Improvisational flops: a problematic concert (1969) and controversial LP (1970) of the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza

Abstract

In the history of the Rome-based Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza (GINC) – one of the first European collectives of free improvisation in so-called New Music – the years 1968-1972 can be considered the zenith of the group’s success in terms of recognition, visibility, and increased output. Two contemporary events, however, appear as uncharacteristic flops: a concert in Berlin during the 6 Tage Musik Festival in December 1969, and the LP The Feed-Back produced by RCA Italiana between March and October 1970. In the first case, a concert, specifically formatted as a “rehearsal-session” to broaden the participation of the audience by dialogic means, turned out to be a challenging experience due to the confrontational behaviour of a part of the audience. In the second case, the production of an LP experimenting in a style that the group’s spokesperson called “upperground”, which included elements of beat music and was thought would also offer a potential economic gain, turned out to be a controversial and disappointing experience. Using documentary and archival materials, as well as oral and written accounts of former GINC members, viewed through the lens of Actor-Network Theory, in this article I explore the many complexities of the two flops. Namely: which entities/actor-networks are involved in them; how these entities/actor-networks interact, which kind of issues they raise, and which negotiation spaces they enact (inside and outside the musical performance space); how in the case of these two projects the premises and the results failed to be aligned, and the consequences for the overall project, i.e. GINC itself. In this article I present a framework which more readily allows for following individual projects (and their eventual flops) not only inside the performance space but also in their relation to the variations in configuration of the overall experimental project/group.