The Aesthetics of Imperfection 
John Tilbury

Aesthetics of Imperfection - it's a challenging title. Last year, in 2018, I participated in a lively seminar on the subject in Zurich. After some preliminary to-ing and fro-ing with my Swiss colleagues, we ended up with the mistitle: The Aesthetics of Perfection. Logically, the one has to be preceded or followed by a consideration of the other, although a consideration of 'imperfection' yields far more. The notion of imperfection opens things up whereas the absoluteness of perfection tends to close things down. So we abandon the arid terrain of perfection to enter the fertile land of imperfection.

'Perfection' is a word degraded by everyday, cavalier usage: Can you manage 3pm on Friday? That will be perfect. Can you take that hem up a couple of inches? That would be perfect. Or, say, a reference to a 'near-perfect' musical performance, where the imperfections which make it near-perfect are rarely considered. Bizarrely, some critics refer to improvisation as a pale imitation of the 'perfection' attained by composed music. They cite the 'perfection' of Mozart, although it is doubtful if Mozart would have bestowed this distinction on himself, even if he may have got closer than most. (I am thinking of a recording of the beginning of the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto in A major K. 488, played by Clifford Curzon – an ineffable musical utterance which has rarely, if ever, been equalled.)

In my experience, most musicians fight shy of the idea of perfection. They deny it, or ignore it. Evan Parker, for example, baulks at the idea. Perfection, he opined, is a long way away most of the time, so much so that the notion is best left out of the equation. ‘It is an ideal’, he added, dismissively – and then, interestingly, ‘but it would be terrible to think you have achieved it’. This links him to the Japanese improvisers; they are categorical, their aim is imperfection:

   ‘I want to make mistakes, mistakes are part of my work, my life.’ Toshi Nakamura

   ‘If I find something perfect, that's wrong. Nothing perfect in life.’ Otomo Yoshihide

Such statements betray the culture of wabi sabi: the Japanese bowl I was given in Japan after a tea ceremony embodies the idea of something which, in terms of Western ceramic standards, would be commercially unacceptable. (I recall buying 'seconds' at the Cardew pottery which were less flawed than my Japanese tea bowl.) The lip of my Japanese dish is uneven, varies in thickness; but along its rim the patient mouth can discover an intimate resting point. The glaze has character, with washes of many natural shades of colour, and there are small marks, placed either intentionally or unintentionally, all of which adds to its beauty. It has a solidity and weight, and yet a delicacy, which makes it perfect to hold (and to drink tea from.) My Japanese bowl is an accident by design. Alas, after many years of grateful usage I dropped it on the tiled kitchen floor, smashing it to smithereens. I kept the pieces. The bowl had changed. That's all. 
  
‘People, music-lovers, critics, have no idea what a phrase costs’, pianist Clifford Curzon mused. It costs blood, sweat, tears, and much more besides. 'Perfection' is an ideal; it exists only in the imagination – desirable, perhaps, but unattainable. That is why our musicians were so sniffy, so dismissive of it. They have more pressing concerns. In any discussion about music the word 'perfection' does not materialise. As a musician, I am perfectly content with a near-perfect performance. In fact, what I strive to create is not 'perfection', but rather something which is unique, irreplaceable – which feels right, though it may not be 'perfect' and may even create unease and discomfort. I am not pursuing an ideal, an absolute. I suppose I am trying, in Beckett's words, to fail better.  

This was impressed upon me by my first piano teacher, Dorothy Symes. When I studied with her, as a boy, she was in full flush. In her excessive, outrageous demands for the perfect (musical) utterance, urging me to repeat a phrase over and over again, she would reduce me to tears of rage. By her insistence on 'perfection', say of a phrase by Mozart (which, of course, was her own personalised projection), she created suffering and despair. For, not to attain perfection was to fail. Like failing an exam. With Mrs. Symes I learnt to acknowledge the inevitability of failure. 

In an interview with me a few years ago, a music journalist posed the following questions:

You're sitting at the piano bench readying yourself to play. The audience is hushed; there's an air of anticipation. Your fingers are poised over the keyboard.  At that critical moment, do the mental processes you go through differ according to whether you're about to play a composition or an improvisation? If so, in what ways are they different?

