> that--a damn shame if true. But classical music it's not; at its best, it
> doesn't involve more or less precise renditions of more or less complex
> pieces from standard scores produced by performers who creativity is a
> matter of fidelity to someone's idea of a composer's intentions.
But any performance of the EU's official anthem, a.k.a. Beethoven's 9th, involves lots of interaction between the conductor, soloists, singers, musicians, etc., and there are huge differences between one rendition and another (tempo, pitch, tone, etc.). And the forms handed down by modernist jazz are actually pretty restrictive about what you can do with an instrument; only certain combinations, certain melodic lines, certain chords are permitted at certain times. As Adorno would've put it, the drive towards absolute contingency culminates in absolute order. The compositional means and technique of jazz are quite different from European symphonic music, but both are certainly composed.
-- Dennis