Gesture of improvising and Freedom

For various aesthetic reasons, it may be attractive for composers to adopt a "gesture of improvising," to display an attitude that feigns improvisation or spontaneous musical action. Examples taken from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as from music of the last fifty years, illustrate some of the procedures of and motivations for this ostensible immediacy. Noteworthy aspects include the conscious presentation of freedom when creating music, the demonstration of contingencies surrounding the musical process, but paramount and preceding any musical action, however, is the confrontation with music's materiality, which brings to the fore the moment of the creative beginning in music.