ABSTRACT
According to Sitton, a document can be designated as improvisational when other contemporaneous sources validate its perception as a form of improvisation. In accordance with this, the authors acknowledge sources that might justify the improvisational status of a document because they link the performer, or performing composer, to a praxis that draws on a knowledge base derived from an established improvisatory tradition. Observing and analyzing improvisational documents in Western music of the 1900–50 period that are neither categorized as examples of authentic African American jazz or of the French organ school remains a challenge due to the relative scarcity of hard evidence. The difficulty of perceiving improvisation as a unified concept or practice is a recurrent topic in new improvisation studies. The capacity for generating music on the spot is often perceived as a process that relies on a knowledge base from which improvisers are said to draw.
