In the twentieth century music was held to be autonomous, its own discourse within the field of reason governed by its own laws and not determined by some other realm, economics for instance. However, these laws gradually ruled more and more things taboo until what was easy and natural had to be abandoned and replaced with what was difficult and unpleasant. This trajectory cost classical music in Europe not just it’s audience but also its social effect, this music ceased to be at the heart of the culture.

It is s also claimed that music and art are sovereign, that they can exceed the bounds that reason sets them, they can be transcendent, and make the infinite present. This is the revolutionary potential of art and music. However the terms of autonomy and sovereignty have fallen into disuse, and the intellectual position of the arts and music is irrationality as art and music as become a commodity. If what art and music generate are new things, and if capitalism has already appropriated the irrationality of music, then it has also appropriated this productivity. What of free improvisation?

Noise and Capitalism (Mattin +Anthony Iles eds) is a collectively written book that seeks to explore the tension that exists within Noise and Music.It is based on the premise that the practice of improvisation in itself questions the foundations upon which intellectual property is based, such as: authorship, rights, restrictions, property, and the division between production and consumption. Improvisation and noise distribution, with their hardcore DIY (do it yourself) aesthetics, indicate alternatives to the mainstream means of production and distribution of music.

Eddie Prévost presents free improvisation in music as an alternative cultural form to the normal music in contemporary capitalism. The two features of normal music against which improvisation is distinguished are the score (produced by the creative genius of the composer) as the notation determining performance, and composition and rehearsal as the point at which the technical problems of musical production are resolved in advance of performance. Improvisation eschews both. Hence the oppositional or resistant techniques and practice of improvisation.