Ghost Notes. Issues of Inaudible Improvisations

In the light of recently proposed theoretical model of “audiotactile formativity” the author discusses the practices of creation in real time of the XVIII and XIX century, in Western art music, by two distinct levels. Firstly, examining the heuristic perspectives and the methodological criteria commonly used in the literature, highlighting critical factors and suggesting possible operational adaptations and conceptual revisions, with a systematization by means of new categorial tools (Process A and B). Secondly, investigating on the distinctive phenomenological and structural attributions of such praxes, in relation to the similar ones belonging to oral cultures or to audiotactile contemporariness. The applicability of the notion of model and of the categorial dichotomy extemporization/improvisation is verified and, at the same time, an explicative perspective is suggested on the disappearing of improvisational traditions in Western art music.