This website is a platform dedicated to research on historical improvisation, with a particular focus on improvised polyphony from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It brings together a selection of projects, publications, and digital resources that explore improvisation as a central musical skill in pre-modern Europe, examined through source study, analysis, and performance-based research.
Improvisation was a basic skill practiced by every choirboy during the Renaissance. [...] Improvised polyphony was everywhere in the Renaissance. [...] Canguilhem (2011, 99) estimates that “the vast majority” of the polyphony heard in Philip II’s chapel in sixteenth-century Spain was improvised. In earlier centuries the amount might have been even higher. The composed polyphony that comes down to us was a small fraction of the musical landscape. This realization transforms our sense of the past.
—Julie E. Cumming, “Renaissance Improvisation and Musicology”, Music Theory Online 19, no. 2 (2013).
This site is designed to provide a centralised point of reference for research on historical improvisation, including articles, doctoral research projects, and media materials. Its aim is to facilitate further research and exchange in this field. If you would like to collaborate, please get in touch.
