Mazanek, M.P (2025) 'Integrating the popular in nineteenth-century improvisation: immaterial labour and learning.' Performance Research, 29 (6). pp. 17-23.
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Abstract
This article explores the intersection of popular song and improvised practices in the nineteenth century and offers a critical reflection upon the theoretical and pedagogical implications for contemporary musicians. It first contextualizes recent research and then provides new insights into the highly distributed nature of improvised practices in the nineteenth century. Using a wide range of primary sources, this paper explores the activities of a network of both prolific and lesser-known figures ranging from pianist Ignaz Moscheles to guitarist Trinitario Huerta and Irish author Sydney Morgan. The activities of such varied figures demonstrate how practices of improvisation were embedded within overlapping discourses on popular repertoires, pedagogical schools of thought, and performance aesthetics. Following Kurt Danziger’s concept of a ‘generative schema’ (1990), the paper frames the engagement with these overlapping networks as a set of shared conceptual beliefs and organised responses I have called the ‘improvisation/variation schema’. Using Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s concept of immaterial labour (Empire, Harvard University Press, 2001), I argue that this improvisation/variation schema was a productive framework that entailed a unique type of symbolic and affectual labour precisely because of improvisation’s entanglement with the popular music of the nineteenth century. This entanglement was a product of various factors including not only popular music’s increasingly commercialized forms of transmission but also the improvised concert fantasia and pedagogical materials for instruments like the piano, guitar and harp. I conclude that learning to improvise in a nineteenth-century style today requires engaging in this type of labour and recognizing popular song’s ability to comment upon and reflect contemporary socio-political thought.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Divisions: | Bath School of Music and Performing Arts |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Jan 2026 20:55 |
| Last Modified: | 08 Jan 2026 20:57 |
| ISSN: | 1352-8165 |
| URN: | https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/17512 |
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