egained importance with Bop and onward. Early Jazz was improvised, using ragtime and blues as a loose structure. In the swing era, popular songs were arranged by an arranger and soloists played improvisations over the repeating sections in order to lengthen the song for dancing. With the advent of Bop, improvisation assumed great importance. The musicians memorized the chord changes to a song, along with the melody, but then played very loosely and in the end substituted new chords along with greatly embellishing the original melody to the point of being unrecognizable. These factors, along with the ability to interact with each other, became important and remains so in the Fusion music of today. In Classical music, modern listeners are mostly unaware of the fact that many of the great composers of the past were not onlyexcellent performers but also great improvisers. Starting with J.S. Bach (1685-1750), the greatest composer of the Baroque era, he in fact made his living through his great skill as an improvisor. It was common for the Lutheran Church organist of his day be able to improvise on choral melodies and Bach was considered one of the greatest at this. There are written accounts of other composers improvisational abilities including Mozart (1756-1791), Beethoven (1770-1829), and Franz Liszt (1811-1886). Yet, as time went on, improvising gave way to the composer's desire to exert complete control over his music. By the late 19th century, improvising was rare and not used at all in public performances of classical music. In summation, we can say that Jazz and Classical music represent two approaches to Art Music. The Classical composer or performer has a long and rich body of music in written form that he uses to learn from while the Jazz musician uses a body of recorded music to learn. Because of it's small size, the modern Jazz ensemble allows loose interaction while the symphony orchestra's large size and diversity o...
