Page 83 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

72 The processuality of composing
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process : on the one hand, he goes through his notebook and reminds himself
of his composition ideas; on the other hand, he “plays around” and “listens
to” already completed work.

[15 Dec 2013] I haven’t worked on the piece for a good month. […]So
how do I get back into it? Yesterday, I played around with my instruments
for a bit. One new addition is that I bought a specific organ software
module. In the “Suicidal Self Portraits” cycle I keep using organ sounds.
And for the performance at the Deutschlandfunk [a public radio station
in Germany], I’d like a set-up that’s as stable as possible. […] Since
Mainstage [a software] has turned out to be less robust than it seemed to
begin with, using it seems risky. I won’t be able to do without Mainstage
entirely, but I’d like to outsource as much of it as possible. […]I’ve also
had this idea that car noises could have a sort of surrogate function for
the topic of plastic surgery. I mean, putting noble car sounds and not so
noble ones side by side. […] And then I downloaded 14 different car noises
from the Internet – for example of doors slamming shut – staggered them
a bit and tried to sort them to see if they could make a kind of heart-beat
rhythm. Again, the quality is not as apparent as I’d hoped. But in prin-
ciple, something should still be possible here.

When Marko Ciciliani re-enters the composition process, he first directs his
attention away from composition creation and onto technical realisability in
a performance setting. He anticipates possible software-related problems
and tries to minimise risks. His valuing of the instrument also goes hand in
hand with an experimental exploring of it and a practical understanding of its
fundamental technical characteristics. Ciciliani tries out the newly acquired
organ module so as to familiarise himself with it. The diary entry also shows
that he thinks in analogies. The association of a “heart-beat rhythm”– created
by car doors slamming in rhythmic sequence – with plastic surgery can be
interpreted as the result of preceding composition ideas and simultaneously as
a catalyst for new ideas (see Bailes & Bishop 2012). Such analogies also make
an appearance later in the diary, for instance the use of clapping on areas of
the body to emphasise the importance of the body for the piece’s theme.

[5 Jan 2014] I’ve developed a violin part, which is quite schematic per se,
but based on the melody of “Gloomy Sunday”. The song really consists
of a rising – it really consists of a triad in minor, which ascends over an
octave. Hang on, it sounds like this [plays the tune on the organ]. And
then there’s a revolving melodic motion. So what I’ve taken from that
schematically is that ascent [plays melody] and then this descending
motion of the melody [plays melody], which happens stepwise. Out
of that, I developed a melody scheme for the whole pitch range of the
violin that consists quite simply of broken triads in minor [plays melody]
and then descends [plays melody]. […] On top of that, I made some