ABSTRACT
The intellectual movement called existentialism, bringing with it a way of both selecting and methodologically approaching philosophical issues, claims F. Nietzsche as its conceptual progenitor for good reason. The profound challenge is one concerning authenticity and, as in so many of Nietzsche’s passages, it functions in a sense contrapuntally. One might say now that without figures like Thelonious Monk, musical authenticity would not be what it is. Jazz improvisation runs free of that governing expectation, and, is again a central exemplar of what Sartre articulated. In the notes written for a CD compilation, Peter Keepnews said, “Jazz is a music that celebrates individuality, and some of its greatest figures made their mark by rewriting the rules in the interest of self-expression. The creation of a self in the existentialist view, is far more active, far more autonomous, and far more a matter of freedom and momentary choice than might be imagined with other philosophical conceptions of selfhood in mind.
