Page 38 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

The topography of composing work 27

words: “If they say, they’re keen on it and it’s fun to play, then the race is
pretty much won. Because if they’re convinced themselves, they convey that to
the audience.” Composers treat musicians as their first audience because
they are aware how vital their “impact on the musicians” is, as Alexandra
Karastoyanova-Hermentin puts it.
This insight has repercussions on the way the composition process unfolds
and on the performance. Contemporary art music is on the fringes of the
public’s perception of music, at least in German-speaking countries, where
tonal music and especially works and styles from the 18 th and 19 th centuries
predominate. As a result, neither conservatoires in their instrument tuition
nor many professional orchestras tend to tackle with any perseverance the
new musical forms that have emerged in the past decades. This means that it
is not always easy for composers to work together with musicians, as Karlheinz
Essl discovered: “Many orchestra musicians don’t want to leave their comfort
zone. I mean, they’re specialists, they have perfect mastery of their instrument,
but within a specific framework of tradition and repertoire, which is fixed. […]
And it’s often a very lengthy process to explain and implement things with
such musicians.”
For a collaboration to be successful, it is important not only that the parti-
cipants have experience in similar music practices, but also that they connect
on the interpersonal level. Veronika Simor stresses this: “Human contact is
very important for convincing people at all stages of the process that what’s
written down there is good.” Composers occasionally find themselves in a
position of throwing down the gauntlet: they confront musicians with new
challenges to be mastered. Mutual respect is therefore crucial for both sides – but
cannot always be mustered. For composers, encountering and working together
with unknown musicians or with an acclaimed ensemble can be fraught with
tensions. An experienced composer admits, “It’s not so easy to establish your
authority in front of an orchestra that’sseen it all.” And as another interviewee
states, “You can’t allow them not to take the piece seriously.”
In the preliminary stages, the physical encounter between composers and
musicians or ensembles is mediated by the score. The score is the point of
departure for rehearsals and can be interpreted as a set of instructions (see
also Cook 2001: § 15). In some cases, these instructions are set down with
maximum precision, as Katharina Klement explains: “My intention is to put
it down on paper in a way that’s as clear as possible so that there’s not much
left to explain.” Other composers renounce noting down everything to the last
detail because they view it as unnecessary. In Judith Unterpertinger’s experience,
it is “often totally absurd to write down everything in detail when I know the
musician would have to sit down and rehearse it for half a year. If I explain
what I want really well, they can do just as good a job, but they’ll have
understood it in ten minutes.”
Historically, there have been different approaches to the question of whether
a score should be annotated down to the very last detail or whether passages
should be deliberately kept vague. In his study of notation systems in New