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ICP 038
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| Mary
Oliver - solo violin
It
may surprise you to learn that along with Sun Ra, Mary Oliver’s travels
in improvisation have taken her to the stars. Oliver’s important 1993
Ph.D. dissertation, “Constellations in Play,” challenges 150 years of
canonical Western practice, in which improvisation is all but absent until
the mid-1950’s, in a single brilliantly turned phrase: “As stars are
made intelligible through being seen forming a constellation, so are the
conditions of an improvisation organized by intuition to form its
identity.” Among
the total of eighty-eight constellations that are “officially
recognized” by those that claim authority in these matters, those
visible to Mary Oliver’s parents on summer nights in San Diego are Lyra,
the lyre of Orpheus; Cygnus, the swan; and Aquila, the eagle. In addition,
if intuition tells us so, any group of stars can become part of a
perceived pattern that astronomers call “asterisms”—such as the
“Summer Triangle,” consisting of Vega, part of Lyra; Deneb, marking
the tail of Cygnus; and Altair, the brightest point of Aquila. Oliver’s
training in Western art music has allowed her to bring the highest level
of virtuosity and interpretation to the realization of some of the most
difficult and complex notated scores ever produced. For some, however, her
equally brilliant work as an improvisor sits uneasily with her expressed
fealty to the Western tradition, especially given that tradition’s
ambivalence—and even fear—concerning improvisation. This fear is often
expressed as an attack on personal narrative, as with John Cage’s
uncritical repetition of one of classical music’s hoariest clichés:
“Improvisation is generally playing what you know and what you like and
what you feel; but those feelings and likes are what Zen would like us to
become free of.” Given
this lack of understanding among even the most progressive
experimentalists, I am sure that Oliver showed great courage and
perspicacity in maturing into a hybrid artist who refuses the
improvisation-composition binary so beloved of high-art music. Ultimately,
the freedom in free improvisation embraces history, memory, and the
present moment, all at once, signaling an end to the binary-star tyrannies
of spontaneity and archaeology. Many
theorists, including Oliver, have situated improvisation in models of
childhood play. Building upon the work of philosopher Lydia Goehr, the
Canadian improvisor and theorist Dana Reason points out how the nature of
“play” in improvisation problematizes the Western concept of the
autonomous, syntactically consistent musical “work”.
For Reason, “improvisations are worked out, worked over, or
worked on, but never finished in the Western classical sense.” Thus, the
“work” becomes another constellation of play, subject to the
contingencies of individual subjectivity. Finally,
if constellations are already subjectively constituted, then asterisms,
the products of improvisitave intuition, constitute proof of agency:
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
Finding authority deep within ourselves, rather than in any mock-priestly
interpretation of “what Zen wants,” we recognize improvisation as
critical to our birthright as humans. As
Oliver declares, “The changing positions of various conditions and
aspects of intuitive decisions, thereby determining the character of
individual improvisations.” That is, where you came from is less
important than where you are going. To all souls who wish to accompany her
on her journey, all we need do is listen, as Mary Oliver comes home to
herself, with infinite possibilities. --Professor
George E. Lewis. A. Viola (2:47) all compositions Mary Oliver recorded april 20 2000 at Plantage Doklaan Amsterdam by Dick Lucas cover by Han Bennink
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