Page 84 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

The processuality of composing 73

percussive interventions, which are created by clapping. This clapping
also represents the link to the body that I’d been looking for in this piece
because I also use it in the other parts of the cycle. There are two things
here. First you clap your hands and then you clap against your cheeks
while shaping different vowels [makes the sounds by clapping his hand
against his hollow cheek]. […] I then assigned the “a, e, i, o, u” the text
that will probably be the title of the piece, too: lips, ears, ass, nose, boobs.
Lips for i, ears for e, ass for a, nose for o and boobs for u. The five areas
of the body represent the meta topic of the piece, which is of course
plastic surgery.

Since the background texture of “Gloomy Sunday” has now been settled,
Marko Ciciliani starts to work out individual aspects of the piece. This is
based on an act of understanding, which in turn is the result of a process of
exploring. However, we need to keep in mind that the diary is a narrative –
Ciciliani’s documentation suggests a certain sequence of activities. It appears
that he first identified the structure of the basic musical material (“Gloomy
Sunday”), then created an abstraction and then developed the violin part.
This gives the impression that Ciciliani divides his work into analytically dis-
ciplined steps and then works his way through them. However, an incremental
procedure is more likely here, meaning that no work task can be considered
finished at the point in time when another is tackled. We view Marko
Ciciliani’s procedure as a complex one and assume that the various activities
are interlinked.
Some aspects of musical understanding – such as the humour and irony in
a piece – are not openly addressed and thus remain implicit. This demon-
strates that understanding is the production of meaning integrated into
making. Irony is expressed in various ways, for instance by clapping onto
various areas of the body. This action, as Marko Ciciliani explained when
asked, is intended to have an absurd and theatrical aspect where spoken texts
are synchronised with an at times virtuoso drum part. The texts he uses derive
from various pop-music lyrics that comment on different areas of the body.
The analogy between the gradually souped-up car and plastic surgery, or the
very cloying use of the organ during the drum part, can be similarly
interpreted.
In January 2014, Ciciliani continues to work on the composition and on 11
January refers to the “polishing” and “fine-tuning” still to be done. These
statements indicate that he is no longer considering fundamental changes.
Rather, the path he has chosen is continually confirmed by his making. They
also hint that the goal of his creative making is now to finalise the composi-
tion. As his written notes corroborate, Ciciliani is now mulling specific details.
On 12 January 2014, for instance, there is a remark about a change in key
with a time indication to the nearest second. On 18 January 2014, he jots
down the idea for a “sudden ‘decompression’” so as to underline part of the
composition (the clapping). The progression of the composition work also