TELLEF ØGRIM

Free improvisation is often treated as marginal or ahistorical, even in serious accounts of twentieth-century music. This essay argues that the problem is not the music, but the way music history is usually written. Using The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross as a reference point, it suggests another way of hearing improvisation — not as an exception to history, but as a practice that challenges how historical authority itself is organized. Free improvisation is often described as marginal in accounts of twentieth-century music. It appears as an outburst, a reaction, a moment of rupture — something that happens after styles have broken down rather than something that carries its own historical weight. In many narratives, it is treated less as a practice than as a symptom. Even in thoughtful and wide-ranging histories such as The Rest Is Noise, improvised music tends to remain at the edge of the story. It is acknowledged, sometimes vividly, but rarely allowed to reorganize how the story itself