Eco, Umberto (1962) The poetics of the open work
Eco, Umberto (1962) The poetics of the open work Bishop, C. (Ed.). (2006). Participation . Whitechapel; MIT Press. 20 A number of recent pieces of instrumental music are linked by a common feature: the considerable autonomy left to the individual performer in the way he chooses to play the work. Thus, he is not merely free to interpret the composer's instructions following his own discretion (which in fact happens in traditional music), but he must impose his judgment on the form of the piece, as when he decides how long to hold a note or in what order to group the sounds: all this amounts to an act of improvised creation. 21 What is immediately striking in such cases is the macroscopic divergence between these forms of musical communication and the time-honoured tradition of the classics. This difference can be formulated in elementary terms as follows: a classical composition, whether it be a Bach fugue, Verdi's Aída, or Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, posi
