Abstract

Understanding artistic improvisation as a risky practice is a commonplace in the descriptions that artists make of their performances as well as studies of artistic improvisation made by musicologists and theorists of the different arts. However, one may rightly question whether it is really plausible to understand the aesthetics of improvisation as an aesthetics of risk and, if it is, in what sense. After discussing the notion of «risk» by leaning on recent work on the aesthetics of improvisation, the article proposes the thesis that the aesthetics of risk in the context of improvisation is to be understood in light of the notion of «adventure» proposed by Simmel and reworked by Jankélévitch precisely in relation to improvisation.