Improvising - an introduction to the psychology of the moment

Contributors

Program

The lecture introduces the FZM lecture series "Improvising: Spontaneous Creativity in Art and Everyday Life" and sheds light on fundamental psychological principles associated with improvisation across a range of topics. The focus will initially be on psychological concepts of creativity and the question of the extent to which improvisation can be located between spontaneity and the recall of known material. In addition to individual experiences, the dependence on genre, convention and situation plays a decisive role, which has an impact not least on the artistic handling of the imperfect or supposedly flawed. In a second part, socio-psychological dimensions of interaction in improvising ensembles and of tuning into one another will be discussed, which have increasingly inspired scientific fields outside of music as well.

Prof. Dr. Clemens Wöllner is Professor of Systematic Musicology at the College of Music Freiburg and Managing Director of the FZM. His research focuses on music-psychological interpretation research, experimental aesthetics and teaching-learning research.

The lecture is part of the FZM lecture series "Improvising: Spontaneous Creativity in Art and Everyday Life".

In the summer semester 2026, the Freiburg Research and Teaching Center(FZM) is organizing a lecture series on the topic of improvisation from various specialist perspectives and facets. In addition to ten lectures by members of the FZM and guests, which will take place on Wednesdays in the lecture hall of the University's Musicology Department, events with improvisational-musical performances or cross-genre performances are planned on five Monday evenings at the College of Music, two of which are part of the FZM event series "musik + wissen".

Here you can find the short program (pdf) (this file is not barrier-free) with all individual dates of the public lecture series.

The Freiburg Research and Teaching Center (FZM) is a joint institution of the College of Music and the University campus Freiburg with the aim of mutual networking in music-related research and teaching.