I answered as follows: 

There are no hard and fast contrasts. Both modes are subject to constraints, imposed from without, which determine what and how one plays. Playing the score…of course, the notation prescribes the broad limits: whereabouts on the keyboard, a relative pitch, a relative duration, a relative dynamic (sometimes)… [But contingencies such as tuning and timbre, for example,] depend upon the instrument, the tuner, the room temperature, etc.

So, with regards to a composition, if the hands are poised and the muscles tensed, this state of bodily affairs is only partially determined by information gleaned by the player from the score. Playing solo (from the score), one should not underestimate the leeway enjoyed by the performer: deciding the actual moment of execution from the moment of sitting down at the instrument. Compare this with playing under the control of a conductor's baton, which is, perhaps, why a number of reputable solo pianists are indifferent concerto players. 

The leeway in free improvisation is greater; one can wait until the music is already underway, has established itself, thanks to the initiative of the other players. But here, too, the first sounds of a set may come as a response to an external provocation – perhaps, though not necessarily, less specific than a musical notation. But what if you are playing solo? Your audience are strangers (initially) and the stage is a lonely place. Either the ambience assumes greater responsibility or, conversely, you retreat into your own private world, relying on recourse to subjectivity to provide reasons for breaking the silence. 

In free improvisation the player revels in a whirlpool of uncertain potentiality. Each musical moment, however fleeting, presents a situation, a 'problem', to negotiate spontaneously. The decision to stop a note, or continue it, for example, is not determined by an external constraint – by compositional structure, by the score. There may be a physical reason for doing one thing or the other, like a wind player running out of breath, for example, but a spontaneous musical reason, is an ever-present option for the improvising musician, an option which always falls well short of 'perfection'. When I improvise, and if the music has 'taken off', there is a strong feeling of identification with the sounds I make and hear. 

Of course, in performing a composition, the composer/score must always prevail; in the last analysis the reader/performer does as he/she is told, although the need or desirability for compromise is something the composer/interpreter relationship often has to come to terms with. (Performer conviction is essential, even overriding, within reason, the composer's initial prescription. I know that most composers would bow to this.) Yet more and more, I question the authenticity, the prestige of the written score and its traditional eminence. 'Tradition' – a relation with the past that is used to excuse all manner of gross and bestial acts, from pushing a head into a birthday cake, to stoning an adulteress. 

I have been listening to an AMM CD, Fine, to a track which 'features' the piano. I have chosen this particular track because I want to try and verbalise what it means, at least for me, to be an improvising musician, and the questions and doubts it gives rise to. Generally, in performance the piano sound can be effectively subsumed into the context; different degrees of presence, from the soloistic, the palpable, as in the following example, to a situation where its contribution is barely perceived, but none the less telling – overheard rather than heard, working in the nooks and crannies, fleetingly emerging from time to time. In this extract, Phase 1 begins with a high-pitched continuo against which there are brief piano interjections: consonant, benign, including perfect intervals. Suddenly a dissonant, augmented interval is sounded, immediately leavened by a quiet repetition. Phase 2: the indeterminate continuo changes subtly, accompanied by an expressive sequence of piano semi-tones which stops for about twenty seconds. 
Phase 3: restarts; adjacent notes are added to the semitones, creating clusters; a slight feeling of urgency, louder, quicker, insistent. A plateau is reached, then two steps descent. Stop. 

There is no score, no blueprint, no ideal by which to stand or fall; the music is completely self-contained. It feels, to me, 'right' – not in any way 'contrived'. It is as if the music was autonomous, and I were simply tracking it, letting it happen or unfold. Yet these are all split-second, 'spontaneous' decisions/choices. To what extent is what I play, and what I hear and see, influenced by my fellow musicians, or the audience? My preference is that the influence is subliminal, the relationships subtle and unfathomable. And chance? Not every sound has the same measure of intentionality. Accidentalness also plays a role, when intention is thwarted. Here is Cardew's view: The only criterion for a sound is: 'was the player expecting (intending) to make it?  If not, it was a mistake, and makes a different sort of claim to beauty. As a mistake, it comes under criteria for action: mistakes are the only truly spontaneous actions we are capable of.'  Imperfection reigns.

