Page 45 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

34 The topography of composing work

the keyboard in front of me, oh yes, D1 is the central pitch, and on either
side… I like having it here. But I don’t need it all the time.” Inscribed in the
piano keyboard is a knowledge of arrangements, which means that it can act as
a visual reference and cognitive prop during composing. Michael Kahr also
regularly uses the piano: “I elaborate my ideas at the piano. Often by impro-
vising. […] Since I’m a pianist, I can keep trying out ideas that way until I can
reproduce them on the piano as an entity. […] For me, there’s a physical aspect
as well. At the computer, the screen always obstructs me a bit …” Not every
composer confirms this central position of the piano. Judit Varga – who, as
well as composing, regularly performs as a pianist – reports that already
as a child, she “sat at the piano and notated. That was the obvious thing
to do because I was always practising the piano, and that’s whenIhadthe
ideas that I then wrote down. It worked well. But obviously the piano is
limited. And it’s killing my ideas.” Her comments point to the regulative
function of instruments. Instruments offer an orientation and can help to
structure ideas as sounds because of their gestalt, the culturally established
ways of using them, and the experiences that the user has of them.
Simultaneously, instruments tempt composers into gearing their composi-
tions towards familiar uses and experiences. The regulative function thus
has a dual character.
Composers also continuously enrich their knowledge of instruments
through their professional experience. This accumulation of knowledge pri-
marily operates on the sensory and practical level, in that composers master
various instruments or appropriate them in an experimental fashion – a
common approach in the musical avant-garde since the 1950s. Karlheinz Essl
explains that he “often worked together with a tuba player” and therefore
knows a fair amount about “what is possible with a tuba”. However, he does
not play the instrument himself and describes how he borrowed a tuba for a
composition and began “treating the tuba like a child that doesn’t even know
you’re supposed to blow into it. Once I took it and used it as a drum. So I
stroked it, rubbed it, scratched it, hit it, and fixed microphones to it to find
out how it sounds.”
Employing an instrument in line with its traditional use is the obvious thing
to do. However, the unknown possibilities which the instrument possesses
because of its material qualities – form, material or devices such as keys –
would thus remain unused. By examining the instrument’s material qualities
and characteristics in a manner that is far removed from the way it is con-
ventionally treated, a composer gradually explores its affordances. This discovery
process is playful and explorative, and has no clearly fixed criteria. Karlheinz
Essl’s reference to his childlike naivety chimes with a topos that has been a
part of our cultural discourse since German Romanticism (Friedrich Schiller,
Philipp Otto Runge et al.). It implies that, in his or her artistic practice, an
artist could employ an object without presuppositions and without being in
any way limited by tradition. In the quoted example, however, there was pre-
existing knowledge of the instrument, which was then extended and modified