Page 152 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

Musicological perspectives on composing 141
transitions in the following key words: “Breathing – sputtering – stuttering –
whispering – choir – groove – slurring – speaking – singing – like an organ
[Orgeln]”. His decision to opt for this formal construction is probably partly
based on his memory of Herbert Eimert’s “Epitaph für Aikichi Kuboyama”
(1960–1962), an important work for Essl.
My brief sketch of the composing process up to this point was intended to
elaborate on the following aspects: experiments based on experience (for
instance, of software) grow out of an initial situation and first conceptual
ideas. As an electronic tool, the software is used both to implement ideas and
to serve as a source of friction or resistance. It can repeatedly yield results
which do not entirely stem from planning. Rather, they are only generated
through “excited improvising”, at least in part. To that extent, the electronic
tools also become agents. Let me point out here that the way the composing
process unfolds substantially concurs with the outline quoted above, which
Essl put forward in an essay almost 20 years earlier (see Essl 1997).
Essl’s statement that “the instrument is now completed” may need further
explanation. By this, Essl means that he considers the construction of the
electronic set-up to be concluded, in the sense that all means for direct com-
positional realisation now exist. To that extent, programming is always a part
of Essl’s composing work in itself. On his laptop, he developed the operator
interface shown in Figure 4.3. In addition to the interface, Essl also readied a
performance score that corresponded with the formal segments, in the shape
of an “action notation [Aktionsschrift] with comments”. This represents the
general steps of the composing process. Figures 4.4 and 4.5 show the first and
last formal segments.
The operator interface, whose complexity only becomes comprehensible
because of the “background”, and the performance score are wholly
calibrated for Karlheinz Essl’s needs as the performer. An interpretation by
others is therefore almost out of the question, or rather it would require
substantial adaptations. Essl directs the progression of the piece in all its
temporal and sonic dimensions by operating the various modulators –
interestingly, all recordings made by him run to about the same length of
12 minutes. In principle, however, the variants could diverge substantially.
In a performance situation, with Essl interpreting the piece, we must also
take into account the body as designing element. Essl indicates that operat-
ing the modulators, especially when working on the seamless transitions,
requires a high degree of fine-motor skills: “[it is] easy to play the wrong
note”, “it really is precision work!” That is why it was important for him to
perform in the standing position: “You yourself start to get into the groove –
what a tacky expression. And this getting-into-the-groove creates other
movements. And they in turn shape the sound result.”
The role of the body in the composing process is undoubtedly hard to
grasp. Conventionally, it plays a marginal role at best. And in the case I have
described, the body only “spoke up” during the performance – although, in this
case in particular, the performance can admittedly not be neatly distinguished