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Improvising Variations on the spot (2020)

Masako Awaji
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Title of Research Improvising variations on the spot Research Question How do we build up a vocablary of different kinds of variations to be able to improvise a piece in variation style on the spot? Summary of Results This artistic research investigates the practice of improvising variations on the spot in keynoard music in the 18th century. In the 18th century Baroque period, the art improvising was quite common amongst musicians, as it was one of the standard performance practices of the time. Someone hearing the term "improvisation", might conjure an image of people with an extremely specialised skill, but actually the practise has continued throughout history and is still used often nowadays in many musical styles. There are many kinds of improvisation: dances, freeform improvisation, such as Prélude non mesuré, Italian toccata and Fantasy; and ground- or ostinato-bass (e.g. La Monica, Passamezzo Antico, Passamezzo Moderno, Bergamasca, Romanesca, La Folia etc.) For my research, I focused to the variation style because there are numerous written-out variation examples by prominent composers from which to learn. Because of these examples, we can clearly confirm variation ideas as every variation starts with a theme and afterwards, we clearly see the composer build their ideas up from start to finish. These ideas are very useful to inspire our own ideas, because with numerous possibilities in your head, you have more from which to choose and create, an improvising vocabulary. Finally, we can use all this vocabulary, the nuance of when to use it, as well as develop our own voices for our own improvisations. In this research I introduce my process and how to connect all the tools for improvising variations in performance.
typeresearch exposition
keywordsHarpsichord and Fortepiano, Art of Interpretation, Improvisation, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Georg Friederich Händel
date19/10/2018
published19/08/2020
last modified19/08/2020
statuslimited publication
share statusprivate
copyrightImprovising variations on the spot
licenseAll rights reserved
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/521288/736778
published inKC Research Portal
portal issue3. Internal publication


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656569 Master plan Direction of research All rights reserved
804749 _A050489_HQ (1) masako All rights reserved

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