Page 48 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

The topography of composing work 37

Versprechen” because he had already rehearsed with them and knew their
distinctive features. Following Fritz Böhle (2010: 161f.), this connection
between people and their preferred apparatus might be called a subjectivisation
of the relationship with work objects. This relationship encompasses discrete
kinds of knowledge of the apparatus that are almost impossible to explicate,
and which help composers make quick corrections or fine-tunings because
they know on a sensory and intuitive level how the apparatus works
optimally.
When discussing composers’ use of the piano, we spoke of a regulative
function. The piano assumes such a function because its tonal register struc-
tures the ongoing composition activity. With computers, we might talk of
their constitutive function in electro-acoustic music. Computers or technical
apparatuses make actions possible that would not be possible without them.
Here, we would like to revive Werner Rammert’s concept of “distributed
agency”, introduced at the beginning of the chapter. Since the connection
between person and computer is, so to speak, the pre-condition that makes
electronic music possible, the ability to act in composing electronic music
derives from it.
The interrelation between person and computer has another relevant
dimension. Technical innovation is constantly advancing the creative possibi-
lities that exist in electro-acoustic composition. The speed of technological
change, however, is both a blessing and a curse for composing and performing
electronic music, as Johannes Kretz explains: “There are those who say,
‘Okay, I won’t go along with that development, it’s good enough for me as it
is, I know it works, I feel at home with it, I just need one software and as long
as that works, I’m not interested in the others.’”

1.3.3 Writing materials
Writing takes place at various phases in the composition process and thus
acquires variable meanings. Typically, it will be involved first in outlining (e.g.
of concepts, time structures, rhythmic and dramaturgical instructions), then in
developing (e.g. of individual parts, pitches, sound groups, dynamics) and at a
later stage in writing up the details of all voices, finalising the score and pos-
sibly making small changes during or after rehearsals. The challenges and
problems confronting composers change accordingly (see also Chapter 2). For
instance, at the beginning of the composition process, composers can find the act
of writing too laborious and slow because that is the phase when inspiration
triggers associations. Writing “kills ideas”, as Judit Varga describes it. At other
times, the act of writing can, on the contrary, be a catalyst for generating new
ideas. The composer thinks pen in hand, as it were – or rather, the hand
thinks on behalf of the head. To use the words of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1977/
1998: 24e): “I really do think with my pen, for my head often knows nothing
of what my hand is writing.” It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that
all the composers we interviewed draw up their first Notate by hand.