Improvisation and its Commonplaces (Oach, Romania)
This article reviews a certain number of findings derived from studies of improvisation, which primarily concern the notion of ‘model’. This notion is of limited value when trying to capture the very process of improvisation, to grasp the unexpected, and even to closely examine the musical strategies adopted in the instant. Moreover, in many oral traditions – the inventory of which is far from completed – the structural regularities and the notion of model seem problematic. This phenomenon was already noticed by Bartók with respect to the peasant musics of Rumania, and is here further examined. So it is that in the north of Rumania, in Oach, violinists (often of gypsy heritage) are asked, for a fee, not to reproduce fixed forms, but rather to produce as many short modal motifs as possible in order to ‘lure’ the singers. During these unpredictable performances, these singers extract their own personal /dants/ from this set of motives, i.e., a complete melody which belongs to them alone and which is not to be confused with any of the melodies used by their rival singers.