Page 149 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

138 Musicological perspectives on composing

be reproduced here in detail. However, it offers a clear insight into the fact
that these explorations also repeatedly led to unpredictable constellations that
had to be discarded or changed. Often an exploratory phase is concluded with
a rather indeterminate feeling –“now it fits”. Such situative knowledge
cannot be viewed as being independent of the immediate composing process,
and therefore corresponds to what John Dewey calls “knowing”, as opposed
to “knowledge”, which refers to a possession of knowledge independent of
activity (see Dewey & Bentley 1949). Wozny’s first sketch page may give a
vague impression of her “picking up”; a detailed “decoding” would admittedly
require the creator’s help (see Figure 4.2).
Some details are easy to relate to the beginning of the score (for instance
the initial notes of the piccolo flute, b, and the bass clarinet, G sharp);
others much less so. Some of the writings may only have been meaningful
for the composer at a certain moment in the composing process. In any case,
we can guess at the various dimensions of her work with the sound textures
and their parameters: remarks about pitch are written next to rhythmic,
dynamic and articulatory instructions, and always in connection with the
instruments to which the sounds are assigned. This indicates a fundamental
traitofWozny’s compositional thinking, which she characterised as follows
in an interview: she cannot imagine pitch without duration, and especially
not without timbre. And imagined notes or sounds are always associated
with instruments. It must be remembered, however, that these internal sound
ideas are unlikely to occur in a form that is representable in writing. Tran-
scribing something as musical notation can be seen as a process of translation, in
that sound ideas have to be made to fit into the conditions afforded by written
signs – a process often perceived as a loss. This also, however, alters the level of
thinking. Formal technical compositional knowledge, work on proportions and
development strategies join with the composer’s internal imagination: sounds of
imagined length have to be transformed into sounds with specific written-down
durations.
Wozny informed us at about the halfway point in her composing process
(late March 2014) that she had been listening to pieces by a variety of com-
posers. Her composing seems to have stalled, and she sought inspiration from
other composers who, in her experience, might offer her general pointers or
be catalysts for this particular piece. However, it was exceptional for a com-
poser to specifically let us know that, as the composing process unfolded, she
or he deliberately sought out a historical discourse of composition. Any
experience gained by listening and looking at scores mostly seems to play an
unconscious role, which cannot be grasped or verbalised by the composer, let
alone by academics.
My analysis of Karlheinz Essl’s composing process includes a closer look at
the construction of his “instrument” mentioned above, so as to illuminate the
tension between the original material, his aesthetic ideas and the decisions he
made during his exploring. The starting material was Ernst Herbeck’s recital
of the following poem (Herbeck in Navratil 1977: 39 – our translation):