Page 50 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

The topography of composing work 39

a better overview and easier organisation of work steps. It also makes clear
once again that individual-habit motives and pragmatic motives cannot be
entirely separated. What is pragmatic about structuring and ordering work
steps and results is determined by the individual composer’s way of working.
Third, the choice of writing media reveals an epistemic motive. The choice
of paper, for instance (white or lined paper, graph or note paper, transpar-
encies, etc.), or the colour of the pens can be an expression in concrete terms
of a composition idea. Even such simple working materials can fulfil gen-
erative functions in the creative process and trigger associations that will
provide a stimulus for further composing. “I’ve now shifted back to paper
from writing on the computer”, Judit Varga says, “because I need it. I love
paper. It’s a bit like painting and drawing for me. I have a visual impression of
how thick the paper is, and at any point I can flick through the pages for a
while. It does give me something to hold onto.” In his piece “Les Cris des
Lumières” (2014), Clemens Gadenstätter initially made his first drafts –
“roughs”– on unlined smooth A4 paper. On this, he noted his first ideas
about “materials, their relations to each other, thematic conditions and their
consequences, and on subsequent pieces of paper ideas for the various stages
of working on the material, a vague idea for a timescale, formal processes,
etc.” This “guideline for creating a structure”, as Gadenstätter calls it, might
well be discarded or modified in the course of the writing process. In a later
work phase, he writes on A3 graph paper (see Figure 1.2), for instance to note
down the time structure or pitch, as he explains:

The graph paper drafts show very nicely that I’m thinking contra-
punctually. There’s a voice here, another voice here, and this is the light
voice [referring to the use of light in his piece “Les Cris des Lumières”].
Many details are fixed in this sketch layer – they’re the results of other
sketch layers, which are in sketch books. The only things still to do are
ordering them into score format, and putting the exact pitch relations
and details on the sound qualities of certain instruments.

He uses notepaper for working out all composition details and thus the score. The
score is then transferred to the computer where – as described above – he reworks
it once more. The kind of paper thus changes depending on the state of the com-
position process, the directionality of thought and the required accuracy of the
notating: the change in paper follows the practical logic of the creative process.

1.3.4 Summary
In this section, we have pointed out the regulative function of material objects:
they shape the composition process through their gestalt, culturally estab-
lished uses and practical habits. In certain cases, material objects achieve a
constitutive function by making actions possible that would be impossible
without them. Material objects thus play a fundamental role in practices of