Composing Processes and Artistic Agency PDF

Composing Processes and Artistic Agency
This monograph carries out an in-depth investigation into compositional

processes, shedding new light on the components and conditions that constitute
artistic agency. Artistic agency relies on the interlocking of such activities that
emerge from various propositional and non-propositional (experiential, corporeal,
sensory) forms of knowledge – listening, feeling, imagining, trying out, reflect-
ing, noting and correcting, which represents a small selection of the multi-
faceted composing activities. The book develops an understanding of artistic
agency and mastery in its fundamentally social nature, through the important,
though largely ignored output of creative compositional processes.
Using a mixture of case studies and theoretical frameworks, this book will
appeal to sociologists, musicologists, creative studies scholars, and artists,
particularly those who teach composition or research on this topic, as well as
students of MA- and PhD-level.
Tasos Zembylas is a Professor of Cultural Institution Studies at the Department

of Music Sociology at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna,
Austria.
Martin Niederauer (Dr. phil.) studied sociology in Trier and Frankfurt am

Main. He currently works at the Faculty of Design at the University of
Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Germany.
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Tacit Knowledge in Composing
Tasos Zembylas and Martin Niederauer
Composing Processes and
Artistic Agency

First published 2018
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© 2018 Tasos Zembylas and Martin Niederauer
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Zembylas, Tasos. | Niederauer, Martin.
Title: Composing processes and artistic agency : tacit knowledge
in composing / by Tasos Zembylas and Martin Niederauer.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017001427 | ISBN 9781138215498 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315443928 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Composition (Music)--Psychological aspects.
Classification: LCC ML3838 .Z4 2017 | DDC 781.3--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017001427
ISBN: 978-1-138-21549-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-44392-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman

by Taylor & Francis Books
Contents
List of figures vii

Composing Processes and Artistic Agency: Tacit Knowledge in
Composing viii
TASOS ZEMBYLAS AND MARTIN NIEDERAUER
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
Starting-point and research interest 1
Empirical bases and research design 5
Overview of chapters 7
1 The topography of composing work 13

1.1 Parameters and resources 15
1.2 Peers and non-peers 20
1.3 Material objects: musical instruments, computers and writing
materials 33
1.4 Immaterial objects: discourses, notation systems, algorithms
and software 41
2 The processuality of composing 57

2.1 Exploring – Understanding – Valuing – Making 60
2.2 The cohesion of activities inherent in processes 63
2.3 The artistic creative processes as a dynamic interlinking of
actions 75
3 Orchestrating different forms of knowledge 80

3.1 The various manifestations of artistic practical knowing 82
3.2 The centrality of learning 93
3.3 Forms of knowledge in composing processes: an interpretative
order 97
3.4 The synergy between the various forms of knowledge 103
vi Contents
4 Musicological perspectives on composing 111
ANDREAS HOLZER
4.1 Perspectives on composing-as-process: a historical outline 112
4.2 The components of composing practices and their
interrelations: present-day observations 124
Index 152
Figures
1.1 The topography of composing work 14

1.2 From Clemens Gadenstätter’s sketchbook for “Les Cris
des Lumières” 40
1.3 From Katharina Klement’s sketchbook for “lichte Sicht”
for 18 strings 42
2.1 The interrelatedness of various partial activities 63
3.1 Artistic practical forms of knowledge 98
3.2 Formal propositional forms of knowledge 98
4.1 Example of notes from Joanna Wosny’s “some remains”,
first system 137
4.2 From Joanna Wozny’s sketches for “some remains” 139
4.3 Operator interface for Karlheinz Essl’s work “Herbecks
Versprechen” 142
4.4 Section 1 of Karlheinz Essl’s work “Herbecks Versprechen”
(breathing – sputtering) 143
4.5 Section 9 of Karlheinz Essl’s work “Herbecks Versprechen”
(singing – like an organ [Orgeln]) 143
4.6 Graphical representation of the sound files (F minor to E minor)
from Marko Ciciliani’s work “LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs
(Gloomy Sunday)” 146
4.7 The beginning of Marko Ciciliani’s work
“LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs (Gloomy Sunday)” 147
Composing Processes and Artistic Agency:
First published in German: Praktiken des Komponierens: Soziologische,

wissenstheoretische und musikwissenschaftliche Perspektiven. Wiesbaden:
Springer-VS, 2016.
Translation: Tom Genrich
The translation costs have generously been funded by the Austrian Science
Fund (FWF) and the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts.
Acknowledgements
This publication and the research project on which it is based would not have
been possible without the financial support of the Jubilee Fund of the City of
Vienna (project no. J 2/12) and the Austrian Science Fund – FWF (project
no. P 27211-G22). The University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna was
the third funding body, since Andreas Holzer, Annegret Huber, Rosa Reitsamer
and Tasos Zembylas are university employees and conducted their research as
part of their official duties. The three organisations are due equal credit.
Due to other commitments, Annegret Huber and Rosa Reitsamer were
unable to prepare a text contribution for this publication. As members of the
project team they achieved much, both in developing theory and in collecting
data. We would like to thank them for their specialist help and collegial support.
Our warmest thanks go to the many composers – and especially those of
the case studies – for their time, interest and confidence in our work: Helga
Arias Parra, Katherine Balch, Marko Ciciliani, Renald Deppe, Christof Dienz,
Karlheinz Essl, Viola Falb, Clemens Gadenstätter, Bernhard Gander, Matthew
Gantt, Michael Kahr, Katharina Klement, Alexandra Karastoyanova-
Hermentin, Johannes Kretz, Hans Lassnig, Mikhail Malt, Veronika Mayer,
Bertl Mütter, Javier Party, Christof Ressi, Veronika Simor, Emiliano Sampaio,
Kristoffer To, Marianna Tscharkwiani, Dan Tramte, Judith Unterpertinger,
Nancy van de Vate, Judit Varga, Antoine Villedieu, Joanna Wozny and
Bärbel Zindler. In addition, we would like to thank Nicolas Misdariis, Markus
Noisternig and Adrien Mamou-Mani of the Institut de Recherche et Coordi-
nation Acoustique/Musique in Paris, who facilitated our understanding of the
collaboration between software developers, composers and sound engineers.
Florian Grote provided guidance on the development and construction of
electronic instruments.
We also owe thanks to other colleagues, whose advice and competence we
benefited from in workshops and discussions: Fritz Böhle, Sarah Chaker,
Nicolas Donin, Michael Huber, Georg Hans Neuweg, Tanja Paulitz,
Katharina Rosenberger, Mihály Szivós, Alfred Smudits and Martin Winter.
Finally, we must also mention the help and support given by the organising
team of the ManiFeste 2015 at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination
Acoustique/Musique in making Martin Niederauer’s research visit possible.
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Introduction
Many contemporary composers describe, analyse and reflect on their creative

processes to explain their musical work to the public. Such self-reflection is
undoubtedly illuminating for those interested in music, and important for
musicological research. It should also be supplemented – every self-description
remains within the boundaries of what can be linguistically expressed, is
potentially prone to errors, and cannot illuminate beyond the beam of self-
reflection. “Blind spots” are not necessarily proof of a lack of reflexivity;
rather, they often point to something that cannot be reflected on. In other
words, they signpost something that is implicit in doing. The specialist term for
this is tacit knowing, and it will be the focus of this publication. We will there-
fore foreground neither individual composers nor their works, but creative
processes of composing. The composers’ self-descriptions – their “I” perspectives –
will be extended using sociologically and epistemically inspired perspectives to
elaborate contents which would otherwise remain in the background of situa-
tive awareness. We will further be directing our interest onto those components
and conditions that constitute artistic agency. This publication is aimed at
interested readers working in sociology, musicology, music psychology and
psychology of creativity as well as those who compose, teach and study, and
artists in general who conceive of artistic practical knowing not simply as an
accessory of their work, but as the genuine product of their practice. Our
remarks should also be understood to transcend the concrete empirical realm
to form building blocks for the advancement of a sociology of artistic practices
(see Zembylas 1997, 2014a; Zembylas & Dürr 2009; Niederauer 2014).
Starting-point and research interest

Although composing processes develop particular dynamics, compositions do
not write themselves – that is to say, the concept of agency seems highly
relevant. Following this conceptual line, our research interest is not about
uncovering and explaining creativity, but about a sociological and epistemic
subject: what constitutes artistic agency?
Empirical studies of artists’ creative processes risk not doing justice to the
particularity and variety of artistic practices by falling into reductionist
2 Introduction
abstractions. Individualist attempts at explanation emphasise personal and
cognitive traits that supposedly characterise the nature of a creative subject
(for further critique see Boden 2004: 11–15; Hill 2012: 91–93). Subliminally,
some analyses thus continue the genius narrative of the 18th century. Further-
more, some sociological approaches stress the central role of institutional
structures, gate-keeping, traditions, discourses or ideologies so as to explain
processes of valuation and appreciation. The creative process itself, however,
is viewed as either a black box or a negligible aspect. In this publication, we
will be developing a different approach to exploring artistic creative processes.
The starting-point for our undertaking is the following: we view artistic
practices in the context of different, always very particular tasks and challenges
which are specific to that branch of the arts. It may be sensible for analytical
reasons to separate artistic abilities and objectives from material, occupational
and institutional conditions. These aspects, however, must always be considered
in their interaction and interdependency. We therefore understand artistic
practices as collectively generated, shared modes of action that are socially
pre-structured and organised and have a practical directionality. Hence practices
are intrinsically associated with projects, tasks, commitments, goals, desires
and emotions. They also involve cultural artefacts (e.g. symbols, concepts,
conventions, rules) and material objects, and are constitutively interwoven
with various forms of knowledge, bodily skills and experiences (see Shove,
Pantzar & Watson 2012: 22–25, 35–37, 81–84). They occur in bundles related
to distinct practice domains (see Schatzki 2014; Zembylas 2014b). These
general features apply to composers as well: individual composers are situated
in a musical praxis, in specific art worlds; they interact with others; they
combine bodily doings and reflective analytical practices in the creative pro-
cess; they use material and immaterial artefacts; they negotiate the meaning
and value of their work with peers and other intermediaries; and so on. Com-
posing practices are conditioned by contextual aspects, unforeseeable events
and personal components, which are almost impossible to grasp and analyse
in their entirety and their permanent change. Agency in all its facets is thus
socially conditioned and based on participation and appreciation. Participa-
tion in a practice domain enables practice-bounded experiences and practice-
relevant knowledge. Both are decisive for developing the requisite mastery to
act competently and be appreciated by others. Simultaneously, while agency is
socially conditioned and shared, it is emphatically not impersonal or anon-
ymous. Rather, it is connected to those people who have made the relevant
learning experiences, rehearsed the skills and acquired precisely those abilities
and resources that are critical for their doing.
Agency is an abstract theoretical concept. Earlier theories explained agency
with reference to individuals’ cognitive capacities (e.g. intelligence, rationality,
imagination, judgement). More recent theories also tackle unplanned, spon-
taneous and improvised actions in varying situations and institutionally
structured spheres (see e.g. Giddens 1984; Emirbayer & Mische 1998). They
conceptualise agency as informed by learning, social participation and
Introduction 3
collaboration, skills and understandings as well as adequate resources, all of
which are relevant for a field of practice. They take into account not only
conscious components, but also those that are not accessible to reflection,
such as incorporated skills activated within a given situation.1 Agency is thus
associated with a practical sense – in other words, with an unmediated direct
knowing or intuitive feeling for the direction, mode and effect of an action.
Many contemporary theories thus no longer regard agency as individualistic.
People’s social interactions generate and reproduce a shared practical style of
thinking and acting. Since in many cases agents depend on the participation
of other people and objects to be able to carry out an action, their ability to
act must logically be conceived as a form of distributed agency. We put the
concept of agency in concrete terms by referring to a precise artistic field of
activity. Having researched other fields in the past (fine arts in Zembylas 1997;
literature in Zembylas & Dürr 2009; jazz in Niederauer 2014, 2016), our focus
in this publication is on composing processes in western contemporary art
music. We concentrate on the what, how and why 2 of specific doing in composing.
In this, we deliberately avoid the concept of creativity, which is currently
experiencing inflationary use (see Hargreaves, Miell & MacDonald 2012: v;
Deliège & Richelle 2006: 2) because it explains artistic achievement mostly as
the result of inherent and personality-related dispositions and problem-solving
skills. Even reconnecting creativity to societal conditions (see Amabile 1996;
Csikszentmihalyi 1996) does not change its basic traditional interpretation as
individualistic and is therefore unable to describe how people act (Coulter
1989: 104–111; Burnard 2012: 319f.).
From this preliminary praxeological position, we conceptualise human
doings and sayings not as the implementation of exclusively pre-formed contents
of consciousness or internalised patterns of action. While people can obviously
refer to their goals, reflections, plans, decisions and routines during a self-
description, we researchers must not forget that introspective and retro-
spective interpretations as a rule fulfil certain purposes of explanation and
justification. Even where a person follows a given pattern of action for a
concrete activity – say, cookbooks or parental-advice literature – he or she
needs to have aptitude, flexibility and at least some capacity for improvising
to competently carry out any non-trivial task. Art as “process of doing or
making” and mastery in the sense of “skilled action, ability in execution”
(Dewey 1934/1980: 47), which emerges from people’s connections with “tools,
environments, [and] other persons or groups of networked people” (Szivós
2014: 22), can never just be learned from instructions, patterns or sets of rules.
The latter are usually drawn up using language whereas doing is a coordinated
bodily implementation in a specific situation embedded in a practice. The
difference between the two is categorical (see Zembylas 2014c: 115–120):
instructions, plans and rules primarily capture the what of an action while the
how – the artful mastery (see Polanyi 1958: 50) – remains unrepresentable.
Accordingly, we view composing processes not as the mere application and
result of knowledge, experience and training – although knowledge,
4 Introduction
experience and training do play a constitutive role. Composing is a practice
because it creates something contingent: something that could also have been
different because it is characterised by aspects that are not explicable and not
fully graspable. This conception was articulated for the first time by Aristotle
and further elaborated in the 20th century by Ludwig Wittgenstein, John
Dewey, Martin Heidegger, Gilbert Ryle and Michael Polanyi, all of whom
underline the significance of practical knowing. This publication builds on
their approaches.
The concepts of knowledge, experience, intuition and ability may well have
frequently positive connotations. Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl
Mannheim and Michel Foucault emphasise, however, that the phenomena to
which these terms refer are interwoven with ideologies and constellations of
power. John Dewey adds a further epistemic consideration that denies
these terms any remaining neutrality: valuations – and thus also interests and
preferences – are involved in the process of developing knowledge, experience,
intuition and ability. In other words, the normativity of epistemic phenomena,
such as knowledge and experience, and the practical implementations asso-
ciated with them, is a constitutive ingredient (see Brandom 1994: 54). More-
over, knowledge, experience and mastery have in the past been related to
transcendental conceptions (e.g. the I, Reason, Spirit, Body) to assign them a
“secure” and universal foundation (for a critique see Taylor 1987/1995).
As a consequence, this publication will examine composing processes, and
artistic creative processes generally, from several, mutually complementary
theoretical perspectives:
Contingency: composing processes unfold with the direct or indirect partici-

