Impromptu
musical form
An impromptu (, French: [ɛ̃pʁɔ̃pty] , loosely meaning "offhand") is a free-form musical composition with the character of an ex tempore improvisation as if prompted by the spirit of the moment, usually for a solo instrument, such as piano. According to Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, Johann Baptist Cramer began publishing piano pieces under the (sub-)title of "impromptu." (AMZ, Mar. No II, 1815, col. 6), which seems to be the first recorded use of the term impromptu in this sense.
Form usage
Since the very concept of unpremeditated, spur-of-the-moment inspiration without studied care is at the heart of Romantic artistic theory, it did not take long before the first generation of Romantic composers took up the idea. Others were:
Frédéric Chopin composed 4 Impromptus, including the famous Fantaisie-Impromptu.
Jan Václav Voříšek was the first one to compose impromptus published under that title, in 1822.
Franz Schubert published two sets of four Impromptus for piano, Op. 90 and Op. 142 (1827).
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This entry incorporates text from “Impromptu” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.