Page 37 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

26 The topography of composing work

work. In a diary, she noted key points: “Results of the internal [strategies]:
photos, drawings, images (for me: sounds, concerts, compositions, etc.).
Results of the external strategies: social sculpture, utopia of a ‘better’ world,
changing society.” Karlheinz Essl gives a different example in his composition
diary. He played his wife a recording from rehearsals of an unfinished com-
position which he is going to perform himself. Her impressions and ideas
influenced the way he subsequently proceeded:

I play Eva the recording from Friday. She’s enthusiastic and wants to
know how many loudspeakers I’ll be using at the premiere. I’d only
intended to use two. Eva rightly says that the piece would be enhanced by
surround setting – if the audience were surrounded by the sounds. When
we listen to it again, I direct her attention to the critical passage with the
Flanger melody. She asks, “You mean the bit with the electric guitar?”
No electric guitar is used here, yet clearly there’s an impression of foreign
elements. Further confirmation for me that I need to change this section.

A special kind of collaborative relationship arises when composers jointly
develop interdisciplinary performances with artists from other fields, for
instance dancers or video artists. Many composers see such encounters as
positive and inspiring challenges. But there can be tensions, too. One composer
discussed the fact that ideas or feedback from other people do not always
facilitate the decisions that a composer sooner or later has to take: “I’dsay it’s
emotionally more difficult on another level, because at some point I just have
to be totally inside the piece. And then I basically have to remove myself from
my thing and find a compromise. And that’s when you start arguing.” Other
artists’ knowledge, and the attempt to integrate it into one’s own creative
processes, can provoke conflicts and lead to inconsistencies. To avoid such
conflicts, composers who like interdisciplinary work and often undertake it
tend to form lasting teams.

During rehearsals

The encounter between composer, conductor and performing musicians
within the rehearsal setting is a collaborative situation. In general, one might
expect to see a traditional hierarchical relationship between a higher-ranking
composer, who creates art, and lower-ranking musicians, who reproduce it.
Social reality, however, is more complex. Stephen Davies (2003: 252) considers
the fundamental role of performers to be one of both responsibility and
creativity: “There is a gap between a performance and the features that con-
stitute the work the performance is of. Where works are specified by scores,
the performance always is more detailed than the piece. […] Provided the
performer is in control of the sounds she produces, it is she who decides how
to bridge this gap.” From the composers’ point of view, musicians likewise
play a key role in successfully performing their work. In Bernhard Gander’s