pation of several people within given informal conditions (individual
resources of time, material objects, networks) and institutionalised condi-
tions (cultural organisations and funding bodies, contractual and copyright
law, discourses). These are very varied and can take different forms from
case to case. This creates multifarious possibility spaces that generate
different alternatives for action.
Teleo-affectivity: This should not be understood as a strict, structurally-
conditioned or even metaphysical teleology. Professional activities are con-
comitant with tasks, and have both an object of labour and reference
targets. They are affective because they activate subjectified components,
such as emotions, anticipatory intuition and the practical commitment of
the person involved.
Effect: every artistic activity has an object of labour. In the context of western
contemporary art music, composing usually creates a piece to be performed
in public. The generation of aesthetic experience – whatever the partici-
pants’ definition of that concept may be – is usually the effect that compo-
sers and listeners strive for and expect (not always, and not always the only
effect). Achieving this effect often represents an important criterion for the
success of artistic efforts.
Introduction 5
This book will integrate these perspectives and extend them with additional
dimensions. The role of several participants, persons and objects elucidates
the social and material dimension of composing practices. We will discuss the
temporal dynamics of composing processes so as to point out the inherent
interdependence of individual work phases. We will present the cognitive
and simultaneously somatic dimension of composing work by showing the
effects of several forms of knowledge, which we shall elaborate from an
interpretative description and analysis of doing.
Empirical bases and research design

In November 2013, we set out on a two-year research project entitled “Tacit
knowing in musical composition work”. Our team at the University of Music
and Performing Arts Vienna included Andreas Holzer (musicology), Annegret
Huber (musicology), Martin Niederauer (sociology), Rosa Reitsamer (sociology)
and Tasos Zembylas (cultural institution studies/philosophy). This inter-
disciplinary make-up was necessary to attain our primary research aims: first,
the documentation, description and analysis of complex composing processes
several months long; second, the examination of the components and conditions
of artistic agency.
Given the financial means available, we made the following practical decision:
to ensure that the collected data would be reasonably comparable, we limited
ourselves to contemporary art music. We contacted professional composers
aged between 35 and 55, with a professional experience of 10 to 30 years. All
of them live and work in Austria and are confronted with similar occupational
and institutional constraints. To generate an internal differentiation in the
data, we contacted composers with different composing methods. Our sample
thus included composers who create instrumental or electronic (or mixed)
works as well as composers who work with specific raw acoustic material.
The “empirical heart” of the study is made up of five case studies of compos-
ing processes in actu, i.e. as they happen. Our documentation covered the entire
timeframe of the respective composing process, from the initial idea to its pre-
miere. The fact that this documentation did not occur retrospectively distin-
guishes our research project from other musicological and music-psychology
analyses of creative processes, which mostly attempt to reconstruct, in hindsight,
the creation of an already finished work using sketches, recordings and other
material. These run the risk of ascribing goal-orientatedness or rational structure
to creative processes. Moreover, studies in music psychology in particular do not
analyse the whole creative process, but limit themselves to individual work
phases. And when musicologists exceptionally do discuss the entire creative pro-
cess, they usually examine the genesis of only one specific composition. Thus,
such analyses frequently lack the comparative perspective (see Chapter 4).
Our documentation strategy is based on a non-invasive concept. Permanent
shadowing of composers in their daily routines would have been impractical
6 Introduction
because it would have been felt to be disruptive and threatened the inform-
ality of their actions. The five composers we selected were therefore asked to
save all the notations, concepts, drawings and, where applicable, electronic
audio files; to keep a verbal or written work-day diary;3 and to be available
for interviews with us at various points in the composing process. In some
cases, we listened to the music files with the composers and clarified a number
of details from the diaries that we found preoccupying. Moreover, in two
cases we were able to observe and take videos of rehearsals with the ensembles
(similar methodologies and further reflections can be found in Collins 2007,
2012; Donin & Féron 2012; Roels 2013).
The case-study composers and their corresponding compositions4 were:
Marko Ciciliani: “LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs (Gloomy Sunday)”; premiered

on 6 April 2014 in Cologne, Germany, by the Ensemble Bakin Zub.
Karlheinz Essl: “Herbecks Versprechen”; premiered on 10 March 2013 in
Vienna, Austria, by Karlheinz Essl.
Clemens Gadenstätter: “Les Cris des Lumières”; premiered on 19
November 2014 in Vienna, Austria, by the Ensemble Ascolta.
Katharina Klement: “peripheries”; premiere of “peripheries, part I” on
11 February 2015 in Brussels, Belgium, by Katharina Klement. First
performance of the whole work on 2 December 2016 in Vienna, Austria,
by the composer.
Joanna Wozny: “some remains”; premiered on 23 May 2014 in Rottweil,
Germany, by the Ensemble Aventure.
In parallel with the case studies, we conducted 23 one-off interviews with

composers (11 women and 12 men), in which we asked them about their
artistic training, work processes and most significant cooperative partners.
Martin Niederauer’s three-week research stay at the Institut de Recherche et
Coordination Acoustique/Musique in Paris during the “ManiFeste 2015”
festival afforded us another source of material. Workshops, ensemble rehearsals
and cooperative interactions between composers, musicians, conductors,
sound engineers and software developers produced further observations.
Overall, we had about 750 pages of transcribed interviews, 92 pages of work
diaries, 62 pages of notes from observations, and a large number of musical
sketches and scores. In hindsight, the case studies certainly gave us a deeper
insight into the composing processes, but the one-off interviews decisively
shaped the breadth of our perspective.
Our analysis, which already began during the phase of data collection, was
guided by grounded theory (see Strauss & Corbin 1990). In several phases, we
formulated 15 codes5 out of the empirical material and gradually developed
object-related concepts, which form the building blocks of this book’s chapters.
During our analysis, the empirical material, our knowledge gained in previous
research projects on creative processes, and specific theoretical reflections were
in a dialogical relationship, meaning that we can neither speak of a purely
Introduction 7
inductive nor a purely deductive analysis. We analysed the material carefully
so as to maintain an open mind. Our final interpretation, which also con-
tained comparisons and contrasts of the case studies, concentrated on retain-
ing and reproducing the phenomenal variety of composing practices, not on
abstractions that could be used as definitions (see Geertz 1973: 24f.).
Our approach to the composers certainly influenced the way we handled
the empirical material. Since we regarded experienced composers as competent
practitioners and informants with detailed knowledge about composing pro-
cesses, we treated their statements with a high level of trust and understood
their reflective practices as a form of research. Simultaneously, however, we
had to take into account that they described options and experiences accord-
ing to socially shared discursive patterns of representation and interpretation
(see Donin 2015). We treated information from composers about intertextual
references, evaluations, work phases, emotions and wishes as being beyond
classification into “subjective” versus “objective” because they are developed,
modified and validated by concretely cooperating with others, and participating
in a publicly accessible and collective polymorphic musical practice.
This approach is also reflected in the tension between our scientific self-
confidence – based on professional research experience – and a scepticism
concerning our own concepts and assumptions.6 After we had concluded the
phase of data collection, we therefore contacted individual composers and
other specialist colleagues and discussed our interpretation with them. This
strategy, requiring relationships built on trust and a reciprocal appreciation of
the various competences, enabled us – we hope and believe – to maintain a
rewarding circular reflexivity.
Overview of chapters
The first chapter, entitled “The Topography of Composing Work”, discusses
the great variety of relationships between people, artefacts and resources that
characterise contemporary composing practices. Its analytical focus is on the
predetermined parameters (place and date of performance, length of compo-
sition, ensemble), the amount of work time available and the place of work,
informal exchange and formal collaboration with other musicians as well as
the role of material objects (writing utensils, musical instruments, computers,
technical apparatuses) and immaterial objects (notation systems, algorithms,
aesthetic discourses). The interplay between these aspects varies from case to
case, so that each composing process represents a particular set of circum-
stances. This chapter nonetheless asserts that, in western contemporary art
music, there are generalisable westernised composing practices. Composing is
preconditionally dependent on participating in a shared musical practice,
exchanging knowledge with other people, and learning a skilful use of material
and immaterial objects.
The second chapter, “The Processuality of Composing”, takes a temporal
approach and asks the following questions: what do composers do while
8 Introduction
composing? How do they do it? When do certain work phases occur? Study-
ing composing processes in actu lays bare their essential openness and fragility.
They are open because the gestalt of the final product that composers strive for
is only generated during the work process. Until that point, there are countless
forking paths. Composing processes are fragile because they are sensitive to
disruptions and entail the possibility of failure. The concept of decision-
making is mostly not suited to explaining creative processes. Nor do we resort
to phase models, but concentrate instead on analysing the empirical material.
We clearly see from this that there is an interdependence of all sorts of activ-
ities immanent in processes, which we divide into four groups: exploring,
understanding, valuing and making. While we can separate out these activity
groups for analytical purposes, they only attain their full significance in their
unity and interconnectedness.
The third chapter, “Orchestrating Different Forms of Knowledge”, assumes
that current sociological, musicological and psychological research into com-
posing processes must be expanded by adding an epistemic conceptualisation
of artistic agency. At the beginning of the chapter, we undertake an analytical
differentiation of the concept of knowledge. Instead of remaining bound by
traditional binary conceptions – knowing how to do something versus knowing
that x is the case, explicit versus implicit knowledge, theoretical cognising versus
actionable knowing – we identify a variety of different forms of knowledge.
We emphasise the significance of abilities that are relevant in creative processes
and, as a result, the significance of experience, the body (including sensory
perception) and practical fine-tuning for particular circumstances. Alongside
this, we discuss the role of formal-propositional knowledge contents, because
reflective moments are activities that are integrated into composing practice.
Our empirical analysis discloses, first, the interlinking and synergy of different
forms of knowledge and, second, that the change from flow of action to
conscious distancing from the musical material is a typical feature of complex
and long-term activities.
In the fourth chapter, “Musicological Perspectives on Composing”, our
colleague Andreas Holzer devotes himself to the issue of how ideas, explora-
tion and notation correlate. His specific focus arises from the low profile
within musicology of sketch research (meaning the reconstruction of a work’s
genesis based on analysing the extant documents). He opens the chapter with
a historical outline of musicological research into composing processes and
goes on to identify the basic problems in attempting to capture composers’
actions and thought processes using sketches, interviews and self-descriptions.
The second half of the chapter is dedicated to three case studies. By means of
comparative interpretation, Holzer elaborates case-specific differences in the
composers’ attitudes and their associated work modes, specific composing
circumstances, the nature of their musical material, and their concrete aes-
thetic objectives. These differences lead him to question the meaningfulness of
generalising theories and methods, and to call instead for complex particula-
rities to be sensitively handled.
Introduction 9
In summary, the term “creativity” does not describe a particular kind of
individual action. Rather, it usually metonymises a positive evaluation of the
outcome of someone’s endeavours. Many sociologists thus explain creativity
as the product of negotiations of meaning and valuation within cultural
institutions (cf. Peterson 1990; Frith 2012: 62f.). Yet we may speak of composing
as a creative process, since composers have as a rule acquired domain-specific
abilities. Their explorations, ideas, understandings and creations are socially
embedded, since musical practices and traditions are indeed trans-individual.
Sociological investigations thus tend to focus on valuations, discourses and
institutions, or on musical practices, competences, materialities and con-
stellations. While the former perspective has already been widely scrutinized,
this monograph will pay more attention to the latter. Furthermore, it will add
an epistemic perspective on practice that enriches sociological and musicological
analysis and highlights new issues. Composing processes generate two different
outputs: the composed work and the artistic practical knowledge that has
been gained. Whilst musicologists usually direct their attention more onto the
works produced (scores as well as performances), this publication opens up a
complementary perspective onto components of knowledge, or more precisely
onto artistic practical knowledge, which to our minds is far from a negligible
accessory to the composing process. Our specific epistemic perspective results
from the fact that artistic practical knowledge is in fact the key to understanding
artistic agency.
Notes
1 Over the past 25 years, neuroscience research has substantially influenced cognitive
psychology, to the extent that cognition is now being re-interpreted as being fun-
damentally embedded in the body: the “embodiment thesis” (see Gallagher 2014).
Cognitive activities are moreover embedded situatively – the “embedding thesis”
(see Robbins & Aydede 2009) – and are hence analysed more closely in their social
conditionedness – the “extension thesis” (see Aizawa 2014).
2 The question of why distinguishes intentional from non-intentional actions (see
Anscombe 1957/1963: 9). However, since there are grey areas between the two
extremes, this is not a strict differentiation. Moreover, the concept of intention is an
interpretative construct, as Hubert Dreyfus (2002: 380) remarks: “we do not
experience our intentions as causing our bodily movements; rather, in skilful coping
we experience the situation as drawing the movements out of us”.
3 They were given detailed recommendations on what to note and discuss, such as
daily routines, time resources, disruptions or longer breaks in the composing work,
gathering of material and research, organising the material, ideas they had retained
or discarded, references to other compositions or works, particular technical or
artistic problems in composing, omissions, deletions, corrections, etc.
4 Some of the works may be heard on our website: http://www.mdw.ac.at/ims/komp
ositionsprozesse
5 Some of the codes we developed – education, reference to other artists/pieces,
working space, gender-related statements, research and ideas, immaterial objects,
composing, artistic participants, artistic self-image, material objects, audience,
performance space, predetermined parameters, knowledge – were differentiated
further.
10 Introduction
6 Historians of science such as Ludwik Fleck, Georges Canguilhem or Michel
Foucault have emphasised that observational data are prestructured by proto-ideas,
styles of thought and discourses. Philosophers of science Michael Polanyi, Thomas
S. Kuhn, Frederic L. Holmes and others have taught us that observational data can
again and again challenge and transform proto-ideas, styles of thought and
discourses. This interdependence also occurred in our research project.
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1 The topography of composing work
The term “topography” usually refers to the representation of a terrain’s

