Page 147 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

136 Musicological perspectives on composing

the scope of this chapter, I will need to limit myself to briefly sketching my
analytical strategies and the focus of my questioning.

The case studies
Joanna Wozny was asked how the start of “some remains” came about and
what strategies for continuing she used (Figure 4.1). Several components were
important in the early stages of the piece (given the parameters of the Ensemble
Aventure, its instrumentation had already been decided as flutes, bass clarinet,
piano, viola, double bass). To begin with, the composer remembered a concert
with specific double-bass sounds that particularly stayed in her mind. Another
important association was the idea of a flock of birds or shoal of fish, a visual
or extra-musical idea that was in a way already charged with latent sound – not
that this could have been clearly verbalised. For a few days, Wozny’scomposing
was shaped by developing multiphonics for the flute and clarinet. How and
when exactly these initial conditions marked her consciousness to the extent
that they became the concrete idea for a musical opening, she cannot say. The
first idea, of representing a process of motion, was also discarded soon after-
wards and replaced by a rather indeterminate quality. This can be seen in the
score in the differently articulated, partly noisy events “in the sound”, which are
complemented by “rubbed” string sounds from inside the piano. An important
decision in the opening phase of the composing process was to work on the
remembered double-bass flageolets, which also seem to have contributed to the
decision to assign multiphonics to the flute and clarinet. This touches on a
crucial aspect of decision-making, namely the role of the instruments as agents.
The relationship that develops when the imagination of the composer meets
the potential sound world of instruments is best outlined in the words of Erika
Fischer-Lichte (2014: 472): “The relationship between humans and the
things they use to act cannot in any way be described as the relationship of an
autonomous subject to a totally available object.” Drawing on Bruno Latour
(2005: 63ff.), instruments can also be labelled as “actants”, which, with their
specific sound potential, create an opposite and a source of friction for the
composing subject in the shape of material conditions. The consequences of
these conditions ultimately cannot be fully comprehended (especially in combi-
nation with other instruments). This turns instruments into agents. Additionally,
it also gives the process a certain momentum of its own, which may (or may not)
lead the composer to diverge from existing intentions. The “material conditions”
of sounds are not definitively present “as such”, but depend on the composers’
historical location and experiential horizon. (Obviously, it is also relevant here
whether, and to what extent, composers work on and with instruments by
themselves or cooperate with instrumentalists.)
Once the shape of the beginning to “some remains” was mostly in place,
Wozny worked on developing possibilities for making progress within the
material conditions set by the sound textures she had already developed. To
name one example of the consequences of material conditions, the structure