In this first installment of acclaimed music writer David Toop's
interdisciplinary and sweeping overview of free improvisation, Into the
Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom: Before 1970
introduces the philosophy and practice of improvisation (both musical
and otherwise) within the historical context of the post-World War II
era. Neither strictly chronological, or exclusively a history, Into the
Maelstrom investigates a wide range of improvisational tendencies: from
surrealist automatism to stream-of-consciousness in literature and
vocalization; from the free music of Percy Grainger to the free
improvising groups emerging out of the early 1960s (Group Ongaku, Nuova
Consonanza, MEV, AMM, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble); and from free
jazz to the strands of free improvisation that sought to distance itself
from jazz. In exploring the diverse ways in which spontaneity became a
core value in the early twentieth century as well as free
improvisation's connection to both 1960s rock (The Beatles, Cream, Pink
Floyd) and the era of post-Cagean indeterminacy in composition, Toop
provides a definitive and all-encompassing exploration of free
improvisation up to 1970, ending with the late 1960s international
developments of free music from Roscoe Mitchell in Chicago, Peter
Brötzmann in Berlin and Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg in Amsterdam.