physical limits (land/water) and height differences. Topographical maps pro-
vide a geographical orientation; in this chapter, we will be using “topography”
metaphorically to set out the web of practices, material constellations and
professional relations within which creative processes of composition take
place (see Figure 1.1). All those who are directly or indirectly involved in the
composition process – from the original idea to the premiere – are part of this
web. To be more specific, we can describe them mainly as peers, and subsume
other composers and musicians within that group. Composers share with
peers musical knowledge and a perspective of composing that is both artistic
and practical. A group of non-peers – which includes clients, listeners, technical
staff, editors and others – can then be differentiated from the peers. If we take
into account that a composition does not come into being in a vacuum, we
appreciate that organisations and objects must also be assigned significance in
the composition process. It is therefore logical to declare both material objects
(writing implements, musical instruments, computers, technical apparatuses)
and immaterial objects (systems of notation, discursive objects, algorithms) to be
relevant aspects of the composition process, along with resources, institutional
circumstances and other conditions. Topography thus consists of four clusters
woven into a web of relations, which shapes the process of artistic creation as
much as the composition, in ways that are both manifest and latent.
We will be using a number of sociological concepts to help disentangle and
analyse this web of relations. These concepts include Herbert Blumer’s (1986:
16–20) “joint action”, which refers to the social division of labour, social
coordination, and the interconnection of different actions. Wider forms of
social action – we might call them fields of practice – are generated when
actions by different participants with different positions, motives, abilities and
knowledge are interlinked. In our case, these participants are musicians, but
also instrument makers, music managers, event organisers, music journalists,
music publishing houses, booking agencies, recording studios, production
agencies, licensing societies, funding organisations, etc.
Closely referencing Blumer, Howard S. Becker (1982/2008) developed his
concept of “art worlds” – a prominent concept in the sociology of art – to
define art as the result of collective action. Becker was referring not only to
the creative process, but also much more broadly to all the processes that are
triggered within the cultural sector by the production, publishing, marketing,
distribution, evaluation, reception, archiving and preservation of artistic per-
formances. He summed up art as the result of coordinated communities,
which he called “art worlds”. Our analysis will be guided by Becker’s
approach – which does have its critics1 – to avoid treating composers as
monadic individuals.
We also ascribe practical relevance to material and immaterial objects as
well, such as computers, instruments, musical notation and algorithms.
We therefore need an additional theoretical approach that enables us to
discuss the cultural knowledge that is embedded in these objects, as well as
the objects’ associated effectiveness within composition processes. Werner
Rammert’s concept of distributed agency is pertinent here. (Andrew Picker-
ing (1995: 21, 115; 2001: 174) has a similar concept, which he calls the
“dance of agency”, pointing to the intertwining of a human agent with
other human agents, material objects and symbolic systems.) According to
Rammert (2008: 65), “[a]ctions emerge out of complicated constellations
that are made of a hybrid mix of agencies like people, machines, and pro-
grams, and that are embedded in coherent frames of action. The analysis of
these hybrid constellations is better done with a gradual concept of
distributed agency than with the dual concept of human action and
machine’s operation”. It must be added that this web (human beings/media/
artefacts) is always anchored in social and institutional settings, which
influence agency and competences. This also helps to explain why we interpret
material and immaterial objects as being participants (see also Engeström
1999). However, as Robert Schmidt (2012: 69 – our translation) emphasises,
Material objects Parameters and resources

Musical instruments
Computers and technical Commission and instructions
apparatus Place of creation and performance
Writing materials Working and living conditions
The creative process of composing
Immaterial objects Peers and non-peers

Theoretical and aesthetic Audience
discourses and considerations Composers
Algorithms Instrumentalists
Systems of musical notation Sound engineers and
software developers
Figure 1.1 The topography of composing work

The topography of composing work 15
unlike human beings objects are “not carriers of implicit knowledge, they
make no autonomous contribution to the meaningful integration and intel-
ligibility of practices” and thus do not form a community of practice by
themselves.
And a final clarification of our terminology: part of our empirical material
consists of music sketches (Notate), within which term we include every kind
of musical mark, such as musical notes and graphics, for instance. We reserve
the term “writings” (Notizen) for all forms of verbal jotting-down during the
composition processes that are not music sketches – diary entries, verbal key
points, longer texts, calculations, etc. We make this distinction to highlight
the fact that composers think not only in music but also in pictures, con-
cepts, figures and figurative drawings. Both writings and music sketches are
fragmentary in character and must not be confused with a music score. By
score we mean the written end product authorised by the composer: the
composition that musicians and conductors will use as a template. A score
consists primarily of musical signs (e.g. notes, intervals, treble or bass clef),
which are sometimes complemented by textual directions (e.g. staccato) and
explanations.
1.1 Parameters and resources

In Western contemporary art music, composition processes usually have a
direct trigger: a commission to compose. All the composers we interviewed
confirmed that it would be exceptional for them to compose something, or to
create a full compositional development of an existing idea, without specific
motivations. Judith Unterpertinger aptly summarises it: “I’m not interested in
working just to fill my desk drawer.” Both financial and practical reasons
underpin her words. An artwork without a public – never exhibited, performed
or published – has no social existence. In that case, to what extent is it even
an artwork? Composers of contemporary art music are aware that their works
must be performed if they are to be visible – it is the fundamental
prerequisite.
When composers receive a request for a composition, they have to consider
whether to accept or decline it. They base their reasoning partly on pragmatic
factors, such as the time available to them, the fee, and the artistic reputation
of the performance context. Additionally, there are artistic and musical
aspects that inform their decision, such as whether they find a given theme
fascinating, or consider specific composition challenges to be attractive, or
how interested they are in working with certain ensembles. In the following
chapters, we will discuss each of these aspects in turn.
1.1.1 Predetermined parameters

Typically, clients who commission compositions are organisations such as
music and event organisers, festivals, orchestras and public or private funding
institutions (at least, that is the case in the art music sector in German-speaking
countries). The commission usually contains agreements on the composer’s
fee, on the form in which and the date by which the score is to be delivered,
as well as the performance rights (which tend to be exclusive until the world
premiere). If desired by the client, the commission also includes requirements
that are specific to the piece to be composed: its approximate duration; the
ensemble that is to perform it (which partially or wholly defines the instruments
to be used); thematic references for the composition; the place of performance,
and others.
Our interviewees did not view such contractual content as restrictive. On
the contrary, many emphasised how important it was for them to be given a
clear thematic context and to know the musicians and place of performance
beforehand. “Where that is the case, [composition ideas] often emerge from
the commissions”, said Viola Falb, for example. Judit Varga confirmed this:
“It helps me a lot to be able to link the music with people or places where it
will be performed. Then the music suddenly comes to life.” On the topic of
the performance space and the performers, Katharina Klement added: “Right
now I’m supposed to be writing something for a string orchestra. If I know
that there are only string players, that obviously encourages different ideas.
Because the means are different. I automatically arrive at a different form
than for five wind players, for example.”
In most cases, the requirements formulated by the client are loose enough
to provide structural guidance in generating ideas, but without being artisti-
cally or aesthetically confining. And where a composer disagrees with certain
requirements, there is often room for negotiation. Composers tend to think
practically – or in a way that is sensitive to the context – and adopt the
requirements productively, as a stimulus for generating ideas. This is the dual
meaning of the title of Pierre Bourdieu’s (1980/1990) book, “Le Sens pra-
tique” (“The Logic of Practice”): sens translates as both meaning and direc-
tion. Sens pratique, understood both as a sense for practical things and as a
practical orientation, sums up the context-sensitive attitude of experienced
practitioners of composition.
Of equal importance is the performance space, which is often specified in
the composition commission. It has a dual significance: first, as a social space
with a reputation in the music sector; second, as a physical space with its own
technical and acoustic demands. Developments in specialist sound-processing
software and in the technical equipment of concert halls have opened up new
possibilities for reflecting on spatial aspects during the composition process.
Composers can thus consider the sound space as a separate level of creativity.
In the Espace de projection at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination
Acoustique/Musique in Paris, the performance space can be adjusted in line
with one’s own sound ideas. This concert hall, which is insulated for both
sound and vibrations, is equipped with dividing curtains and ceiling sections
whose height can be adjusted. They can thus be used to modify the volume
and sound scattering. Additionally, the walls and parts of the ceiling consist
of individually motorised components that can absorb, reflect or scatter sound
depending on their adjustment. Technical equipment of this kind is, of course,
rare and costly. But aesthetic sound modifications are not tied to specific
concert halls. Special software for analysing and synthesising sound develop-
ment along with purposefully arranged loudspeakers enable an orchestra’s
overall sound to be recorded in real time, broken down (e.g. by instrument or
group of instruments) and distributed over the loudspeakers in such a way as
to create an artificial and continuously changeable sound space within the
concert hall. Thus, for the listeners, a violin might appear to play above their
heads at one point, then move from left to right, and shortly afterwards
sound as if it was 50 meters away – whilst the violinist on stage does not
move from the spot. It must be emphasised, however, that such software is
not used as a matter of course in our field of analysis, art music.
The performance space tends to be important especially for those compo-
sers who will also be performing their own work. As Karlheinz Essl points
out, he does not need any special software to get to know the physical space.
For Essl, it is crucial to be undisturbed in the space, “so I can get a detailed
impression of the acoustics of the space. I have to adjust my ear to the new
circumstances. I can’t say, oh, I’ll just start to play, and then I suddenly notice
how different it sounds, and get irritated.” This sensitivity to the potential
particularities of performance spaces derives from a realisation based on
experience: each room has different acoustics, which can only be accessed
bodily, kinaesthetically and in situ. Being able to grasp the particular acoustic
characteristics of a space is a form of sensory and situational knowledge that
has an effect on subsequent actions. For the performance of “Herbecks
Versprechen” (see also Chapters 2 and 4), the positioning and fine-tuning of
the loudspeakers was crucial to Karlheinz Essl, so that listeners “have the
impression of being ‘inside’ the sound and surrounded by the sound”. Here,
adjusting to the acoustics of a space has a twofold meaning: on the one hand,
getting to know how tones sound in the room with a view to composing the
oeuvre; on the other, as a performer, adjusting to how one hears the piece and
how the acoustic characteristics of the space impede one’s own perception.
This too is a sign of professional mastery: to anticipate all aspects that might
interfere with the performance (see Polanyi 1958: 188).
1.1.2 Resources of time

