Introducing Contemporary Music Performance Practice to University Students

Abstract

This study explores artistic improvisation as a vital mode of creation across music, theatre, and dance, where spontaneity and structure coexist to generate meaning in real time. Far from representing an absence of rules, improvisation relies on a flexible internal grammar rooted in listening, intuition, and presence. In music, improvisation evolves from the Baroque tradition, exemplified by Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, and continuo practice, through Classical and Romantic innovations by Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, and Chopin, to the 20th-century emergence of jazz and the avant-garde, where indeterminacy becomes a compositional tool. The Romanian context mirrors this evolution, from Enescu’s interpretative freedom to contemporary experimental scenes integrating jazz, electronic, and free improvisation. In theatre, improvisation functions as both pedagogy and performance, from Commedia dell’Arte to the work of Stanislavski, Meyerhold, Grotowski, Brook, Spolin, and Johnstone. In Romania, improvisational practices expanded after 1970 and flourished in post-1990 independent theatre. In dance, improvisation manifests as instantaneous composition informed by spatial and bodily awareness, shaped by figures such as Duncan, Laban, Paxton, Forsythe, and Halprin; in Romania, it gained prominence after 1990 through contemporary choreographers. Across all disciplines, improvisation balances freedom and order, fosters interaction, and privileges presence, ultimately revealing artistic creation as a living, unrepeatable process.