ABSTRACT
If music is played with intent, then the musician must have some idea of how that will have impact on the performance—even if the ambition is to be entirely free of predetermined intent. In this chapter we argue that the recognition of a flow state is tied to a perception of indeterminacy within the improvisation, and that the music has become affectively and effectively more than the sum of the musicians’ contributions. We discuss how anticipation in improvised jazz accounts for context because intent seeks to derive the next most likely within many different possible scenarios—unlike prediction, which is simply forecasting the next step using algorithmically derived patterns of past behaviour. And so, it seems safe to say that in music anticipation is connected with affect as much as cognition, that emotion is important in making meaning in and of music. As such, it is linked to intent.
