Improvisation: the Emancipation of an Ancient Skill

The history of music making unequivocally demonstrates that improvisation, in the sense of making music without a written score, is manifest in many forms. It also makes clear that this music making was considered a serious skill by all concerned – that is to say as far as records go, roughly speaking from Paumann to Deslignes. Initially, this skill was the basis of all music making, the crux of which was to find and combine musical elements – sometimes called composition, but not to be confused with writing scores as we understand it today. Until the early nineteenth century, scores had a practical purpose, facilitating ensemble playing and helping to retain and further develop musical ideas, and to teach oncoming talents. Only later, through the advent of concert halls and the associated demand by the public to know beforehand what was to be expected, the score gradually acquired the position it still has as the embodiment of a composition’s identity. The skill of making music without a score, and therefore with a considerable input from the musician, has nevertheless survived, particularly among musicians directly or indirectly involved with the organ. After the Second World War this was sufficient reason for the town council of Haarlem to hold an organ improvisation competition. The effect of this, in turn, was that attentive listening, as it had arisen in the concert hall, became coupled to the ancient skill of making music specially for a particular occasion. Through the years, a manner of improvisation has been manifest in Haarlem that can be described as modern conservative. Improvising organists in Haarlem followed rather than set the trend. The same applies not only to their colleagues in Paris but also to those in Vienna (where, in the hands of organists such as Anton Heiller and Peter Planyavsky, an organ improvisation culture arose closely related to that of Haarlem). This may be explained by the reference system in which these organists operated. Most of them experienced their musical upbringing in the church, while the reference system of many of their listeners was formed in the concert hall. Trend setting are the organ improvisers of the twenty-first century: the improvisations of Porter, Lutz, De Vries and others in Baroque style astonish connoisseurs and devotees of early music, while improvisations by organists like Lekkerkerker prove that the organ has lost nothing of its power to inspire musicians devoted to contemporary art