylor, Air Above Mountains, Enja Records, 1992 (recorded 1976).
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10. Joseph Straus, Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory, 2nd edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2000; Stefan Kostka,
Materials and Techniques of Twentieth-Century Music, 2nd edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1999; J. Kent Williams,
Theories and Analyses of Twentieth-Century Music, Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1997.
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11. Lars Edlund, Modus Novus, Stockholm: Edition Wilhelm Hansen, 1963; Samuel Adler, Sight-Singing: Pitch, Interval, Rhythm,
2nd edition, New York: Norton, 1997; Michael Friedmann, Ear Training for Twentieth-Century Music, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1990.
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12. Meyer Kupferman, Atonal Jazz. Medfield, MA: Dorn Publications, 1992.
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13. Ed Sarath, “A New Look at Improvisation,” Journal of Music Theory 40/1 (1996): 1–38.
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14. Jeff Pressing, “The Micro- and Macrostructural Design of Improvised Music,” Music Perception 5/2, 1987: 153–172. Like

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Sarath quoted above, Pressing distinguishes between object memory (small building blocks) and process memory (global
processes). In contrast to Sarath, Pressing makes no claim that one is more appropriate to improvisation than the other, but
suggests that the improviser should develop both types of memory. See Jeff Pressing, “Cognitive Processes in
Improvisation,” in Cognitive Processes in the Perception of Art, ed. by W. Ray Crozier and Antony Chapman, Amsterdam: Elsevier,
1984: 345–363. Elsewhere, Pressing develops detailed models of the improvisational process that incorporate findings from
cognitive science and neuroscience, along with insights gained from studies of improvising musicians and improvisation
method books. See Jeff Pressing, “Improvising: Methods and Models,” in Generative Processes in Music, ed. by John Sloboda,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988: 129–178; and Jeff Pressing, “Psychological Constraints on Improvisational Expertise and
Communication,” in In the Course of Performance, ed. by Bruno Nettl and Melinda Russell, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1998: 41–67.
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15. Anne Carothers Hall, Studying Rhythm, 2nd edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1998; Samuel Adler, Sight-
Singing: Pitch, Interval, Rhythm, 2nd edition, New York: Norton, 1997; Daniel Kazez, Rhythm Reading, 2nd edition, New York:
Norton, 1997.
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16. For more information about student reactions to improvisation, see George Lewis, “Teaching Improvised Music: An
Ethnographic Memoir,” in Arcana: Musicians on Music, ed. by John Zorn, New York: Granary Books, 2000: 78–109.
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17. The exercises above come from the following books and article, all of which contain valuable improvisation exercises,
from beginning to advanced levels: David Darling and Bonnie Insull, Return to Child, 3rd edition, Goshen, CT: Music for
People, 1997; Roger Dean, Creative Improvisation: Jazz, Contemporary Music and Beyond, Milton Keynes, UK: Open University
Press, 1989; W.A. Mathieu The Listening Book, Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1991; John Buccheri, “Finding Your Own
Music - A Case for Free Improvisation,” College Music Society Newsletter, September 2002. Another book that easily could be
adapted for music theory or aural skills courses, because it gives detailed instructions about working with pitch, is Gerre
Hancock, Improvising: How to Master the Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. At the other end of the spectrum are two
books that list improvisation exercises for children that require little instrumental expertise, which could be used for warmup
or introductory activities: Trevor Wishart, Sounds Fun: A Book of Musical Games, SCDC Publications, 1975; and Trevor
Wishart, Sounds Fun 2: A Second Book of Musical Games, London: Universal Edition, 1977. The composer Bruce Adolphe has
developed exercises that are more conceptual (for example, improvising in the style of a well-known composer, thinking of a
sentence and then “playing” it on an instrument, etc.) that could be used in a variety of situations. See Bruce Adolphe, The
Mind’s Ear, St. Louis: MMB Music, 1991. Saxophonist Larry Ochs discusses devices for structuring improvisations for
multiple performers in Larry Ochs, “Devices and Strategies for Structured Improvisation,” in Arcana: Musicians on Music, ed.
by John Zorn, New York: Granary Books, 2000: 325–335. Two sight-singing/ear training textbooks that also contain
post-tonal improvisation exercises are Friedmann, Ear Training for Twentieth-Century Music, and Vernon Kliewer, Music Reading:
A Comprehensive Approach, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1973. For an overview and discussion of improvisation pedagogy
and method books, see Pressing, “Improvising: Methods and Models”, 141–145.
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18. For a detailed analysis of this work, see Cynthia Pace, “Accent on Form-Against-Form: Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Piano
Study in Mixed Accents,” Theory and Practice 20 (1995): 125–148.
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19. Mark Harvey and the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra, Aardvark Steps Out, 9 Winds Records, 1993; Willem Breuker Kollektief,
Heibel, BVHAAST, 1991; Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, and Panaiotis, Deep Listening New Albion Records, 1989.
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20. For an excellent discography of recorded improvisations, along with discussion, see John Corbett, Extended Play, Durham:
Duke University Press, 1994.
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21. I would like to thank Michael Reavey and Dave Reminick, who performed the improvisations discussed in this article.
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22. Hancock, Improvising: How to Master the Art, vii.
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