The paper aims at giving an outline of an aesthetics of improvisation.
The first part studies concepts and properties of improvisation and treats of the features of improvisational art practices.
The second part works out a conceptual framework for a philosophical understanding of improvisation in music and in the arts. The thesis of an aesthetics of imperfection as conceptual background for the understanding of improvisational practices is compared with Luigi Pareyson's Theory of formativity. I argue that Pareyson's point works better, because of its conception of artistic perfection based on the idea of art as formational activity: a kind of making, that – like improvisation – invents the ways of its working in the very course of its action.
