Page 106 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

Orchestrating different forms of knowledge 95

knowledge of relevant pieces of music, is so self-evident for them that most of
them did not explicitly refer during the interviews to their embeddedness in a
specific musical tradition. Usually, this embeddedness would go unremarked
because the composers’ shared tradition is both the bedrock for their current
participation in the contemporary-music sector and fertile ground for new
ideas. Shared knowledge and common preconceptions about the significance
of artefacts (other pieces of music, instruments, software) and the relevant
institutional structures of the music sector are praxeologically important
conditions (see Shove, Pantzar & Watson 2012: 56f.). The relationship
between composers and their musical tradition, shared knowledge, material
objects and practical frameworks is hence predeterminant in that it founds
composers’ agency and enables them to participate in a practice community.
There is no doubt that the similarity in composers’ education – their
“shared histories of learning” (Wenger 2002: 86) – is very marked in classical
and contemporary art music. It consolidates a shared musical practice and
facilitates cooperation. But learning does not end with the composers’ gra-
duation from academic or postgraduate studies. Rather, it continues during
their work as musicians and composers because “practice [… is] the site of
knowing” (Nicolini 2011). Some learning experiences have a long-term effect
since learning shapes habits and work routines. Many composers, for instance,
when commenting on their way of writing indicate that they learned to work
by hand from the beginning and have kept the habit to this day.
Equally, composers make fundamental new learning experiences during their
professional lives that cause them to change direction. Their perspective of cer-
tain aspects changes. This new way of seeing, or rather the dawning of an aspect,
points to the reciprocal relationship between seeing, knowing and interpreting.
As Wittgenstein (1953/1968 Part II xi: 193e) explains it with reference to picture
puzzles: “But we can also see the illustration now as one thing now as another. –
So we interpret it, and see it as we interpret it.” Noticing specific aspects is thus
an important element in every practice domain (see Fleck 1947/1986: 129–151).
It is an ability, linked to composers’ individual sensibilities and aesthetic aspira-
tions. Marko Ciciliani makes the following comment on the shift in the interplay
between hearing, understanding and valuing:

If I really think back to the very beginning, I realise I sometimes attached
huge importance to things when I was composing, whereas today I can just
say to myself, I think that’s unimportant right now. For example, in some
contexts, tone pitches simply make no difference. And fifteen years ago, I
would’ve lost sleep over whether to put in an F or an F sharp, things like
that. Now, in certain situations, I just write something, anything. […] I think
perhaps I see more clearly now which parameters play an important part in
my music and which are simply less important.

Here Ciciliani not only points to a shift in his thinking, but also to a quali-
tative change in his making. Sensory experiences change with his increasing