Exchange Talk: Teaching Improvisation in European Higher Music Education

Exchange Talk: Una MacGlone and Guro Johansen
Mon 24 Jan 2022

In music education contexts, improvisation is currently a rapidly evolving field across musical genres. In Higher Music Education (HME), improvisation has traditionally been taught as part of Western jazz curricula. It is increasingly introduced as part of Western classical music and in cross-genre courses. A number of improvisational teaching concepts are emerging. However, as with jazz pedagogy, debates on improvisation pedagogy seem to be tension-loaded, perhaps stemming from socio-historical battles of power, status and artistic identity. In the context of HME, there are scarce to no research studies exploring such issues and the musical backgrounds which inform the many different practices in Europe.
Our study addresses this gap in current research by mainly utilising qualitative interviews, with the purpose of investigating micro-practices within the teaching of free improvisation in European HME institutions. Research questions were: What conceptual tools do teachers in free improvisation use HME institutions in Europe, and how may these relate do different cultural and genre-related educational values? Results provide insight into both the institutional and personal educational aims which inform approaches to teaching improvisation. The term free improvisation was often associated with freedom, creativity, self-expression, and spontaneity, and thus positively loaded. Further, some teachers seemed to refer to a canon of free improvised, experimental or classical contemporary music. These aspects may be seen as a need among the teachers to position and legitimise a potentially marginalised subject within institutions.
Teachers in our study emphasise how free improvisation could serve to develop students’ general musical awareness and ability to interact and listen. Focusing on musical parameters, limitations of choices, or language metaphors were often used as tools for acquiring such aims. In sum, our study is beginning to map contradictions and complexities of this new and evolving area of pedagogy.