Resumo

In the absence of pre-specified rules and prescriptive materials, free improvisation presents itself as impermeable to traditional analysis. Consequently, developing guidelines for teaching free improvised music may be considered difficult. In this paper rhetoric is presented as a suitable area for establishing a discourse on free improvisation and useful to understand this music in structural and intentional terms. Examining the author's own development as improviser and the results from improvisation projects, this investigation has set out to propose that the ethics of the social environment in which this music activity is realised is crucial for understanding this practice. The creation of form and content collectively has uncovered ethics as the primary force in establishing the style of free improvised music. Ethics, the driving force in rhetorical theory, helps us to understand this music aesthetically, opening ways for the development of pedagogical approaches. It appears that the realisation of this activity is important for developing individual expressiveness and may be a model for a new music educational system.