2024/01/09 by Erkki Huovinen · 1 voice
Psychology · Neuroscience · Computer Science · #Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy #Embodied and Extended Cognition #Music Technology and Sound Studies
paper · doi:10.1093/aesthj/ayac052
openalex publication_date 2024/01/09 · openalex created_date 2024/01/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Improvisation is currently a hot topic, not only in various specialized disciplines of arts scholarship but also in philosophical aesthetics. Not long after the extensive, two-volume Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies (Lewis and Piekut, 2016), we may now delve into an equally impressive collection, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Improvisation in the Arts, edited by Alessandro Bertinetto and Marcello Ruta. Prior to this new handbook, Routledge had published the anthology Philosophy of Improvisation: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Theory and Practice, edited by Susanne Ravn, Simon Høffding and James McGuirk. Together, the two new publications include contributions by sixty-one scholars, only five of whom appeared in the Oxford volumes. This attests to the vibrancy of the field, but can also be explained by the slightly more European home base of the Routledge publications. Despite a truly international outlook, Italian and German-speaking researchers are especially well-represented in the new Handbook, while the anthology has a more Nordic emphasis. Both books include chapters by philosophers, scholars from humanities and social sciences, and working artists—bringing about varying mixes of philosophical rigour and contextually informed description of improvisation practices. In this brief review, I will focus on the more philosophical aspects, on the assumption that the publications might give a fairly representative view of the ways in which studies and practices of improvisation—especially artistic improvisation—have lately interacted with philosophy.