On Sunday, May 7, 2006 at 12:43:01 AM UTC-7, William Harris wrote:
> Improvisation is becoming a core concept now in dance, in film since
> Altman, in drama experimentally, and it was always central to the art
> of painting. In fact it can hardly be separated from art and the
> creative impulse. Every composer from Ockgehem to modern times was able
> to play one or more instruments well enough to test out new ideas in a
> continuous flow of musical thought. This was always the musician's
> personal way of thinking about music, not unlike talking or thinking
> words to yourself. The flow of ideas is natural to our nature, most of
> us do it fluently with words in conversation as a matter of course.
> Piano study since the early l9th century was a largely un-musical
> system, since it started with learning to play scales and figures
> two-handed as exercises for the hand muscles, while directing the
> student's eyes to the score on the stand which told which keys to press
> in what order and time sequence. Learning to "play the piano" was
> learning to read notes on a page of standard score, the "music" being
> someone else's music which you were going to learn to play. There was
> little real Play in all this, a lot of rigidity in getting the right
> note while counting out one-and-two-and...... No wonder most kids hated
> lessons and few continued past a few years when parents gave up.
> Learning to reproduce on the piano a few pieces written a century ago
> and do it badly, is not fun, it is not "play" and it is in the end not
> music.
> On the other hand those of us who stayed with it even unwillingly, did
> learn a lot of technique, both reading score, using the hands in some
> pretty complicated ways, and if we listened carefully, we heard some
> real musical ideas within the weekly lessons. For that we can be glad,
> because we can now years later come back to the piano and start to
> learn to make our own music, which means Improvising. Without those
> hard years of hand training you cannot do this; these may be rusty
> tools but they are usable.
> I have been sincerely into improvising my own music on the piano for
> years, and have several essays on various aspects of improvisation and
> related problems on my website
> <http://www.middlebury.edu/~harris/music.html>, along with recent
> improv-compositions which you can hear on the internet. In my piano
> pieces I have atonal passages but I use harmonics as well, and I have
> no hesitation in adapting a figure or a feeling from a
> master-improviser like J.S.Bach. I avoid the idea of "playing in the
> style of..." which is good for parlor tricks, but not personal enough
> for a musical ear. I work cold right-off at the piano without
> preconceptions but find that my mind has a lot of inner-order which
> comes out as developments and contrasts in each five minute piece.
> Organization should come from the mind, not from a schematic layout.
> I recently put a long article on this website
> <http://middlebury.edu/~harris/MusicPapers/baroque.html> which is a
> loosely constructed course as an "Introduction to Baroque Improv. " It
> is not a series of "lessons and exercises" which I don't believe it,
> but a discussion of how to go about it on your own, in an experimental
> way. Give this a try as a starter, see what you can do when you get
> free of directions, orders, corrections and sticking to the notes on
> the score. Improvising at the piano is no different and no more
> threatening than talking out some ideas, or humming a made-up tune or
> whistling while out on a walk.
> Best wishes,
> Bill Harris
> har...@middlebury.edu

According to this:

- There was a spirit of improvisation, a horror of sameness. Baroque composers pushed to the limit the idea of spontaneity.

https://groups.google.com/u/1/g/rec.music.classical.recordings/c/mHB8w2HE6mw/m/7iCQnLn_oMQJ