Work officially starts once a commission has been accepted. The beginning of
the actual process of creation, however, is not so easy to determine. Many
ideas arise out of previous compositions and situations, or are inseparably
interwoven with the extensive cultural and musical experience of individual
composers. Nevertheless, the commission lays down a deadline for delivery,
which imposes a temporal structure on the work process. How work time is
organised differs from individual to individual, depending on other profes-
sional commitments (often in music teaching) and family obligations.
Younger or childless composers often seem to have less marked time
restraints, meaning that they can work late into the night if necessary.
Nevertheless, many composers struggle with a lack of time regardless of their
individual life situation because very few live exclusively off composing.
Many of our interviewees have strict work hours. Bernhard Gander
explained: “I have an incredibly well-ordered daily work routine. I get up at
six, start at seven, work until eleven. Then I have my lunchbreak, and then I
work again from two until six, seven at the latest. On Saturdays I only work
until noon, and I never work on Sundays. That’s how I fill 40 hours a week.”
Katharina Klement similarly reported that her work day was “as disciplined
as possible”: “So that I’m at work for my few uninterrupted hours a day.
That’s the most important thing. […] Just so I know: from nine till noon,
mobile off, door closed!” Christof Dienz mentions “multiple pressures”: “I
have a family, I’m taking part in a festival, I’m the curator of a festival, I have
to work in many different fields. I have to plan quite a lot. […] Basically, I
have a daily work routine like a civil servant.”
Because of these time restraints and their multiple activities, composers
have to learn to deal with pressure, “or I wouldn’t be able to do this job”, as
Christof Dienz sums it up. Judit Varga added that she was currently unable
to compose at night “because if I do, I’ll fall asleep the next day while
teaching at university. And yet the work gets done anyway. I don’t know
how the human brain can function in this way. Now that I’m under time
pressure, I get considerably more done in three days than I did in a month in
the past five years.” However, time pressure is not always experienced as a
positive factor. On the contrary, in extreme cases it can become such a
burden, as one composer reported, that she felt “completely paralysed”. The
time available, in other words, is less an objective factor than a subjective
experience.
In these accounts, self-discipline is indispensable and not connoted nega-
tively. John Dewey viewed self-discipline as a central feature of human efforts.
When human beings have a plan and want to achieve something, they enter
into a process in which they act in anticipation of the desired state. This
process, argues Dewey (1916/1941: 161f.), “demands continuity of attention
and endurance. This attitude is what is practically meant by will. Discipline
[…] is its fruit.” But you have to practice to attain such a concentrated focus
on a work task and to develop stamina. Judith Unterpertinger described this
process:
First I actually had to learn how to work from home. I found it hard, but
I’ve learnt how. […] I try to get into a rhythm, but in fact I never stick to
it and ultimately everything gets pushed back into the night. That means
I can only work properly when it’s dark and there are no more distrac-
tions. […] In the morning, over lunch and in the afternoon, I tend to take
care of all the office work, meaning emails, organising, phone calls,
and so on.
Knowing what factors are effective in stimulating your productivity, and
under what circumstances you work well, is “personal knowledge” by
Michael Polanyi’s (1958) definition. The way you organise your work is based
on experience, insights derived from goals for certain activities that you have
met, and temporal resources. On the basis of these, you practise an ordered
daily routine that does justice to individual demands and requirements. And
yet the connection between work hours, organisation of the daily work routine
and living conditions shows that for most composers their composition
activities are not just work, but – despite their pragmatic attitude – a practice
that shapes their lives. This life practice – or in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s (1953/
1968: § 23) terminology, “form of life” – is characterised by the following:
imposing a time structure on the composer’s daily routine; prioritising his or
her artistic and musical activities both practically and emotionally; and
focusing efforts on certain goals while putting up with an often precarious
financial situation.
1.1.3 Workplace
Workplaces vary depending on the individual’s living situation, family obli-
gations, financial resources and personal preferences. Our interviewees
described very different workplaces: in their private living space or own
studio, or in public places such as coffee houses, train compartments and
public libraries. In spite of such differences, these places have to be appropriated
functionally and emotionally to the extent that the composer can feel at home
in them, or at least no longer consider others a disturbance. In his interview,
Bertl Mütter describes his living-room as his workplace. There he has every-
thing “that you surround yourself with. That’s where the books are, that’s
where the CDs are, the radio’s on, there’s the trombone and the computer. So
in principle it’s relatively interchangeable.” Strictly speaking, however, it is
impossible for the composer’s workplace to be interchangeable. Creative
workspaces need to radiate an atmosphere that encourages a specific mood of
concentration and inspiration. One interviewee addressed this problem
directly: “I used to work at home, but it drove me crazy. Because of the children,
among other things. Because something’s always going wrong. You actually
have to leave the house, otherwise you don’t stand a chance.” And when the
composer’s partner is also a musician and regularly has to practise at home,
this background sound can massively impair the composer’s chances of
working concentratedly. A workplace that is separate from the living space
structures how work is organised. It enables a spatial as well as temporal
division of the day into work versus private life (even though it is unlikely that
the separation will always be strictly maintained). Karlheinz Essl’s studio, for
instance, contains a multitude of instruments and technical apparatuses as
well as an extensive collection of books. Although it is a workspace,
this does not mean foregoing comfort: there is a sofa suite with armchairs.
Past composition projects, including various music sketches, writings and
scores, have been sorted and are kept in file cabinets in a separate office space,
accessible at all times. The studio is not just where current production occurs,
but also where past work and the knowledge associated with it are stored and
where there is anticipatory reflection on the various work phases (see also
O’Doherty 2007: 18; Morgner 2016: 41ff.).
On the whole, workspaces are equipped for a purpose and express a reified
self-discipline. Ultimately, the objects they contain and the way in which these
have been arranged reveal each composer’s personal understanding of creative
work. Creative work needs creative impulses, is predicated upon maintaining
good social and professional contacts, and requires both order and organisa-
tion. The functionality of the workspace is also related to individual needs
and work habits – especially where composers require technical equipment.
As Katharina Klement explains, her workspace “[is] a bit cluttered. Because
I’ve got these two loudspeakers for stereo playback. And here’s my desk
without computer. It’s a tried-and-tested arrangement [our italics]. There’s the
hifi for my record-player. […] My main stereo playback is via bigger PA
boxes, which might be a bit oversized, but I really like them because I’ve used
them for years.” Again, this demonstrates the extent to which the auditory
layout and appropriation of a space also helps to make it a workplace. Since a
separate personal studio generates additional costs that may not be affordable,
many composers make do as best they can. Alexandra Karastoyanova-
Hermentin explains that “before I had children, I found it very disruptive to
hear anything that disturbed me when I needed quiet. When you have children,
you learn to work more quickly. You just need the time. Then you can switch
off completely and start work right away.” Some composers remember their
college years, when spatial conditions for composing were less than ideal.
Judith Unterpertinger lived in a small one-room flat and went to a café in the
evening: “For me, the café was a place to think. A creative place where I was
served. Where I couldn’t jump up from my seat. I’m often very restless when
I’m composing. When I’m at the start of a piece, my flat’s always very clean.
Because I start cleaning the flat or doing other unnecessary things.” Judit
Varga lived in a student hall of residence. “Usually, at least three people
would be practising in my room at the same time. It’s impossible to compose
like that. So I often went to McDonald’s to compose there instead.” Even in
later stages of life, some composers are professionally very mobile and use
public spaces for working, as Marko Ciciliani describes: “Basically, I can
compose pretty much anywhere. […] But I do have to feel uninterrupted.”
1.2 Peers and non-peers

Artists work within complex “cooperative networks” (Becker 1982/2008: 1)
with people from different professions. And “all of the people who participate
in making the work have some effect on the final choice of the ‘work itself ’”
(Becker 2006: 24).2 In general, sociology of the professions views peers as
people with a comparable level of education and comparable professional
competences. In addition, characterising two people as peers presupposes that
they acknowledge each other as such. Composers depend on connections with
both peers and non-peers to be able to handle the organisational and artistic
challenges of the composition process, as we will discuss in the following
section.
1.2.1 The audience

That the audience is highly significant is undisputed, and is underlined by
Becker (1982/2008: 214), among others: “Though audiences are among the
most fleeting participants in art worlds, […] they probably contribute most to
the reconstitution of the work on a daily basis. Audiences select what will
occur as an art work by giving or withholding their participation in an event
or their attention to an object”. On the immaterial level, the audience con-
tributes decisively to artists’ public presence and reputation. At the same time,
viewers and listeners are their partners in an economic exchange.
Composers are aware of the audience’s importance and their consequent
dependence on it. All the composers we interviewed worked on their relation-
ships with the audience and with the musical public sphere. As one composer
said bluntly, “If I don’t give a shit how my work’s received out there, then I
don’t really need to have it performed, do I!” At the same time, however, they
articulated their relationship with the audience in very different ways. On the
one hand, they referred to the audience’s anticipated capacity to absorb –
“you mustn’t ask too much of the audience” – or just expressed the hope of
getting an emotional reaction: the piece “must have an impact”. Some, on the
other hand, do not ascribe very much relevance to the audience despite its
important place in the concert sector: “To be honest, I’m not really interested in
what the audience expects to hear.” Or: “I don’t want to become subservient.”
Yet attitudes to the audience do not conform to an either-or principle, whereby
the audience is either served affirmatively or dismissed as irrelevant. Rather, it
is proof of the composers’ professionalism that they neither let their existing
dependence on the audience turn into frustration or rejection nor let it
become the defining aspect of the composition process.
As part of the creative process, composers regularly consider the performance
context and the impact of their music. Since emotions play an important role in
numerous ways, the work of composing always includes self-reflexive
moments: for instance, what effect does a tone in a certain context have on
me or the listeners? Bernhard Gander, who sees himself “as the audience’s
representative”, systematically puts himself in its stead during the review and
correction phase that comes towards the end of the composition process: “I
always imagine myself sitting in the audience when the piece is being played.
Is it interesting enough?” Similarly, Judit Varga does not conceive of the
audience as a homogenous crowd. Rather, “I always keep two listeners in
mind. One is a professional; the other has no clue about music. It’s important
to me that both get something out of it.” Such reflexive-imaginative processes
are an indispensable element of understanding what the performance is
designed to achieve. Following Wolfgang Iser (1978: 34f.), we might call this
the “implied listener”. In that sense, the audience is indirectly present during
the composition process.
As the divergent remarks make clear, it is impossible to reduce the com-
poser’s relationship with the audience to a simple formula. And yet, despite
the varying attitudes, the artists’ professionalism is characterised by a reflexive
mind-set, which can at times be rather unarticulated (see Szivós 2014: 27): to
take into account who the audience is and how to connect with it sensually,
emotionally and intellectually.
1.2.2 Cooperating with sound engineers and software developers

