ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the art of improvisation according to the testimony in Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's theoretical and practical works, and from the examples by Handel. It offers a modest contribution to the art of diminution, which is the principal agent in the free, and at the very least to alert the ear to the inner laws of diminution in order to protect it from the stagnation induced in precisely those who speak out most loudly against it. The chapter explains that one read again what Bach says on the elaboration of fermatas as well as on the elaboration of cadenzas. For Bach, even the individual motives of diminution are really distinct affects, distinct passions, and at the same time their contrast to one another. Bach insists upon a most precise ordering of events even in the diminution of a free fantasy, and only for the sake of 'fantasy' hides it behind the appearance of disorder.
