Entextualization and the Improvised Past

Abstract

Drawing on recent developments in improvisation studies, the author argues that the reconstruction of improvisatory practices in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century European music entails the cultivation of archaeological (as well as historical) modes of inquiry and digital (as well as literary) sensibilities. The anthropological concept of entextualization is deployed to illustrate how aspects of improvisation that defy literal forms of representation might be accessed through material culture, algorithmic processes, embodied reenactment, and simulation.