As we hinted in our description of the developments in software and spatial
acoustics for the performance context, some composers – depending on their
artistic orientation – collaborate with sound engineers and software developers.
In certain cases, they even depend on such collaborations (see also Born 1995:
210–218, 262–275; Vinet & Delalande 1999). In his interview, the computer
musician and sound director Markus Noisternig describes collaborating with
the composer Olga Neuwirth, who in her work “Lost Highway” wanted to
generate sound clouds that nervously circled around the audience in coloured
micro-fluctuations. These sound domes were created during the live perfor-
mance by electronically distorting the sounds of the solo instruments (sax-
ophone, trombone, clarinet): “For example, a clarinet plays multiphonics at
various pitches. These are then put into a feedback loop, where they’re dis-
torted by a harmoniser or phaser according to the score, and make sound
clouds.” The distorted sounds then describe fluctuating, small circular move-
ments around “a centre of gravity that slowly moves across the room”. The
speed of these movements and their displacement around the centre can be
controlled at will for each sound component “to produce an ambient sound. […]
It creates a soundscape within the performance space.” It was not only a
substantial challenge for the collaborating team of computer scientists and
sound engineers to realise this composition idea. According to Noisternig, the
2003 performance of “Lost Highway” also used five high-performance Linux
computers to handle the various tasks. Thus, projects that rely on spatialisation
demand a skillset from the composer that includes both knowledge of com-
puter technology and analysis of spatial acoustics. The technical collaborators
become performers in that they too implement the score, albeit on a computer,
not on an instrument. In other words, their participation in the performance is
not just technical but aesthetic as well (see also Barrett 2014).
Collaboration between composers, software developers and sound engineers
creates a win-win situation. Alfred Smudits (2002) and Kurt Blaukopf (1989/
2012: 63–91) coined the term “mediamorphosis” that also applies for the
digital era, where creative artists “must acquire extensive competencies so as
to master and optimally use digital means of production” (Smudits 2002:
196 – our translation). In some cases, composers can also resort to the technical
knowledge of developers, who will build them the software or the software-
hardware combination that they need to achieve exactly what they had imagined
musically and compositionally. This extends the composers’ own compe-
tencies at the same time as it offers software developers creative challenges,
especially when composers push the limits of what is technically possible.
1.2.3 Interacting with other composers

The data we collected focuses primarily on the composition process, which
makes composers’ relationships with their colleagues appear quite under-
exposed. However, the truth is that there is a range of exchanges between
composers. It is important for composers to have interlocutors who can stimulate
them or offer ideas while composing, who can trigger a thought process or
open up new perspectives on the composer’s creative processes. It might seem
logical that other composers in particular – i.e. genuine peers – make ideal
interlocutors because of their shared profession and knowledge, and their
similar experiences of artistic practices. In fact, our interviewees reported that
they tend to be critical of feedback from colleagues, or at times even explicitly
reject it. One interviewee said, “I don’t find it easy at all to give feedback on
compositions. That’s a really, really touchy area. And there are very, very few
people I’d ask for feedback myself.” Reasons for this vary. For Johannes
Kretz, who composes computer-generated music, getting feedback on a score
is a fundamental problem. “I can’t just say, ‘Take a look at my score, what do
you think?’, because basically the thing has to be played for you to be able to
give an opinion on it.” Scores are not an appropriate basis for feedback or
exchange of views because musical notations are only signs, not audible tones.
A composition is ultimately judged on its actual performance – its musical
realisation – which is of course tied to the musicians’ practical abilities, creative
interpretation and way of dealing with the situated performance conditions.
Interaction with other composers can of course take place during the work
process. But as Clemens Gadenstätter points out, not every idea or suggestion
or piece of advice can simply be adopted: “The logic of the composition
suddenly clicks into place, everything makes sense, but I can’t yet say what it’ll
look like in detail.” As Gadenstätter emphasises, this logic has no conceptual
shape. It is a musical imaginative anticipation of a work that is still being
created. “Often I can’t find the right words myself when I’m sketching it out. I
have to use metaphors, drawings, comparisons, et cetera. But the fact that it
clicks into place and suddenly becomes meaningful, that’s something […],
that’s something you sort of feel.” Based on this account, composing can be
described following Fritz Böhle as an “experience-based subjectifying action”
(Böhle, Orle & Wagner 2012: 32), where the term experience encompasses not
only past experiences, but also the actual process of experiencing. Perception
“associated with one’s subjective feeling” therefore plays a pivotal role, yet not
as “an ‘inner’ process but as a way of cognizing the circumstances”. A
situational feeling – which is a somaesthetic response and expression of tacit
subtly-nuanced discriminations – acts as a reliable basis for judging and
acting (see also Janik 1994: 33, 35). As a sensory and physical sensation, it “is
not attributed to distance, but to proximity and association” (Böhle, Orle &
Wagner 2012: 32).
Relationships between composers are also marked by competitiveness,
which can weigh down their rapport. Some of the composers we interviewed
only believe a few people capable of “objective feedback”: “Let’s not forget
that competition is incredibly tough. And I just think that lots of opinions aren’t
objective, but come from a very human state of mind.” A different composer
stated that she “did not believe all that many people are capable of giving
feedback, in the sense of talking profoundly about the material.” Mistrust of
other composers must be seen in the context of processes of demarcation and
positioning. Nevertheless, different attitudes emerge here too. For Bernhard
Gander, “negative feedback has about the same weight as ten good bits of
feedback. [Laughs] You just need to able to compartmentalise it somehow.”
Ultimately, the process of composing remains a personal and at times intimate
matter, which composers need to resolve within themselves.
1.2.4 Interacting and working with musicians

The composers commented extensively on their interaction and work with
other musicians. To guide our analysis, we will be introducing two differential
categories, the first of which concerns the timing of the joint work. Some
interactions take place during the process of creation, others during rehearsals
after the entire score has been finished. The second differentiation concerns
the social quality of the relationships. Where the exchange between the com-
poser and other people is informal and completely voluntary, we will call it
cooperation. The partners in this type of interaction do not necessarily have
the same work objective, nor do they enter into any contractual obligations.
By contrast, where there is formal prior agreement on the work to be completed
together, we will call it collaboration. Here, the partners in the interaction
have a shared goal: a successful performance.
During the process of creation

Relationships between composers and musicians during the process of creation
can assume different forms. First and foremost, there is the creative relationship,
in which other people contribute constitutive creative impulses. Composers
make contact with the performing musicians at the start of the writing process.
They let themselves be inspired by their specific way of handling their instru-
ments and by the associated sound possibilities of the ensemble, as well as its
willingness to experiment. The musicians’ preferences, specific abilities and
particularities can thus be discussed during the process of creation and taken
into account while composing. Judith Unterpertinger reports that she likes to
meet the musicians early on in the composition process to find out the
ensemble’s specifics. Whenever she is unfamiliar with an ensemble, she looks
at “what else they play. What can they play? […] Which instruments do they
use?” Research into the ensemble forms the composer’s provisional assump-
tions and orientation. Christof Dienz also touches upon this necessary
familiarity with the performers: “When you know whom you’re writing for,
it’s twice as meaningful because then the performers can also show you their
sleights of hand. So then you can tailor-make your arrangements without
torturing them.”
The situation is different when composers seek contact with experienced
musicians who will not be performing the piece, in the hope of benefiting
from their knowledge of an instrument or a certain way of playing. We will
call this a knowledge-generating relationship. Composers sometimes use such
relationships and the musicians’ expertise to solve a specific issue. Thus,
Bernhard Gander gets in touch with musician friends to ask: “Can I come
round so you can show me what it sounds like? That’s the most important and
advisable thing for any composer.” Clemens Gadenstätter similarly reports
that he consults musicians when he has a composition idea for an instrument,
but is unsure about the sound or even whether he will like the sound. In some
cases, he gets hold of the instrument and tries it out himself, insofar as that is
possible. Javier Party, who played electric bass himself, describes how he
talked through ideas and musical possibilities with a double-bass player who
was going to premiere one of his compositions, in the hope of getting further
inspiration: “What’s possible, what isn’t possible, and so on. And what’s possible
for him. And I took notes and then used some of them, but not others. […]
The fingering is quite different on an electric bass guitar and a double bass.
And I knew that the things that I’d imagined on the electric bass wouldn’t be
so easy to play on a double bass.” Musicians have a physical knowledge of
their instruments (see also Chapter 3), which marks them out as experts.
Composers deliberately target this expertise. Musicians, in other words, are
not simply performers or interpreters. They also act as creative partners who
depend on composers and who contribute their personal knowledge to the
composition process.
Composers also relate to other people, whom we generically call non-peers,
such as artists from other fields, partners who are not musicians themselves,
and other acquaintances who act as interlocutors and may provide stimuli for
having ideas. Katharina Klement received a work scholarship from the Austrian
state of Styria and travelled to Belgrade in the spring of 2014 to compose an
“acoustic city portrait”. Two locals – a visual artist and a graphic designer –
offered their help as people who knew their way around Belgrade. They
guided the composer through town, showing her different localities, where she
made recordings, and also various rooms, where she might be able to have her
composition performed. Beyond this, there was also an exchange on the
artistic level. Klement mentions a conversation with the visual artist about
“internal and external artistic strategies”, which connected with her own
work. In a diary, she noted key points: “Results of the internal [strategies]:
photos, drawings, images (for me: sounds, concerts, compositions, etc.).
Results of the external strategies: social sculpture, utopia of a ‘better’ world,
changing society.” Karlheinz Essl gives a different example in his composition
diary. He played his wife a recording from rehearsals of an unfinished com-
position which he is going to perform himself. Her impressions and ideas
influenced the way he subsequently proceeded:
I play Eva the recording from Friday. She’s enthusiastic and wants to
know how many loudspeakers I’ll be using at the premiere. I’d only
intended to use two. Eva rightly says that the piece would be enhanced by
surround setting – if the audience were surrounded by the sounds. When
we listen to it again, I direct her attention to the critical passage with the
Flanger melody. She asks, “You mean the bit with the electric guitar?”
No electric guitar is used here, yet clearly there’s an impression of foreign
elements. Further confirmation for me that I need to change this section.
A special kind of collaborative relationship arises when composers jointly

