The New Lexicon I.
Philosophy of Music Improvisation [research group]
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WHY THE NEW LEXICON?
The title The New Lexicon names the need to reconsider the languages through which improvisational practice describes and evaluates itself. Terms such as freedom, spontaneity, intuition, interaction, listening, dialogue, risk, presence, expression, authenticity, mastery, flow, invention, responsiveness, and collective creation remain central to discourse on improvisation. Yet their meanings cannot be assumed stable, self-evident, or universally adequate.
These terms carry histories. They emerge within aesthetic traditions, pedagogies, institutions, technologies, and relations of authority. They enable certain distinctions and obscure others. Freedom may describe possibility while concealing conventions that organize participation. Spontaneity may name real-time invention while denying the role of preparation, memory, or social history. Dialogue may characterize reciprocity while overlooking unequal conditions of speech and listening. Mastery may recognize skill while privileging techniques, bodies, and standards of control.
A new lexicon does not replace one vocabulary with another definitive system. The programme does not seek terminological novelty for its own sake, nor presume that inherited concepts have become obsolete. Its task is to examine what existing words permit us to perceive, what assumptions they carry, where they generate confusion, and where new distinctions become necessary.
Lexical work is inseparable from improvisational work. To distinguish spontaneity from immediacy, freedom from indeterminacy, attention from obedience, interaction from reciprocity, or distributed agency from equal power is not merely to refine discourse after the event. Such distinctions can alter how situations are prepared, performers listen, responsibility is assigned, and possibilities become available. Conversely, improvisational encounters may disclose phenomena for which no adequate term yet exists.
The programme therefore treats vocabulary as a site of collective research. Participants will identify key terms within their practices, trace the assumptions attached to them, compare their uses across different histories and settings, and formulate alternatives where necessary. The objective is not universal agreement. It is to increase conceptual precision while preserving the plurality of improvisational positions. A productive lexicon should make disagreement more intelligible, not eliminate it.
DATES
MENTORS
PROGRAMME FORMAT
RESEARCH PREMISE
WHY THE NEW LEXICON?
CENTRAL QUESTIONS
WORKING METHOD
PARTICIPANT VALUE
WHO THE PROGRAMME ADDRESSES
TOWARDS MULTIPLE PHILOSOPHIES OF MUSIC IMPROVISATION
APPLICATION
APPLICATION FORM AND
PARTICIPATION FEES
The New Lexicon program is produced by .abeceda Institute
.abeceda [Institute for Research in Art, Critical Thought and Philosophy], a public-benefit NGO and non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing contemporary artistic practices and critical inquiry. Through its innovative programmes, .abeceda has gained international recognition as one of the leading platforms for contemporary music and artistic research in the Adriatic region and across Europe: www.abeceda.io