Page 15 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

4 Introduction

experience and training do play a constitutive role. Composing is a practice
because it creates something contingent: something that could also have been
different because it is characterised by aspects that are not explicable and not
fully graspable. This conception was articulated for the first time by Aristotle
th
and further elaborated in the 20 century by Ludwig Wittgenstein, John
Dewey, Martin Heidegger, Gilbert Ryle and Michael Polanyi, all of whom
underline the significance of practical knowing. This publication builds on
their approaches.
The concepts of knowledge, experience, intuition and ability may well have
frequently positive connotations. Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl
Mannheim and Michel Foucault emphasise, however, that the phenomena to
which these terms refer are interwoven with ideologies and constellations of
power. John Dewey adds a further epistemic consideration that denies
these terms any remaining neutrality: valuations – and thus also interests and
preferences – are involved in the process of developing knowledge, experience,
intuition and ability. In other words, the normativity of epistemic phenomena,
such as knowledge and experience, and the practical implementations asso-
ciated with them, is a constitutive ingredient (see Brandom 1994: 54). More-
over, knowledge, experience and mastery have in the past been related to
transcendental conceptions (e.g. the I, Reason, Spirit, Body) to assign them a
“secure” and universal foundation (for a critique see Taylor 1987/1995).
As a consequence, this publication will examine composing processes, and
artistic creative processes generally, from several, mutually complementary
theoretical perspectives:

Contingency: composing processes unfold with the direct or indirect partici-
pation of several people within given informal conditions (individual
resources of time, material objects, networks) and institutionalised condi-
tions (cultural organisations and funding bodies, contractual and copyright
law, discourses). These are very varied and can take different forms from
case to case. This creates multifarious possibility spaces that generate
different alternatives for action.
Teleo-affectivity: This should not be understood as a strict, structurally-
conditioned or even metaphysical teleology. Professional activities are con-
comitant with tasks, and have both an object of labour and reference
targets. They are affective because they activate subjectified components,
such as emotions, anticipatory intuition and the practical commitment of
the person involved.
Effect: every artistic activity has an object of labour. In the context of western
contemporary art music, composing usually creates a piece to be performed
in public. The generation of aesthetic experience – whatever the partici-
pants’ definition of that concept may be – is usually the effect that compo-
sers and listeners strive for and expect (not always, and not always the only
effect). Achieving this effect often represents an important criterion for the
success of artistic efforts.