Page 102 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

Orchestrating different forms of knowledge 91

Obviously you have too much material at the beginning. But at some
point the writing process develops its own dynamic, and it falls into place
to quite an extent. […] I often have a kind of superficial way of looking at
it. That means the stuff is lying on my desk and I have a quick look at it.
At that point, it’s much more important to have something jump out at
me. Because I know if I want to look for something, the filters are already
set in some special way and I’ll find the right thing.

Once again, the statement contains the anonymous pronoun “it”. However, it
falls into place by itself only for those who have mastered composing.
Experienced practitioners have their “filters” and are thus in a position to find
and do the right thing without analytical reflection. Philosophers frequently
5
use the term “intuition” to describe this phenomenon. Examples from our
empirical material draw a complex picture of the intuitive work mode.

I: And when or how do you know that it fits? I mean, what makes you
certain?
Katharina Klement: Well, I think you feel it straightaway. Today I
thought: “Hmm, how did [Iannis] Xenakis do that?” And you look at his
scores and see how he divides time. Or you read articles about it. At these
points, I look in my sketchbooks and I’m glad that I keep collecting stuff
like that. […] And then this morning, I returned to the idea and listened to
my sound installations – they’re electronic sounds, obviously – and I
thought: “Well, why not try and transcribe it for instruments?” And with
that, I got some clarity and thought: “Ah, now it fits, I’ll do it like this.”
And then there was suddenly a lightness to it. And I thought: “Right, this is
the path I’m taking!” I mean, those are experiential values, perhaps. […]
That really made me happy. I thought: “Well, why not do it like this, it’s
much smarter this way.” There is a coherence.
I: When you say it made you happy, did you feel happy as well?
Katharina Klement: Oh, yes. And then I try to go on in the state I’min
because you’ll be sorry if you take a path that you believe you absolutely
have to take. Because then you have to stay on that path to the end,
obviously. […] That’s why I prefer to spend more time in the beginning
phase, where the decisions are taken that really lay the foundations.
Where I can’t yet really gauge the whole thing myself. You can’t know at
that stage how to approach it properly. A great deal only develops as the
work unfolds, but it still depends on the first decisions. And so I at least
try to be careful that I stick to mine.

Subjective certainty has many anchor points, such as models and convictions,
experience and somatic sensations. Together, they enable agency and also
explain the perceived immediacy of the composers’ aesthetic judgement (see
Born 2010: 192). Recognising whether a composition concept or specific
sound results are coherent has less to do with a logical rigour conferred by