Page 100 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

Orchestrating different forms of knowledge 89

reflexively when the person concerned directs his or her attention onto his or
her body’s activities. Karlheinz Essl, for instance, describes his posture during
performances as follows:

My hands are vital during performances. I mean, the whole physicality of
my fingers and also my movements while standing. That’s why I make my
reference recordings and then perform my piece standing, and not sitting
down. […] I mean, I’m sitting down while developing the piece. But when
I’m performing I’ll stand whenever possible. […] It gives you a different
posture than when you’re sitting down. You’re not flexible sitting down.
[…] Standing, you yourself start to get into the groove – what a tacky
expression. And this getting-into-the-groove creates other movements.
And they in turn shape the sound result. So I’m convinced that when I do
the whole thing sitting down, I’m not as responsive as I am standing.

During playing and trying-out, intuitive sentient judgements are made: “it
fits” or “it sounds right”. But what does the pronoun “it” refer to here? Why
not have an “I” as the subject of the sentence? We could simply point to lin-
guistic conventions and refrain from further interpretation. But when we ask
composers, they refer to the immediacy of these judgements-by-the-body: they
do not make their decisions after analytical reflection. According to Maurice
Merleau-Ponty (1945/2005: 114f.; see also Dreyfus 2002; Shusterman 2008:
63f., 67ff.), bodily perception has a gestalt effect, that is to say, it generates
whole and intelligible impressions rather than collecting elementary and
unrelated information. And the gestalts that it generates culminate in these
judgements that feel like direct evidences and certainties. Michael Kahr, for
one, prefers composing on the piano because, while playing and trying out, “I
[develop] a sense on the piano: now it fits. […] For me, composing also has a
physical aspect. […] For example, if you play a rhythmic figure, that figure has
a certain feel on the piano. Some figures are angular and have sharp edges.
They don’t feel nice.” (On the significance of the body as a source of music,
see also Shilling 2005: 127–132; Crossley 2015: 483ff.) Alongside the embo-
died gestalt perception, there is also an embodied memory and an established
sense of time for processes and chronology, which develop through repeated
rehearsing. Karlheinz Essl knew that his piece “Herbecks Versprechen” lasted
about 11 minutes and 30 seconds, “but I deliberately didn’t write it down”.
He developed an “internal timing” during rehearsals and was thus able to do
without an external chronometer. This takes not only practice but concentra-
tion and discipline as well. Essl remarks: “You do have to watch out that
you’re not swept away by your feelings and start clowning around. Obviously,
that’s always a bit of a risk when you’re playing live. You have to discipline
yourself and say: ‘Right, this part of the piece is done, now you have to keep
going.’ But without a stopwatch.”
Even though the composing of contemporary art music is generally
viewed as an “intellectual activity”, composers rely heavily on their bodies.