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The processuality of composing 77
2 Ernst Herbeck (1920–1991) was an Austrian poet who spent many years in the
Gugging state psychiatric hospital.
3 “Life is beautiful / quite as beautiful as life. / Life is very beautiful / we learn it; life; /
Life is very beautiful. / How beautiful life is. / Life starts out beautiful. / So (beautifully)
hard it is too.” (Herbeck in Navratil 1977: 39 – our translation.)
4 In October 2016, Karlheinz Essl gave a public lecture at Helsinki’s Aalto University
on the context of “Herbecks Versprechen” and the software he had used – see
http://www.essl.at/works/herbeck.html.
5 John Dewey (1916/1941: 164) writes: “To ‘learn from experience’ is to make a
backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy
or suffer from things in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes a
trying; an experiment with the world to find out what it is like; the undergoing
becomes instruction – discovery of the connection of things.”
6 This artistic demand can be seen, for instance, in a jazz improvisation, which is con-
stituted, inter alia, by its ephemeral nature and the imperative of the non-repetitive
associated with it. In turn, this imperative can “only” act as an ideal and not be posited
as categorical since improvisation is no creatio ex nihilo (see Niederauer 2014: 182).
7 We use the term “thick description” in reference to Clifford Geertz (1973: 3–30)
who interprets cultural actions from a quasi-internal practice perspective. Andrew
Pickering (1995: 17) also follows this by stressing the importance of intentionality,
since practice is “typically organised around specific plans and goals”.A “thin
description” would therefore exclude the composers’ intentions.

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