Music as Extended Agency: On Notation and Entextualization in Improvised Music

Abstract

This article presents results from fieldwork with two groups of improvisers using different forms of notation in their creative practice. Such practices raise fundamental questions about the relation of notation to performance. Drawing on theories of entextualization in linguistic anthropology, I argue that, contrary to many arguments for a performative understanding of music, performance is partly about creating something that has an identifiable existence, transcending space and time. The notations and compositional systems used by improvisers are a means of achieving this entextualization of their musical utterances. One of the main findings of my fieldwork was that improvisers frequently speak of acting ‘in service of the music’, a phrase commonly associated with composition-centred musical discourse. Drawing on the work of Karin Barber and Alfred Gell, I argue that this idea represents a process of entextualization that is not a negation of performers’ creative agency, but an extension of it.