Going back to the original question, playing the score/improvising, 'in what ways are they different' – we can draw an interesting comparison in the preceding example between composition and improvisation. In the improvisation we can identify a real, as opposed to a prescribed, tentativeness; the musicians' hesitations reflect this idea of 'feeling a way into the music'. There is a fragility, a vulnerability, about the music. Compare this with the prescription 'zögernd' ('hesitating') in Schönberg's op.19 no.1. Here the pianist may not perform the phrase in question 'hesitatingly', as the improvisers do; rather they should create, for the listener, the appropriate artistic expression of the concept of 'hesitation'. Similarly, at the beginning of Debussy's piano piece Jimbo's Lullaby from the Children's Corner Suite, the composer prescribes the performance instruction 'gauche'. Of course, the pianist should not perform in a 'gauche' manner; rather they must express a certain awkwardness – through a subtle rhythmicization, through an idiosyncratic accentuation, and so forth. Through, paradoxically, control. (I am often asked how playing Feldman has influenced the way I improvise with AMM. In fact, it is the other way round. Through AMM I became more aware of the unintended in the sounds which abound in performances of Feldman's music).

In improvisation there can be moments of real musical 'awkwardness'; you are feeling your way; you are not sure whether you are making the right decisions, especially in the early stages. You are neither 'convinced' nor 'convincing'. But this lack of conviction, too, can be contextualised and turned to musical, artistic advantage. 

Sometimes, when I play a larger aggregate of notes, I can anticipate the qualities of sound and the nature of the harmony that I'm playing, but not exactly. I don't exactly hear the chord in my head, except to the extent that it's a cluster-type chord or a whole-tone type of chord. But once I've played it, then immediately I'm reacting and adjusting, trying various transpositions, for example. I like the economy of that way of working – the experimental part of it, working on the material, making split-second choices, ironing out the imperfections, or the perfections; retrospectively 'correcting' mistakes, using the piano as a sound source to be explored rather than an instrument to be performed on. It's like pottery: you are dealing with a piece of clay, kneading with your fingers and hands, moving it around, making shapes, not dissimilar to that of sculpting in stone, the only artform that creates by reducing its material. It is the physicality of playing the piano that I enjoy so much.

When you are dealing with intervals and individual tones there's more control. I'm playing a descending scale, for example, and I omit a few notes because I think at that particular moment I want a certain intervallic quality. And I know how to do that. Of late, I have got into playing scales and arpeggios. I like using scales, traditional scales, as well as idiosyncratic, 'composed' scales (reminding me of Cardew's request in Paragraph 3 of The Great Learning, that the performer should 'invent' scales.) And, what is more challenging, I try to remember what I have played, what tones, what intervals. Sometimes, intentionally or unintentionally, I alter the intervals slightly. Sometimes I use preparations, not to bring about a complete metamorphosis of the instrument, but a way of subtly colouring a chord of say seven or eight notes by including a single 'prepared' tone. 

But still one asks: how do we arrive at these 'imperfect' decisions – what determines these particular choices? Which pitches and when precisely to play them? Register? Durations? Repetitions? Pacing? Placement? The change from consonance to dissonance? The mood? The subtle inflections of intensity and dynamic? The morphology of a phrase? These decisions demand an alertness, a high level of consciousness; their execution requires precision, and a total commitment to an exact moment of execution. Yet nobody or nothing is telling me what to do. So whence these impulses? Cardew used to talk of musicalness, which went beyond mere musicality; his radical mission was to recognise the musical composition of the world, no less. Cardew questioned the existence of a separate, non-musical world. 'My attitude', he wrote, 'is that the musical and the real worlds are one'. 

In making these aforementioned 'choices' Cardew would allow his 'musicalness' to intervene, to assert itself – so the dilemma of 'how many' or 'how much' was not an exclusively 'musical' choice. He never seemed to prioritize in the way that most of us do. The reason for this was that for him every activity was endowed with equal significance. Devising a new musical notation demanded the same care, the same attention to detail, the same concern and respect for human relations, as bathing the baby or preparing a picnic. The plot thickens.

