So what results from the improvisatory movement of composition and performance? From musical energeia grows an ergon – but an ergon that still remains within the play of musical energeia, and from which it cannot be disconnected. Indeed, we might more properly say that this ergon exists as energeia. Thus, improvisation provides a way of conceptualizing music that does not force us to choose between defining music as either ergon or energeia. Music that is improvised endures and is yet transitory. Being transitory, its existence is very much genetic, historical, changing; but, in that it likewise endures, it has a continuing identity.

To see music as essentially improvisational clearly has certain implications for musical activity. First, while we need not necessarily see the creation of musical works as incompatible with the activity of music making – indeed, they can be seen as interdependent – the telos of music making cannot be defined simply in terms of the creation of musical works, or even primarily so. Instead, the work becomes a means to the end of making music, not an end in itself.