develop interdisciplinary performances with artists from other fields, for
instance dancers or video artists. Many composers see such encounters as
positive and inspiring challenges. But there can be tensions, too. One composer
discussed the fact that ideas or feedback from other people do not always
facilitate the decisions that a composer sooner or later has to take: “I’d say it’s
emotionally more difficult on another level, because at some point I just have
to be totally inside the piece. And then I basically have to remove myself from
my thing and find a compromise. And that’s when you start arguing.” Other
artists’ knowledge, and the attempt to integrate it into one’s own creative
processes, can provoke conflicts and lead to inconsistencies. To avoid such
conflicts, composers who like interdisciplinary work and often undertake it
tend to form lasting teams.
During rehearsals
The encounter between composer, conductor and performing musicians
within the rehearsal setting is a collaborative situation. In general, one might
expect to see a traditional hierarchical relationship between a higher-ranking
composer, who creates art, and lower-ranking musicians, who reproduce it.
Social reality, however, is more complex. Stephen Davies (2003: 252) considers
the fundamental role of performers to be one of both responsibility and
creativity: “There is a gap between a performance and the features that con-
stitute the work the performance is of. Where works are specified by scores,
the performance always is more detailed than the piece. […] Provided the
performer is in control of the sounds she produces, it is she who decides how
to bridge this gap.” From the composers’ point of view, musicians likewise
play a key role in successfully performing their work. In Bernhard Gander’s
words: “If they say, they’re keen on it and it’s fun to play, then the race is
pretty much won. Because if they’re convinced themselves, they convey that to
the audience.” Composers treat musicians as their first audience because
they are aware how vital their “impact on the musicians” is, as Alexandra
Karastoyanova-Hermentin puts it.
This insight has repercussions on the way the composition process unfolds
and on the performance. Contemporary art music is on the fringes of the
public’s perception of music, at least in German-speaking countries, where
tonal music and especially works and styles from the 18th and 19th centuries
predominate. As a result, neither conservatoires in their instrument tuition
nor many professional orchestras tend to tackle with any perseverance the
new musical forms that have emerged in the past decades. This means that it
is not always easy for composers to work together with musicians, as Karlheinz
Essl discovered: “Many orchestra musicians don’t want to leave their comfort
zone. I mean, they’re specialists, they have perfect mastery of their instrument,
but within a specific framework of tradition and repertoire, which is fixed. […]
And it’s often a very lengthy process to explain and implement things with
such musicians.”
For a collaboration to be successful, it is important not only that the parti-
cipants have experience in similar music practices, but also that they connect
on the interpersonal level. Veronika Simor stresses this: “Human contact is
very important for convincing people at all stages of the process that what’s
written down there is good.” Composers occasionally find themselves in a
position of throwing down the gauntlet: they confront musicians with new
challenges to be mastered. Mutual respect is therefore crucial for both sides – but
cannot always be mustered. For composers, encountering and working together
with unknown musicians or with an acclaimed ensemble can be fraught with
tensions. An experienced composer admits, “It’s not so easy to establish your
authority in front of an orchestra that’s seen it all.” And as another interviewee
states, “You can’t allow them not to take the piece seriously.”
In the preliminary stages, the physical encounter between composers and
musicians or ensembles is mediated by the score. The score is the point of
departure for rehearsals and can be interpreted as a set of instructions (see
also Cook 2001: § 15). In some cases, these instructions are set down with
maximum precision, as Katharina Klement explains: “My intention is to put
it down on paper in a way that’s as clear as possible so that there’s not much
left to explain.” Other composers renounce noting down everything to the last
detail because they view it as unnecessary. In Judith Unterpertinger’s experience,
it is “often totally absurd to write down everything in detail when I know the
musician would have to sit down and rehearse it for half a year. If I explain
what I want really well, they can do just as good a job, but they’ll have
understood it in ten minutes.”
Historically, there have been different approaches to the question of whether
a score should be annotated down to the very last detail or whether passages
should be deliberately kept vague. In his study of notation systems in New
and Serial Music, Erhard Karkoschka (1972) took into account the extent to
which the interpretation of notes by musicians was already indicated in the
score and how much room for interpretation remained. Karkoschka dis-
tinguished between precise notations, which contain exact instructions on how to
realise the score; parameter notations, which offer a choice within fixed
boundaries; indicative notations, which give the musicians the opportunity to
get a feel for timing and duration (for example) and then decide themselves;
and a musical graphic that encourages interpretation. Obviously there are
hybrid forms of these notation systems. In any case, our interview material
has led us to conclude that scores are always negotiable formulations,
regardless of the notation system on which they rely and regardless of their
intended precision. Scores are sequences of signs which always initiate a realm
of meaning while at the same time leaving much unwritten or even unrepresen-
table. The relationship between score and sound is therefore underdetermined
and in some cases even fundamentally metaphorical. The appropriate sound
has to be found, tried and negotiated while playing. There are of course different
ways of interpreting a piece of music. Katharina Klement’s statement makes
this clear: “That’s when we start discussing things that go beyond the values
of notes or dynamics or tempos […]. We’re no longer talking about crescendo
and decrescendo, but about tension and relaxation, and we use tacky expressions
and metaphors like ‘It sounds as if the sun is rising.’”
While some composers cannot always find the time to attend rehearsals
and only go to the final rehearsal, others can afford “the luxury” – as Bertl
Mütter calls it – of being present at all rehearsals: “The joy of working with
people and realising that my way of writing something is a kind of compres-
sion. And then it’s enriched by what I say during the rehearsal process, so that
some very complex things can be learned and reproduced in a very short time.
That way musicians sound fresh when they play it, and they enjoy it.” The
joint action of making music with others demands a sensory and emotional
fine-tuning with one another, so as to be able to work together on the sound
experience (see also Ravet 2016: 297f.). Many composers thus characterise
their attitude during rehearsals as pragmatic and ready to compromise. In
Christof Dienz’s words: “If somebody says to me, ‘That’s really shit, and it
just can’t be done that way’, I’d be the last person to say, ‘Too bad. It stays
like that.’ Instead, I’ll say, ‘Okay, let’s change it.’” The musicians’ commitment
while preparing the performance and their interpretative achievement during
it are among the factors that determine both the quality of the performance
and whether or not the practical implementation of the score conforms to the
composer’s vision. At the same time, it is up to composers to motivate musicians
properly and involve them in the creative process. In this, they need to consider
that musicians often prepare for a performance under great time pressure,
which requires knowledge of the working processes and conditions of
orchestras, ensembles and conductors. Such knowledge has an effect on com-
posing because the way the work process will be managed by the performing
ensemble and conductors is already thought out in the composer’s own
schedule, and organisational issues concerning rehearsals or preparing for the
performance are already taken into account. This is what Bernhard Gander
describes:
Usually you have to deliver the score first and the sheet music later. I
always finish very early. In one case, the premiere was set for late
September and I had finished the piece by the previous December. So the
score was ready by April or May. Then the conductor received it. That
way they can already schedule their rehearsals. And I write them a short
text about the content of the piece because they also want to propose the
piece to other venues. Each time, it’s an ongoing exchange.
It is also important for composers to be familiar with the working pro-

cesses and conditions of ensembles because it enables them to gauge what
can and cannot be expected from musicians in terms of commitment and
initiative in handling the finished score. Such local and contextual knowl-
edge can have an impact on the kind of notation used. One composer told
us that he paid close attention to the orchestra or ensemble that he was
cooperating with when writing the score:
They [a large orchestra] have little time to rehearse. Their motto is: Just
play what’s on the sheet. Every note is clearly described. There’s no need
to discuss much, they don’t need to do much soundwise – of course they
do overall, but that’s the conductor’s job and there’s no changing it.
Whereas in the XY pieces, the way the flautist plays that long note so that
harmonics develop, so that the note changes more and more from hissing
and breath into sound, that is written down. But there’s still room for
manoeuvre in the way it’s done. And skill comes into play here. Some
musicians can do it incredibly well. Others can’t do the breathed start of
the sound. […] And it takes an unbelievable amount of time to motivate
the musicians to try it anyway. And then suddenly, somehow, it works.
In the score, the composer tries to formulate clearly what the notation system
he or she uses will afford. This is a pragmatic approach, which does not have
to deprecate large orchestras. But where the musicians’ working processes and
conditions allow it, they will be expected to show initiative and contribute
creatively – the score will be prepared in such a way that they can participate.
Here, composers do not see themselves as the artist-as-solo-creator, but rather
include the performing musicians in the interpretation of the score. In return, they
expect the musicians not to behave purely as reproducers, but to take the time to
enter into the material and develop their own ideas about how the composi-
tion might be realised as sounds. In his discussion of authors, Jérôme Meizoz
(2007: 42) introduces the concept of “instance plurielle”, which can be trans-
posed to composition processes. Meizoz suggests that a literary work is
the result of a creative process in which several people participate – and a
composition is no different. In this sense, authorship must be thought of as
plural (see also Stillinger 1991).
Musicians also contribute to rehearsals spontaneously. During a rehearsal
for the premiere of Bernhard Gander’s sitcom opera, “Das Leben am Rande
der Milchstraße” (Wien Modern, 2014), the violin, cello and double bass were
struggling with a difficult combination of rhythms when the percussionist
stepped in. He gave them advice on how best to count so the stresses fell in the
right places and so the musicians could coordinate better. He played the passage
on his percussion elements while counting aloud. He then accompanied
the three instruments even though he was not in the score, and switched on a
metronome. The conductor and composer did not get involved. Instead, the
four musicians spontaneously synchronised on the basis of their respective
expertise. This is an example of “experience-based subjectivising cooperation”,
as Fritz Böhle (2010: 164 – our translation) calls it: “The catalyst, timing and
co-operators involved evolve in a situated way depending on the problem;
communication occurs based on shared experiences and uses objects; and the
relationship between the co-operators is founded on reciprocal (work-related)
familiarity.” Composers need to know many things, but cannot know everything;
they always have the choice of delegating. Asked whether it ever happened
that musicians were unable to play a passage, Joanna Wozny answers: “Yes, it
happens. But it’s not a big problem because the musicians often look for
solutions themselves.”
Despite their different training and practical competences, musicians and
composers share a broad body of knowledge: of writing and reading musical
notes; of instruments, their sound and tonal range and the way they are
played; of arrangements and of musicians making music together. Thus, from
this perspective, they are peers. This joint theoretical, music-practice and
acoustic knowledge always has an impact when producing a score. Howard S.
Becker points out that in their actions people anticipate the possible reactions
of their counterparts and so change perspective. Artistic actions are not
excluded from this: “[A]rtists create their work, at least in part, by anticipat-
ing how other people will respond, emotionally and cognitively, to what they
do” (Becker 1982/2008: 200). The significance of shared knowledge, common
practices and anticipated reactions becomes obvious when the notation
cannot express the composer’s intentions. Even when composers use a con-
ventional notation system for their score, it is not necessarily musically realised
by the performers that the composer originally had in mind. Potential reac-
tions cannot always be anticipated in spite of shared knowledge and common
practices. Individual notation systems can express a great many things, yet
they also always come up against the limits of what they can represent. In
such cases, composers use various techniques for answering questions or
avoiding communication problems.
Since every notation system has semantic ambiguities, composers often use
verbal explanations as well as symbolic analogies. Thus Bertl Mütter avoids the
need for complicated or time-consuming detailed notes by explaining to a pianist:
I want to hear you play the piece like a piano player in a bar. […] I’ll tell
him, “Look, it should sound like perfumed bar music. Like a piano player
who smiles and then plays ‘I Did It My Way’.” That has its own sound. I
could tear out my hair writing it, and research voicings. Or I can just say:
“You know what I mean. A pianist in a bar. Say, in a five-star hotel, but
not the best. Imagine you have brylcreem in your hair, and you’re wearing
a white dinner jacket, and you’re sort of smiling, but you know you’re not
really allowed to talk to anyone, because you’re an employee.”
For this, composers have to be able to gauge the frame of reference for those
involved (their experience, tools, and ways of thinking) to ensure that analogies,
imitations and gestures work. Even common associations and widely shared ideas
are only partly self-explanatory. Communicating and learning from each
other are based on imagination supported by experience. And when symbolic
analogies are not effective, composers often attempt to explain their sound ideas
to the musicians more immediately by playing, singing or imitating sounds.
There are many composers who only pay attention to right or wrong,
blablabla. Whereas I can turn up with really complicated things, and the
musicians will play them correctly. Because I’ll explain: “That deep sound
there doesn’t really need to be played right, it should be more like
growling or puking or something.” And then I’ll imitate it too:
“blarghhh” [makes retching sounds]. They’ll laugh, but they’ll know
exactly what I mean.
(Bernhard Gander)
To come up against the limits of symbolic representation and explication does

not denote a lack of competence. Even composers who have a sophisticated
knowledge of notation systems and ways of playing, as well as substantial
experience gained through their own extensive performance practice, are
confronted with the limits of communication. This becomes very clear in an
interview, in which a composer explains his score to a musicologist. Although
both are proven experts in their field, communication problems arise. The
composer, when asked what musicians need to know to be able to realise the
score in line with his ideas, uses physical gestures as well as language and
sound imitation to explain:
So, in that way an area of rustling noise builds up, which slowly moves
through the room. And at this point the tremolo is slowly turned up from
zero to half, over eight seconds. That’s a very precise instruction. That
means this noise surface starts to tremble [makes shivering sounds and
makes his hands tremble].
Verbal language, physical gestures, and singing or playing notes complement

each other and make it possible to extend the limits of communication. All
those involved know that musical notation cannot always deliver the level of
accuracy required for conveying one’s ideas. Accuracy cannot be determined
via objective criteria that have no context, as Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953/
1968: § 88), for instance, has remarked: “No single ideal of exactness has been
laid down.” The meaning of exactness will be negotiated between those
involved in a particular situation and in certain contexts with a view to
applying it practically: it is a goal-orientated and intersubjective matter.
1.2.5 Summary
In this section, we have been discussing composers’ interactions with peers
and non-peers. These interactions, however, do not occur throughout the
creative process, but sporadically in certain phases. At times, composing is
indeed a “lonely” affair, with hardly any interaction with others that is
meaningful for the composition.
To summarise, composers and peers or non-peers relate on three levels. On
the social level, we have made the distinction between cooperative and colla-
borative relations based on the following differential criteria: whether those
involved share in the objective of the work, and whether their interactions are
informal or contractual. On an epistemic level, we distinguish between crea-
tive and knowledge-generating relationships. The former primarily provide
inspiration and generate ideas whereas the latter aim to solve specific pro-
blems. The relationship between composers and others can also be analysed
on a third, motivational level: composers have to reach out to the musicians,
convince them of their ideas and expectations, and create enthusiasm for a
successful interpretation of the composition. These three relationship levels
are not strictly divided. Together they produce an interdependent relation, in
which composers and others influence each other and benefit from one
another.
Composing can be interpreted as the collective undertaking of a practice
community, whose participants are involved with varying degrees of intensity,
depending on their competences and resources. And yet, even where musicians
sporadically influence the composition process and the rehearsals with their
knowledge, they are not granted the status of creators. Bertl Mütter describes
his relationship to musicians as “primus inter pares” [first among equals],
expressing his willingness to engage in a fundamentally egalitarian, non-hier-
archical relationship. This is reciprocal: the composers expect musicians to
show initiative and commitment and make creative contributions while they
themselves must meet the ensemble’s needs (see also Ravet 2016). It is just as
important in peer-to-peer relationships to convey professionalism and be
perceived as a professional, as one composer clarified: “If they get their sheet
music early, I know they’ll think, ‘Right, he’s well-organised’. There are
composers who’ll bring the last notes to the last rehearsal. To be honest, I’d
be sceptical myself. I’d think, ‘Whoa, this piece can’t be any good if he can’t
get it together!’”
1.3 Material objects: musical instruments, computers and
writing materials
In a practice-orientated perspective, the focus can also be shifted to material
objects – such as musical instruments, computers or various writing materials –
as a means of demonstrating the materiality of practices of composing (see
Engeström 1993; Knorr-Cetina 2001; Nicolini 2012: 223ff.; Shove, Pantzar &
Watson 2012). Material objects are not simply tools for carrying out actions.
In some cases they contribute constitutively to the occurrence of particular
actions. James J. Gibson’s (1979) term of “affordance” lends itself to an
interpretation of the role played by material objects. Building on Gestalt
psychology (Kurt Koffka and Kurt Lewin), Gibson uses affordance to refer to
the action-stimulating character of objects: because of their gestalt – understood
as the totality of their visible form and properties, including colours, devices,
surface, material, etc. – objects invite certain actions, but they can also be
used in various other ways. Instead of considering the perception of an object
as a stimulus-response pattern or a purely cognitive achievement, Gibson calls
for an activist conception of perception, pointing out that the relationship
between people and objects is dynamic. Affordance, he argues, is orientated
both physically and psychologically and concerns the object and its observer
equally while they interact with each other in any concrete situation (see
Gibson 1979: 129). This reciprocity between persons and objects has a
meaningful complement in James G. Greeno’s (1994: 338) concept of “ability”.
Where affordance focuses on the interaction between person and object in
terms of the object’s gestalt and available actions, Greeno points out that such
an interaction is similarly marked by the person’s ability and practical inten-
tionality: imagining various uses, developing a practical sense of the object
and acting skilfully (see also Noë 2012: 29). There is thus a creative factor in
using an object. Scott Cook and John Brown (1999: 64–67) refer to this logic
when they speak of “dynamic affordances”, pointing out that when a person
handles an object, pre-existing knowledge comes into play, but new knowl-
edge can be generated as well.
1.3.1 Musical instruments

