ABSTRACT
Long before it fired the enthusiasm of twentieth-century creators, improvisation had held its own in popular forms of theatrical entertainment such as medieval ‘games’ or ‘mystery plays’, precursors of Commedia dell’arte. It went on to become associated with music, the seventeenth-century definition of the verb ‘to improvise’ being ‘to create and perform spontaneously and without preparation’. This musical grounding helped to establish improvisation as an ‘absolute poetic fact’, as the philosopher Christian Béthune put it, 1 an assertion that tied in with Western beliefs, progressively based on notions of the artist and his work. The nineteenth century may have glorified Romantic genius but it also marked the decisive split between composer and performer, a way of proclaiming the written word’s superiority over invention in the moment, with the musician losing any prerogative over the composition by becoming the mouthpiece of a pre-existing work. At that time, improvisation was assimilated to the virtuoso tours de force that so enthralled Salon gatherings – leading composers could sometimes turn out to be consummate improvisers but it was through their scores that they joined the ranks of creators. 2
