The improvising mind Cognition and creativity

The ability to improvise represents one of the highest levels of musical achievement. An improviser must master a musical language to such a degree as to be able to spontaneously invent stylistically idiomatic compositions on the spot. This feat is one of the pinnacles of human creativity, and yet its cognitive basis is poorly understood. What musical knowledge is required for improvisation? How does a musician learn to improvise? What are the neural correlates of improvised performance?

In The Improvising Mind, these questions are explored through an interdisciplinary approach that draws on cognitive neuroscience, study of historical pedagogical treatises on improvisation, interviews with improvisers, and musical analysis of improvised performances. Findings from these treatises and interviews are discussed from the perspective of cognitive psychological theories of learning, memory, and expertise. Musical improvisation has often been compared to 'speaking a musical language.' While past research has focussed on comparisons of music and language perception, few have dealt with this comparison in the performance domain. In this book, learning to improvise is compared with language acquisition, and improvised performance is compared with spontaneous speech from both theoretical and neurobiological perspectives.

Tackling a topic that has hitherto received little attention, The Improvising Mind will be a valuable addition to the literature in music cognition. This is a book that will make fascinating reading for musicologists, music theorists, cognitive neuroscientists and psychologists, musicians, music educators, and anyone with an interest in creativity.

Aaron Berkowitz received his M.D. from Johns Hopkins University, his Ph.D. in music from Harvard University, and his Bachelors degrees in Music (B.A.) and Biology (B.S.) from George Washington University. He has published his research in the journals NeuroImage and Twentieth Century Music, has been an invited speaker at several major U.S. universities and conferences, and served as a guest professor in music and psychology at Tufts University. As a pianist and fortepianist he has performed throughout Europe and the U.S., and as a composer his compositions have been performed in Europe and the U.S., including Carnegie Hall.

Dedication	p. v
Acknowledgements	p. vii
Prelude	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Defining improvisation: Spontaneous creativity within constraints	p. 1
Stylistic constraints	p. 2
Performance/Performer constraints	p. 3
Learning and memory	p. 7
Implicit and explicit learning	p. 7
Implicit and explicit memory	p. 8
Declarative and procedural memory	p. 8
Comparisons of music and language	p. 10
Cognition in the Pedagogy and Learning of Improvisation
The pedagogy of improvisation I: Improvisation treatises of the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries	p. 15
The treatises of the present study	p. 18
Prerequisites for learning to improvise	p. 24
Formulas in the pedagogy of improvisation	p. 27
Cadences	p. 31
Rule of the octave	p. 33
Movimenti	p. 34
Conclusion	p. 35
The pedagogy of improvisation II: Pedagogical strategies	p. 39
Transposition	p. 41
Transposition cross-culturally	p. 42
Transposition, automatization, and proceduralization	p. 42
Variation	p. 46
Variation cross-culturally	p. 50
Variation: Concepts for cognitive economy	p. 52
Recombination	p. 56
Combinatoriality in eighteenth-century musical thought	p. 64
Recombination cross-culturally	p. 67
Recombination, transitional probabilities, and statistical learning	p. 69
Models and the acquisition of style	p. 73
Conclusion	p. 77
Learning to improvise: Learners' perspectives	p. 81
Incubation, internalization, and assimilation: Exercises and repertoire	p. 82
Rehearsal: Finding paths through the knowledge base	p. 88
Learning to improvise through improvising in performance	p. 94
Learning through teaching	p. 94
Music and language cognition compared I: Acquisition	p. 97
Competence and performance: Perceptual competence and productive competence	p. 97
The knowledge base in language and music	p. 100
Phonology	p. 102
Morphology, the lexicon, and semantics	p. 103
Syntax	p. 107
Acquisition of the knowledge base in language and music	p. 108
Phonology	p. 109
Semantics, syntax, and pragmatics	p. 109
Nativist approaches to language acquisition: Noam Chomsky and universal grammar	p. 111
Empiricist approaches to language acquisition: constructivism and cognitive-functional usage-based linguistics	p. 112
A cognitive-functional usage-based approach to learning to improvise	p. 115
Conclusion	p. 118
Cognition in Improvised Performance
Improvised performance: Performers' perspectives	p. 121
Creator and witness	p. 121
Creator and witness cross-culturally	p. 125
(No) memory and improvisation: A neuropsychological explanation for the creator-witness phenomenon	p. 128
The neurobiology of improvisation	p. 131
Studying music cognition in the laboratory	p. 131
The neural correlates of improvisation I: Berkowitz and Ansari (2008)	p. 132
Study design	p. 132
Behavioral results	p. 136
Quantification of rhythmic improvisation: Interpress interval variability	p. 137
Quantification of melodic improvisation: Variety of note combinations and percentage of unique sequences	p. 137
Brain imaging results	p. 138
The neural correlates of improvisation II: Limb and Braun (2008)	p. 142
Conclusion	p. 144
Music and language cognition compared II: Production	p. 145
Speaking and improvising: Theoretical perspectives	p. 146
Speaking and improvising: Neurobiological perspectives	p. 150
Cadenza	p. 153
Cadenza pedagogy in the eighteenth century	p. 154
Definition of cadenza	p. 154
Türk's guidelines for cadenzas	p. 155
Models: Mozart's cadenzas	p. 157
Background	p. 157
Structure	p. 158
Mozart's cadenzas to the first movement of K. 271: Nr. 16 (Figure 9.8) and Nr. 15 (Figure 9.9)	p. 162
Cadenzas Nr. 16 and Nr. 15	p. 162
Cadenza Nr. 16 continued	p. 162
Cadenza Nr. 15 continued	p. 164
Robert Levin's Mozart cadenzas	p. 165
Note on the transcriptions	p. 166
Levin 1 (Figure 9.10)	p. 166
Levin 2 (Figure 9.11)	p. 168
Levin 3 (Figure 9.12)	p. 170
Conclusion	p. 174
Coda Constraints and freedom: Improvisation in music, language, and nature	p. 177
Bibliography	p. 185
Index	p. 197
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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The improvising mind Cognition and creativity in the musical moment

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