Introduction

The Handbook is organized into two parts and four sections. The two sections of the first part are dedicated, respectively, to theoretical investigations of artistic improvisation – particularly focused on ontology and phenomenology – and to aesthetic aspects of improvisational arts and their ethical and political meanings and effects. The two sections of the second part are dedicated to music and to a diverse range of other arts. The reason why a whole section is dedicated to improvisation in the musical arts is self-explanatory: as recognized by many experts on the subject, music and music studies have long had a leading role in the field of improvisation practices (Lewis and Piekut 2016: vol. 1, 21). This is demonstrated by, among other things, the great number of publications devoted to traditional and new forms and technologies of musical improvisation, emerging not only in the final decades of the previous century, but also in very recent years.6 While Section 3 seeks to do justice to the preeminence of improvisation in music, we supplement this focus with a series of contributions, collected in Section 4, on other performing arts, installation art, and also arts rarely associated with improvisation ‒ such as painting, sculpture, photography, poetry, literature, architecture, and design ‒ and even practices not always considered artistic, including culinary aesthetics and gastronomy as well as games such as role-playing games and videogames.