The sound of the piano is magic and seems to transcend the instrument whence it materialises. It is a kind of Pandora's Box; this is what intrigues me and which I try to exploit. The instrument carries with it an enormous amount of historical baggage. Every piano sound is steeped in history. So I walk a tightrope. I can fall into style; cliché, reference. The piano sound is subsumed into the context. Context is crucial. The appropriateness and inappropriateness of a piano phrase, chord, note, etc., relates to context. For example: 'ugly' sounds get beauty through their 'logical positioning'. And suppose you find yourself in a hostile situation which you find aesthetically offensive. For example, regarding extreme volume; as a pianist playing with a saxophonist and a drummer you cannot match certain dynamic levels. You can play without being heard: conceptual approach. Or strategically placing sounds in rare moments of space/time – in the nooks and crannies. Or playing defiantly softly throughout. Or remaining indominantly silent.  

Both with regards to repertoire and improvisation I have a propensity for soft music. Softness transcends the instrument and draws the audience into the music – it encourages attentiveness and alertness. It demands a 'transcendental' listening in its search for the 'revelatory experience'. I baulk at loud piano. David Tudor once said: 'the trouble with the piano is that it is just one ugly sound after another'!

In all this, touch is of the essence. It is the dialectic of, on the one hand, the extreme fingertip sensitivity and control, embodying the notion of intention – and on the other hand the recognition, through an awareness of the contingent, of the ultimate impossibility, indeed the undesirability, of control. Intimately, at close quarters, the performer experiences the vulnerability of intention and the inevitability, and acceptance, of failure. And this 'imperfection' gives the music its unique quality. Again, we are reminded of Beckett's dictum: ‘No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ 

I mentioned 'historical baggage'. The difficulty with improvising at the piano is that every sound is somehow redolent of the past. This is compounded by the fact that the piano's tones are discreet, explicit, the semi-tone the smallest interval; there are no ambiguous melodic and harmonic territories where the piano can create and exploit alibis. Play a single chord and one or another ghost from the past, from Frescobaldi to Cage, will present itself to the contemporary consciousness. I have no recourse to novelty except, perhaps, for prepared sounds. My aim is no style. My intention is that, somehow, the resulting music will transcend the history of the instrument; and that my music should be rooted in the present, not in the past.

Improvisation thrives on chance, risk, the accidental, the unintended, all of which totally subverts any idea of 'perfectibility'. Ideally, improvisation grasps every feature of every sound, every irretrievable moment; through a subtle contextualisation it exalts the accidental, the half-intended. Thelonious Monk provides an irresistible footnote. Coming off after a set he complained bitterly: ‘I played all the wrong mistakes.’

The Times critic a few years ago advised the AMM, patronizingly, to carry on with the business of making fresh sounds and sound relationships but not to worry our musical heads about moral and social matters. In a BBC radio broadcast introducing a recording of the first performance of Paragraph 1 of The Great Learning at the Cheltenham Festival Cornelius Cardew again hit the nail on the head: ‘If music were a purely aesthetic experience, it wouldn't occupy the central place it does in our affairs. It must make waves in the environment and have repercussions beyond the concert hall.’ 

When Cardew was once asked, after a particularly radical and uncompromising performance, 'But Mr. Cardew, is this music?' Cardew replied: 'I am a musician; I make music'. In other words, it is all about 'being a musician'.  But what is, being a musician? Is it, in my particular case, my history? My beloved teacher, Dorothy Symes, who taught me what it costs, intellectually and emotionally, to play a phrase. The music of Mozart, which I have always so loved. My father, who, when he came home from the war, played hymns on the piano, which made me, a child of 9, weep. My mother, who is a constant presence. My wife. And writers, artists and philosophers, close friends, who have profoundly influenced my Weltanschauung and who have fine-tuned and sometimes ruffled my sensibilities. I am them. Relationships which have sometimes inspired and sometimes shamed me. And, from the perspective of old age, frustration, disappointment, anxiety (children), intolerance, insecurity, failure, incompleteness, valediction, all of which in some way must necessarily impinge upon my music-making, for better or for worse. 