Organology is part of every conservatoire’s syllabus for music composition.
Quite apart from the composer’s knowledge of various instruments, the
instruments themselves also play a vital part in composing. In the Western
classical tradition, the piano occupies a unique position. There are various
historical, technical and practical reasons for this. Because of its tonal range –
or its “harmonic power”, as Franz Liszt put it (quoted in Thom 2007: 14) – the
piano more than any other instrument offers an ideal basis for making
composition ideas real as sounds. Katharina Klement, for example, has a piano
in her workspace, “because I always go back to the piano and listen to the
tone – it’s my reference. I’m much too connected to the piano. When I see on
the keyboard in front of me, oh yes, D1 is the central pitch, and on either
side… I like having it here. But I don’t need it all the time.” Inscribed in the
piano keyboard is a knowledge of arrangements, which means that it can act as
a visual reference and cognitive prop during composing. Michael Kahr also
regularly uses the piano: “I elaborate my ideas at the piano. Often by impro-
vising. […] Since I’m a pianist, I can keep trying out ideas that way until I can
reproduce them on the piano as an entity. […] For me, there’s a physical aspect
as well. At the computer, the screen always obstructs me a bit …” Not every
composer confirms this central position of the piano. Judit Varga – who, as
well as composing, regularly performs as a pianist – reports that already
as a child, she “sat at the piano and notated. That was the obvious thing
to do because I was always practising the piano, and that’s when I had the
ideas that I then wrote down. It worked well. But obviously the piano is
limited. And it’s killing my ideas.” Her comments point to the regulative
function of instruments. Instruments offer an orientation and can help to
structure ideas as sounds because of their gestalt, the culturally established
ways of using them, and the experiences that the user has of them.
Simultaneously, instruments tempt composers into gearing their composi-
tions towards familiar uses and experiences. The regulative function thus
has a dual character.
Composers also continuously enrich their knowledge of instruments
through their professional experience. This accumulation of knowledge pri-
marily operates on the sensory and practical level, in that composers master
various instruments or appropriate them in an experimental fashion – a
common approach in the musical avant-garde since the 1950s. Karlheinz Essl
explains that he “often worked together with a tuba player” and therefore
knows a fair amount about “what is possible with a tuba”. However, he does
not play the instrument himself and describes how he borrowed a tuba for a
composition and began “treating the tuba like a child that doesn’t even know
you’re supposed to blow into it. Once I took it and used it as a drum. So I
stroked it, rubbed it, scratched it, hit it, and fixed microphones to it to find
out how it sounds.”
Employing an instrument in line with its traditional use is the obvious thing
to do. However, the unknown possibilities which the instrument possesses
because of its material qualities – form, material or devices such as keys –
would thus remain unused. By examining the instrument’s material qualities
and characteristics in a manner that is far removed from the way it is con-
ventionally treated, a composer gradually explores its affordances. This discovery
process is playful and explorative, and has no clearly fixed criteria. Karlheinz
Essl’s reference to his childlike naivety chimes with a topos that has been a
part of our cultural discourse since German Romanticism (Friedrich Schiller,
Philipp Otto Runge et al.). It implies that, in his or her artistic practice, an
artist could employ an object without presuppositions and without being in
any way limited by tradition. In the quoted example, however, there was pre-
existing knowledge of the instrument, which was then extended and modified
by a sensory and experimental approach in the spirit of the musical avant-
garde of the 1950s and 1960s. Hearing has a monitoring function in this
process. Because of composers’ years of training and experience in making
music and composing, their ability to make aesthetic judgements resides in
their hearing, which is equipped with embodied knowledge. This allows them
to gauge “if something actually works” (Essl).
1.3.2 Computers and technical apparatuses

Art music uses computers in a variety of ways. Depending on the software,
a computer can serve as a writing tool; as a tool during the composition
process (computer-aided composition); as a tool for mixing and trans-
forming sounds; and as an instrument that generates sounds. Before dis-
cussing these manifold uses, we would like to clarify the following
analytical issue: to what extent can a computer be seen as a material
object? A computer consists, on the one hand, of hardware. On the other
hand, the operational core of every computer is its software (operating
systems and applications). Since hardware and software are normally so
closely bound up with one another that every digital computing perfor-
mance has a physical translation (written notes or generated sounds),
computers have a hybrid status. We will consider computers to be, at one
and the same time, material and immaterial objects, and will therefore
discuss algorithms as cognitive tools in the section on immaterial objects.
For just over two decades, affordable powerful computers have been capable
of operating fast enough to “immediately generate an audible result, which
means you can work very intuitively”, according to Karlheinz Essl. Because
composers of electronic-acoustic music can interact with their computer in
real time, the computer is seen not just as a “machine that generates structures
of some kind or another, but it basically becomes an instrument you can
play” (Essl). The possibility of musical improvisation – partly in combination
with programmed sequences, so-called “pre-sets” – ultimately makes the
computer a fully-fledged instrument. This also delivers electro-acoustic com-
positions from a certain performative quality and makes it possible to interpret
them anew at each playing. Computers, like musical instruments, can thus be
seen as partners in an interaction (see also Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1986; Suchman
2007; Folkestad 2012). This interaction presupposes explicit knowledge in the
field of software programming as well as technical know-how. It also requires
kinaesthetic skills, such as dexterity and auditory competence, which are
particularly fruitful during performances since computers are often wired to
mixers, amplifiers and other apparatuses necessary for carrying out certain
operations. Operating these apparatuses leads us back to the concept of
affordance introduced at the beginning of this section. Mixers are operated by
hand – trivial though this might sound – and that means that their various
attachments (such as controls and buttons as well as their layout) have to be
user-friendly. For performances of his piece “Herbecks Versprechen”,
Karlheinz Essl employs a small MIDI controller (KORG nanoControl),
whose controls and buttons are laid out in such a way that he can operate
several controls at the same time with one hand. That requires experience
playing with the controls, which have to be appropriated to such an extent
that the desired actions can be carried out seamlessly. Hands need to learn the
anatomy of the material object and internalise it sufficiently to be able to
work the controls only by touch. The importance of such buttons and con-
trols for physical touch becomes evident in their absence. Essl contrasts the
ease of use of MIDI controllers with touchscreens as follows: “They may be
called touchscreens, but they only work if you’re looking at them. That’s very,
very problematic. I mean, you can touch them, but you can’t touch them
blind. You always need the visual feedback. And that makes the whole thing
extremely unintuitive. Because you can’t feel them. Now the controls, they’re
tactile, I can hold them in my hand, and I know them.” As he suggests, an
intuitive work mode results from the way the respective apparatus is used:
“Of course, there are some things you can do with a mouse too. But with a
mouse you can only control one parameter at a time. With a controller you
can do up to eight parameters at the same time, depending on how good you
are. But that’s quite a manual challenge, it needs regular practice.”
The ongoing digitization of sound generation and music production is
changing the interaction between people and machines. Composers can work
intuitively once they have rehearsed certain processes and manipulations to
the point of internalising them. They can then withdraw their attention from
the operational level (e.g. controls for volume, sound mixing, switching algo-
rithms) and instead concentrate on musical aspects (e.g. sound quality,
rhythm, transitions). To reach this level of internalisation, Essl uses several
sensory and sensorimotor abilities – sight, hearing, tactile senses and movement
memorisation – and practised for a long time. This is an exemplary illustration
of implicit knowledge. Michael Polanyi (1958: 49–59; 1966: 15–19) stresses
that the relation between person and machine is strongly structured by an
implicit directionality of thought. The movement of focal awareness goes from
the controls (the proximal term: “proximus” – “close to the middle of the
body”) towards the realisation-as-sound (the distal term: “distare” – “distant
from the body”). To be able to accomplish this directionality of thought,
composers must incorporate the proximal-term sequences to such an extent
that they become self-evident and no longer need any mental representation
in the sense of a consciously controlled process. That is the necessary pre-
condition for being able to concentrate on the distal term and carry out the
sequence of events.
The regular use of instruments and technical apparatus creates an affective
familiarity with them – an almost humanised relationship, even. We have
already quoted Katharina Klement in the section on workplaces saying that
her PA boxes “might be a bit oversized”, but that she “really like[s] them”
because she has used “them for years”. Similarly, Karlheinz Essl considered
taking his “Bose L1 column loudspeakers” to the performance of “Herbecks
Versprechen” because he had already rehearsed with them and knew their
distinctive features. Following Fritz Böhle (2010: 161f.), this connection
between people and their preferred apparatus might be called a subjectivisation
of the relationship with work objects. This relationship encompasses discrete
kinds of knowledge of the apparatus that are almost impossible to explicate,
and which help composers make quick corrections or fine-tunings because
they know on a sensory and intuitive level how the apparatus works
optimally.
When discussing composers’ use of the piano, we spoke of a regulative
function. The piano assumes such a function because its tonal register struc-
tures the ongoing composition activity. With computers, we might talk of
their constitutive function in electro-acoustic music. Computers or technical
apparatuses make actions possible that would not be possible without them.
Here, we would like to revive Werner Rammert’s concept of “distributed
agency”, introduced at the beginning of the chapter. Since the connection
between person and computer is, so to speak, the pre-condition that makes
electronic music possible, the ability to act in composing electronic music
derives from it.
The interrelation between person and computer has another relevant
dimension. Technical innovation is constantly advancing the creative possibi-
lities that exist in electro-acoustic composition. The speed of technological
change, however, is both a blessing and a curse for composing and performing
electronic music, as Johannes Kretz explains: “There are those who say,
‘Okay, I won’t go along with that development, it’s good enough for me as it
is, I know it works, I feel at home with it, I just need one software and as long
as that works, I’m not interested in the others.’”
1.3.3 Writing materials

