Dear Adam
I’m sure you are right about this but no research has been done as far as I know, and I can’t think how one could do it. Scientific methods are rather blunt and crude and not suited for something as evanescent and subtle as this. Do please tell us more
Rupert Sheldrake
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Dear Rupert,
You have put your finger directly on the problem: if improvising musicians were aware that they were being scientifically tested for evidence of telepathic powers they would almost certainly be too self-conscious to provide any. However, some observations might be interesting.
The act of plucking music out of the air, spontaneous composition and performance, relies on the participating musicians having a great sense of intuitive sympathy with each other. There are many forms of this. The kind of improvisation I cited to your colleague was Bebop – the school of jazz pioneered by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie (amongst others) in the mid-1940s. Tragically, this coincided with a recording ban (to do with the United States war effort) so there is very little recorded evidence of what they achieved in the precise moments of their innovations. I have no idea how much, if any, technical knowledge of music you have, or if you have any interest in jazz, but I will plough on.
The great leap forward that they made relied on a hitherto unrealized thoroughness of knowledge of harmonic and rhythmic circumstances. They had a technical and theoretical facility that was right at the forefront of what was considered possible at the time. On an individual level, Parker seemed to find this came naturally (he was often described as a genius) whereas Gillespie had worked methodically and systematically to arrive at this point over the course of several years. When they met, they recognized immediately that they were working on similar lines and formed a musical partnership whereby they would play trumpet (Gillespie) and alto saxophone (Parker) in front of whatever rhythm sections they could find who were at all sympathetic to their ideas. Their musical revolution spread very quickly amongst musicians.
But what of telepathy? There were basically two frameworks they would use: the 12 bar blues and the 32 bar popular song form known as ‘Rhythm Changes’ (often known as “I Got Rhythm”). Whoever was leading the series of improvisations would convolute these frameworks to such an extent, and at such a speed, as to make it as difficult as possible for the other to anticipate or improve or complement it. This was part of the game: to one-up each other. But how did they do this? 1. Memory – of the frameworks involved, and of the results of previous “bouts” 2. Accumulated knowledge – of what gambits were available at any given moment in a constantly shifting landscape of possibilities. 3. Judgment – the wisdom, taste and experience to know what will work.
This makes it sound a bit like a boxing match but the goal was always music. To actually make music that was pleasing to the ear whilst systematically exhausting all possible permutations of the material. In a completely different context, J.S. Bach attempted something similar in his “Art Of Fugue” and “Musical Offering”. But to return to those three conditions, In my opinion it is the second – accumulated knowledge – that gives rise to telepathic activity. Parker KNEW that Gillespie had as thorough an understanding as he did, and vice versa, and that they were both of them at the cutting edge of uncharted musical territory, creating on their feet, precisely in the moment. A situation like this is very unusual and it created very unusual results. I wish I could point you at specific examples but, as I say, most of what they did went unrecorded. All of this conjecture I am engaging in is based on oral histories and scraps of unofficial recordings made by enthusiastic amateurs (e.g., Dean Benedetti) – also, on retroactive analysis based on studying recordings that DID get made (e.g. “The Famous Alto break”).
Essentially, jazz is a music that is founded on the ideal of telepathy. The idea that musicians will feel such empathy with each other that they will be able to produce beautiful music together more or less spontaneously. It depends, to some extent, whether or not you acknowledge intuitiveness as a form of telepathy. Certainly a jazz musician (once he has mastered the basics) will be judged by his peers on his intuitive skills. A highly skilled technician who “doesn’t listen” will never be as highly valued by other musicians as someone who maybe has less technical facility but a greater intuitive understanding of what is appropriate in a given or spontaneously improvised musical setting
There are, of course, other forms of musical improvisation. “Free Improv” has become quite a rarity nowadays but I recall seeing AMM perform on the South Bank. They dispensed with form altogether and often made sounds with “found objects”. The musical collective Henry Cow formed a sort of bridge between the extremism of AMM and more conventional forms of music making. This raises philosophical questions along the lines of “what is music?” which I don’t want to get into here. Although interesting, like a lot of philosophical questions, it is a massive digression. Let us just say that most people know what music sounds like and what it is for. Certainly small children do.
But one can’t run away from philosophy and it may be that that is the central problem: some things just cannot be quantified, measured, precisely understood and that is precisely why the scientific establishment are wary of, or downright hostile towards discussions on telepathy and why the music of such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie is not taught at music schools with the same vigour as Bach or Mozart (both of whom were, ironically, prodigious improvisers). I remember asking my teacher why the music of Terry Riley was not as “respected” in academic circles as that of Philip Glass or Steve Reich. “Because he’s an improviser”, replied my teacher. “The academics don’t know what to make of improvisation. It makes them nervous.”
Does this ring any bells with you?
I am sorry if I’ve waffled on without giving any precise examples. I have studied Indian Classical Music too, not in depth but enough to see that they have integrated improvisation into their formal pieces in a natural and unforced way that we in the West could learn a great deal from. We could also talk about the work of John Coltrane and Rashied Ali but it’s just more of the same, only more concentrated (it also excludes the casual listener in a way that a lot of Parker and Gillespie’s work did not.)
I do hope that this has been of some interest to you.
All the best
Adam Blake