Fantasies of Improvisation by Dana Gooley (review)

In Fantasies of Improvisation, Dana Gooley provides the first detailed overview of free keyboard improvisation from 1810 to 1880. By free improvisation, Gooley is referring mainly to free fantasies and other types of independent musical extemporizations (as opposed to preluding, ornamenting, or improvised transitions). Based on analyses of recital programs, concert reviews, treatises, and scores, Gooley describes the diversity of free improvisatory approaches employed in the nineteenth century, such as single melody, multimelody, or three-tone extemporizations. Through case studies of Georg Joseph Vogler, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Ignaz Moscheles, Carl Loewe, Robert Schumann, and Franz Liszt, Gooley also documents the complicated history of free improvisatory practices in the nineteenth century. For instance, Gooley problematizes the notion that free improvisation declined primarily because of the rise of the work concept. The author specifically shows that many of the important improvisers of the nineteenth century were not only touring virtuosos but also Kapellmeister. As a result, free improvisations could demonstrate craft as much as aura and virtuosic prowess. Moreover, Gooley notes that when the practice of improvisation declined in the concert halls and salons, it lived on in the church and informed notated compositions even as it was idealized nostalgically in literary texts. "One of the paradoxes of improvisation in the nineteenth century," the author writes, "is that it perceptibly lost credibility in some places, while in other places it persisted without any signs of 'reconstruction'" (p. 154).

Although the topic of improvisation has garnered a considerable amount of attention in recent decades, scholars have largely focused on the improvisatory practices of individual artists. Moreover, while preluding and ornamenting have received considerable attention, the topic of freely improvised fantasies in the romantic era has not. (See, for instance: Kenneth Hamilton, After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008]; Jeffrey Kallberg, "Chopin and the Aesthetic of the Sketch: A New Prelude in E♭ Minor?" Early Music 29, no. 3 [2001]: 408–22; Rudolph Rasch, ed., Beyond Notes: Improvisation in Western Music of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries [Lucca: Brepols, 2011]; Nicholas Temperley, "Preluding at the Piano," in Musical Improvisation: Art, Education, and Society, ed. Gabriel Solis and Bruno Nettl [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009], 323–42.)

Gooley's book is organized largely chronologically and takes the form of five case studies that are framed by a prelude, a concluding chapter, and a postlude. In the prelude, Gooley questions why free improvisation went out of fashion. He attributes part of the decline to the rise of the work concept and a lack of familiarity of audiences with the practice after the 1830s. Yet Gooley simultaneously reveals a more complicated history, noting, "Even where romantic musicians did not continue improvising per se, they often sympathized with the valorized idea of improvisation that literary romantics were promoting" (p. 4). At the same time, composers continued to improvise privately for inspiration. Gooley also notes that improvisation remained strong in certain settings, such as in churches.

In chapter 1, Gooley challenges perceptions of free improvisation as being performed primarily by traveling piano virtuosos. He maintains that if any institution kept improvisation vibrant in the nineteenth century, it was "not the modern 'emancipated' virtuoso, but the profession of the kapellmeister, whose education revolved around ideals of rigorous theoretical training, pragmatic skill, and stylistic flexibility" (p. 13). Gooley specifically documents a line of improvisation descending from Vogler to his most famous pupils, Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer. On weekdays, students wrote compositions based on melodies provided by Vogler, and in the afternoon they brought their pieces for critique and performance. Yet on Sundays, they improvised; Vogler frequently improvised a motif on one organ in a church while a student developed the motif on a second organ.

Weber and Meyerbeer, known today primarily as composers, subsequently garnered praise during their lifetimes for their skills as free keyboard improvisers. Some of Meyerbeer's improvisations were...