Page 127 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

116 Musicological perspectives on composing

is what we demand of him” (Hausegger 1903: 366). A central aspect of
Hausegger’s method was an extensive survey of artists from various dis-
ciplines, in which he informed them of his research interests and confronted
them with a detailed catalogue of questions. This catalogue demonstrated a
level of differentiation lacking from most subsequent projects, which is why
we reproduce it in its entirety here:

Which external conditions have an influence on your willingness and
ability to engage in artistic creation? (loneliness? environment? external
stimulus; day, night; bodily disposition, etc.)
Where, in relation to your state and ability, do you see the difference
between moments of willingness to create and moments of reluctance?
How do you get the ideas for your artworks?
How do you proceed with the design, and what internal reasons convince
you to choose what design?
To what extent, and in what manner, do unconscious influences assert
themselves in this?
Do dreams or states of psychic exaltation play a role in your creativity?
Are you at all subject to vivid dreams or exalted states?
Do you sense the worth of a product made by you whilst willing to create,
in contrast to one made whilst reluctant to create?
How does this conviction about the work impose itself? As a vague feeling
or as knowledge based on certain attributes?
To what extent is your creating shaped by intentional or willed activities
and to what extent by unconscious or internally driven ones?
Does an interest in knowing or any particular desire (external purposes)
have any influence on your creative ability?
When and under what circumstances did your creative ability awaken for
the first time? (Hausegger 1903: 375f. – our translation)

The particular philosophical conception of a psychophysical subject that
clearly underpins the catalogue of questions as a whole is typical of its time,
as is the recourse to psychological states (“dreams”, “psychic exaltation”).
Hausegger’s desire to differentiate between “knowing” and “vague feeling” is
likely to derive from Leibniz’s distinction between obscure and clear knowl-
edge, but could also be analogous to the modern demarcation of explicit
versus implicit forms of knowledge. Even so, Hausegger also brings “bodily
dispositions” into play as decisive factors, although this is not necessarily
comparable with the dominant role the body assumes in more recent socio-
logical theories of practice. Finally, it is remarkable that the majority of the
artists contacted by Hausegger in 1896 were indeed prepared to respond to
his questions, a fact which runs contrary to the clichéd conception of artists
at the time not wanting to throw light on the enigma of their own creativity.
Some of them did with alacrity and interest; a few even quite extensively
(Wilhelm Kienzl, Felix Weingartner, Richard Strauss). In addition to those