And yet now I seem to be more in tune with what I play. Gone are the days of picking my way through the repertoire of the professional pianist. Feldman fulfils a deep-seated need, my posthumous collaborations with Beckett (and Derek Bailey), music-making with friends and colleagues from AMM and others, who enrich and inspire my music-making. Posthumously, Cardew also provides a moral dimension.

It is the present that occupies me more and more. By 'the present' I mean now; in my music-making, in particular, 'nowness' has assumed a quality of preciousness and I strive, sometimes unsuccessfully, to protect it from violation. In improvised music this sense of 'nowness' is cherished and intensified. It becomes increasingly apparent that this preoccupation with nowness is also associated with age, with ever-increasing consciousness of one's mortality. 

‘Hygiene’, the Russian pianist, Svetoslav Richter retorted when asked his opinion of the music of Bach. I assume he meant something which cleanses, which Blake makes explicit: ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is – Infinite’. The opening chorus of the St. John Passion springs to mind, the opening statement of the Goldberg Variations, too. 

I recall an occasion in Graz, Austria when, performing Feldman's Triadic Memories, I glimpsed the 'Infinite'. The concert began in a natural light which was beginning to fade, and accompanied, enhanced by the changing light, it ended, after one hour and three quarters, in near darkness. (The only artificial light was a lamp by the piano) Towards the end of the performance bells from a distant church provided a miraculous counterpoint – a merging of Art with everyday reality; and at a stroke, what the English writer Anita Brookner calls the 'monstrous egotism' of the artist – in this case composer and performer – is punctured, undermined, and the music could no longer say simply 'listen to me'; nor could the performer demand of his audience 'look at me'. 

Listening to Triadic Memories on that day two women, one young, one elderly, were weeping. I mention it, not least because I think it is a rare occurrence at concerts, and I can only speculate on the reasons. But I believe they have something to do with meanings in Art and in Feldman's Art in particular: human vulnerability and fragility. Human imperfection. In the late works the enveloping hugeness of Feldman's canvas reminds one of the great Rothko black paintings. There, too, in the Rothko chapel, people sit and quietly weep. How far we seem to have travelled from the notion of perfection!

So how does it behove me, the humble piano-player, to pronounce on this subject? Perhaps the key to this is my maternal grandfather, whom I never met. He and his wife and two daughters lived in dire poverty in Latimer Road, West London. He was a building worker and died from tuberculosis in 1914 at the age of 39 when my mother was 7. He was also a pub pianist who had an affair with the barmaid, which produced my mother. I have missed him and continue to miss him more than I can say. Well, perhaps the combination of music, alcohol and illicit love, which my mother somehow bequeathed to me, bestows on me more than a smidgin of 'authority' in the issue at hand. After all, all three, replete with imperfection, seem to offer much and yet promise nothing.  

The Japanese musician, Otomo Yoshihide, sums it up perfectly: ‘If it's perfect, there must be something wrong with it’.

DISCOGRAPHY AND VIDEOGRAPHY

AMM (2001), Fine, CD, Matchless, 20840.
Hopkins, P. (2012), Amplified Gesture, documentary film, DVD, Sound SS, DVD01.

REFERENCES

Beckett, S. (1983), Worstward Ho, London: John Calder.
Blake, W. (2008), The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, Revised Edition, ed. D. Erdman, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cardew, C. (2006), Cornelius Cardew: A Reader, ed. E. Prévost, Essex: Copula.
Dennis, B. (1971), ‘Cardew’s The Great Learning’, The Musical Times, 112: 1545, pp. 1066-1068.
Eyles, J. (2010), ‘John Tilbury: A Strong Emotional Response to Music’, All About Jazz, 17/8/2010 (https://www.allaboutjazz.com/john-tilbury-a-strong-emotional-response-to-music-john-tilbury-by-john-eyles.php?pg=3) [Accessed 24/8/2019]. 
Feurzeig, D. (2011), ‘The Right Mistakes: Confronting the ‘Old Question’ of Thelonious Monk’s Chops’, Jazz Perspectives, 5: 1, pp. 29-59.
Monsaingeon, B. (2001), Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Tilbury, J. (2008), Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981): A Life Unfinished, Essex: Copula.
Wolff, C. (2017), Occasional Pieces: Writings and Interviews, 1952-2013, New York: Oxford University Press.

NOTES