Improvisation: Jazz as model. From bepop to free jazz.

Abstract

The paper is in two parts: the first, Study, is a reflection on improvisation in jazz, which
the second, Analyses, illustrates through six pieces: Charlie Parker’s Billie’s Bounce,
Now’s the time and Ko Ko, Miles Davis’ So what and Flamenco sketches, and Ornette
Coleman’s Free Jazz.
Improvisation fully partakes to the history of European music, up to the experiments on
accident and aleatoriness in the years 50 and 60. Yet, if this question remains today at the
centre of many a composer’s preoccupations, it is because jazz has been recognized as a
major art from of the century. by essence rebellious to notation, jazz puts in question the
distinction between composer and performer: in jazz, the work exists in the time of the
performance, and there only. If improvisation, in the common sense, is not necessary to the existence of jazz, it is nevertheless determining for its evolution. From the variation
on a theme to collective improvisation, the history of jazz also is that of the conquest of
new spaces allowing an ever freer musical expression. The analyses of works by Charlie
Parker, Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman will allow the reader to follow and to
understand an evolution all the more impressing that it is linked mainly with outstanding
intuitions, resulting from the most original experiments in rhythm and harmony in 20th
Century music.