Writing takes place at various phases in the composition process and thus
acquires variable meanings. Typically, it will be involved first in outlining (e.g.
of concepts, time structures, rhythmic and dramaturgical instructions), then in
developing (e.g. of individual parts, pitches, sound groups, dynamics) and at a
later stage in writing up the details of all voices, finalising the score and pos-
sibly making small changes during or after rehearsals. The challenges and
problems confronting composers change accordingly (see also Chapter 2). For
instance, at the beginning of the composition process, composers can find the act
of writing too laborious and slow because that is the phase when inspiration
triggers associations. Writing “kills ideas”, as Judit Varga describes it. At other
times, the act of writing can, on the contrary, be a catalyst for generating new
ideas. The composer thinks pen in hand, as it were – or rather, the hand
thinks on behalf of the head. To use the words of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1977/
1998: 24e): “I really do think with my pen, for my head often knows nothing
of what my hand is writing.” It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that
all the composers we interviewed draw up their first Notate by hand.
Composers prefer different media for capturing their composition ideas and
writing up the details. They have the choice of using pen and paper or else a
computer, and the reasons behind their ultimate choices vary.
First, there is the motive of individual habit in the choice of medium.
Habits and aesthetic preferences come into play here, which as such are not
inevitable. Some composers prefer writing up and finalising the score by hand,
others on the computer. Katharina Klement writes “everything by hand. I’ve
never learned any other way. I think I’ll never be able to write on the computer
from the beginning. I use a lot of graphics, and it’s just not compatible.”
Bernhard Gander also writes exclusively by hand: “I get a better overview by
hand. I can put the sheets next to each other or on the floor. On the computer
I’d have to scroll through somehow. My handwriting also reveals what’s
important for me. On the computer it’s all a bit too samey.” When notating
by hand, composers can add in gestural indications, such as drawing a note in
bold or sketching an especially thin legato line. Composers do not follow any
fixed rules when interpreting their own handwriting, including its gestural
aspects, but proceed on a case-by-case basis guided by experience. This
demands sensitivity and a flair for the inherent musical sense of these gestures.
Following Wittgenstein (1969/2005: § 37), this is a case of “intransitive
understanding”. The meaning hidden in the various ways of shaping one’s
handwriting is not interpreted analytically but directly. This requires neither
explication nor justification since understanding results from familiarity with
the thing – in this case, with one’s own handwriting. Intransitive under-
standing thus has the advantage of not interrupting the flow of the action
because the understanding is already integrated into the action. It is an
understanding in actu, which requires no conceptual abstraction.
Second, Bernhard Gander’s statement hints at a pragmatic motive for his
choice of work medium. Writing by hand enables him to view objects in parallel.
His choice of medium is intended to bring order to the work and results.
Pragmatic motives become even clearer when the writing process has to be
accelerated, for instance to meet contractual agreements. Saving time turns
into an important criterion – and to save time, composers resort to computers,
as Christof Dienz reports: “For my first big orchestral piece, I worked eight to
ten hours a day for six weeks just to write a clean version of the score so that
someone else would be able to read it too. […] Six weeks!” What must be
remembered, however, is that nowadays Christof Dienz already works much
faster than he did before because he has experience. Saving time, in other words,
can be attributed in part – but not entirely – to using a computer. Clemens
Gadenstätter likewise types his scores into the computer at an advanced stage
of the rough versions because “I realised that if I see the score on the computer
and rework it, not just correct the errors but rework the piece from an almost
objective perspective, then that’s really good for me. Because that distance can
trigger responses to ‘what I’ve actually done’, which means it’s easier for me
to carefully reconsider my own work and the sound reality of the piece.”3 In
this instance, unlike for Bernhard Gander, working on the computer provides
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
Figure 1.2 From Clemens Gadenstätter’s sketchbook for “Les Cris des Lumières”, 2014 – © Clemens Gadenstätter
composition. Through their action-structuring effect, these objects create an
objectivised counterpart, almost a partner in an interaction, which makes the
composers’ composing visible, audible and tangible for them – in short: dis-
coverable to the senses. Alongside their useful function as tools, musical
instruments, computers and writing materials also develop a creative-epis-
temic function in the context of certain actions – for example, the sensory and
experimental handling of instruments or different kinds of paper.
1.4 Immaterial objects: discourses, notation systems, algorithms

and software
We use the expression “immaterial objects” to refer to music-aesthetics dis-
courses, notation systems, algorithms and software. They are immaterial because
their existence cannot be reduced to physical characteristics. At the same time, in
practice they are always realised as signs, for instances as texts, sketches (Notate),
scores and programming, fixed on material supports such as paper, hard drives
or USB sticks. Clearly, an algorithm does not exist only through its representa-
tion on a computer screen, any more than a notation system is represented by
ink molecules on paper (see Faulkner & Runde 2010; Lando et al. 2008). Texts,
music notations and algorithms also need to be considered as symbols: as a
verbal language, notation system or programming language, whose respective
effectiveness is anchored in the relevant practices – reading, writing and inter-
preting. Algorithms, scores and texts are designed to fulfil certain defined tasks
(e.g. calculating, representing, fixing, ordering, developing or portraying some-
thing, instructing people, coordinating orchestra members). They are thus a
kind of purposive tool. However, unlike material objects, they are not imme-
diately to hand. It is for this reason that we also designate immaterial objects as
cognitive tools (see Windsor & de Bézenac 2012).
Our concept of cognitive tools follows the theory of Lev Vygotzky. James
Wertsch (2007: 178) wrote of Vygotzky:
In his view, a hallmark of human consciousness is that it is associated with

the use of tools, especially “psychological tools” or “signs”. Instead of acting
in a direct, unmediated way in the social and physical world, our contact with
the world is indirect or mediated by signs […]. It is because humans inter-
nalise forms of mediation provided by particular cultural, historical, and
institutional forces that their mental functioning is sociohistorically situated.
Vygotzky primarily focuses on verbal language. But many people also learn
other kinds of languages during their lifetimes, for example mathematical,
musical sign or programming languages. Vera John-Steiner (1995) developed
the concept of “cognitive pluralism” to describe this phenomenon, a concept
which can be applied to composers as well. Katharina Klement often works
with graphic representations of sounds. For one composition, she drew
coloured geometrical shapes on several transparencies (see Figure 1.3). She
Figure 1.3 From Katharina Klement’s sketchbook for “lichte Sicht” for 18 strings, 2014 – © Katharina Klement
then put those transparencies on top of each other to represent the layering of
sound. Such visual blueprints resemble the “technique of over-painting. They
come from my spatial ideas, or rather they represent them, and they correspond
primordially to the intended sound.” These “base layers” are thus relevant
both for developing a musical notation and in the performance context.
However, this example should not be taken to mean that immaterial objects are
the product of a private sensitivity (see also on private language Wittgenstein
1953/1968: §§ 256–269). They are social because they are socially generated,
shared and used. They are structured objects, which are embedded in supra-
individual systems shaped by rules (language, notation systems, mathematics,
logics). These underlying systems are characterised by their high combinability.
A limited number of signs can form a very large, almost infinite number of
algorithms, scores and texts.
1.4.1 Written-down reflections and music-aesthetic discourses

When contemporary composers are asked about their education, models or
musical sphere of reference, it quickly becomes clear that they find themselves
in a culturally hyper-encoded referential space, which is structured in part by
the canon and in part by morals, and which they view with varying degrees of
ambivalence. None of the composers we interviewed question the centrality of
language – emphasised by Vygotzky and many others (see also Rorty
1967) – although they do occasionally criticise what they see as the
intensive intellectualisation of contemporary music: the use of arguments
and normative aesthetics as a means of consolidating one’s own ideolo-
gical position. The centrality of language manifests itself in the fact that
creative composition practices unfold not only in a sensory-auditory
manner, but also in verbal discourse. Ideas, concepts and intertextual
references can be found in all the interviews. Katharina Klement states
that “an artistic work is always in an aesthetic context”. Clemens
Gadenstätter adds that language plays a pivotal role in his work since
composing consists not only of notating, “but also of texts and essays”
that he writes.
Discourses, theories and systematically elaborated ideas are ubiquitous
in contemporary art worlds. Not all composers, however, read theoretical
writings with the same intensity, record their thoughts in a diary, or write
texts on music. And yet composers are urged to confront music theory,
musicology, philosophy, and music psychology while training. This
understanding of a musical education has been the tradition in western
cultures for generations. It is also based on generalised social expecta-
tions, artists’ job descriptions and specific discursive practices that
generate meaning, which have become constitutive in contemporary art
(see Becker 1982/2008: 131–164; Zembylas 1997: 105–113, 165–170;
Heinich 2014). Drawing on Anthony Giddens’ work, we understand the
artist’s self-identity to be the result of loops of reflexivity that have been
habitual during training and professional practice: “All self-development
depends on the mastering of appropriate responses to others; an indivi-
dual who has to be ‘different’ from all others has no chance of reflexively
developing a coherent self-identity. […] The individual is unable to dis-
cover a self-identity ‘sober’ enough to conform to the expectations of
others in his social milieux” (Giddens 1991: 201). Frequent references to
established composers in history, well-known philosophers, music theorists
or musicologists and the terms connected to them are neither superficial
rituals of self-projection nor unreflective reproductions of disseminated
educational content. Rather, they are the expression of a multilayered
process of identity-building.4 The appropriation of, and participation in,
theoretical discourses is here a typical sign of an individual’s ability to
join in and of his or her integration into a collective (see Wenger 2002:
55–57). One composer we interviewed discussed a composition as “more
of an offer to the listeners, to take it with them on their search or on
their way, so that through their experience, interest and intuition they can
become co-creators”. This immediately recalls Umberto Eco’s (1962/1989)
theory of the open work of art or Roland Barthes’ (1968/2005: 142–148)
interpretation of the reader as a second author. However, we are not talking
here about “copies” or “plagiarism”, but rather about the appropriation of
ideas, convictions, figures of thought and rhetorical turns of phrase that iden-
tify a person as a member of a practice community.
Many of the interviewed composers regularly write down their thoughts
and ideas on works in progress.5 Christof Dienz confirms: “Often I even write
a ‘prose score’ in the prep phase. I write it in words because if I don’t, I’ll
forget what I was thinking, […] just as a reminder.” Judith Unterpertinger
also says, “There is much that I jot down in words, i.e. narratively”. Looked
at closely, these writing processes (or rather these accessories) are not a simple
writing-down of what has already been thought. Rather, diaries are one of
the many places where ideas are developed. When composers pursue an
impulse to write and follow an idea, a thought or an association, they trigger
new sequences of ideas or associations, which are often expressed concretely
in drawings as well as language. The goal of writing is then primarily practical:
to make progress in the composition process. For instance, Marko Ciciliani
observes:
Ultimately, concepts are important to me because they radiate such

motivation and fascination. But then I have to be able to transpose
them to music. And that’s basically the decisive moment. If I start, and I
realise, okay, I’m capable of conveying this topic in an artistic form that
preserves its fascination and its interest, then I’ve got past the critical
point.
Consequently, writing becomes a generative and creative activity integrated

into the composition process. The Notate contain various semiotic forms –
alongside language there are also sketches and diagrams – as well as frag-
mentary methods of notating, such as key points, short allusions or meta-
phors suited to the speed and compression of ongoing thought processes (see
John-Steiner 1995: 5f.). Recurrent writing processes crystallise and develop
core ideas, which will ultimately need translation into art music.
In addition to writing up their own ideas, composers are also readers of
texts written by others. The practical directionality Ciciliani refers to applies
to reading as well. Judith Unterpertinger realises that in the past few years
she has made progress “in multi-level thinking” by opening her mind to other
fields. At the same time,
I notice that when you read a lot, you know a lot more, but on the other
hand you become more critical. So knowledge can also block you. You
realise that so much has been done before. […] At the moment, I feel the
need to read a lot again, and ask philosophical questions. But there are
times when I think it’s very important to consciously distance yourself.
An interest in theory must not turn into a compulsion that distracts composers
from action, or in other words, from composing. Besides, grappling with
theory is not merely an intellectual challenge that is part and parcel of com-
posing, but also – as Clemens Gadenstätter says – time-consuming: “I lack
the time to concern myself with everything, so I have giant gaps.” Ideally,
reading should inspire and offer food for thought (“so-and-so does it like this,
so I could proceed by analogy and do this…”), with inspiration being the
result of a creative personal contribution. Beyond that, reading can serve as a
catalyst for making progress in a different context. As Clemens Gadenstätter
remarks,
Claude Lévi-Strauss, I mean he was like live-cell therapy for me. When I
read “Mythologica”, I had the impression that his thinking directly con-
cerned me. A light suddenly went on in my head: ah! And suddenly I had
a different relationship with musical material. Or when I starting tackling
Lakoff and Johnson, “Philosophy in the Flesh”. That was more important
to me in some ways than concrete music.
Additionally, there are theories from physics, natural sciences and mathe-
matics, which in their genuine complexity are not easily accessible to non-
specialists. When the interviewed artists refer to such theories, they do so in a
largely metaphorical sense or – to exaggerate somewhat – exploitatively. They
alight on something that seems inspiring to them, but without doing justice to
the respective theory or needing to understand it in its entirety. One composer
echoed this, saying with specific reference to postmodern philosophers
including Gilles Deleuze that they are good sources of inspiration because
“they’re so vague in their statements that composers can interpret them in any
way they find inspiring [laughs].”
As critical participants in the music sector, however, many composers
notice that music-theory discourses not only discuss certain topics, but are
generally also instrumental in power relationships: they serve particular
struggles for positioning and legitimisation. One composer observes, “I don’t
want to sound arrogant, but I really have to say that I’ve found music theory
pretty boring for a long time. […] Because I think music is almost always
about material concepts in some way, and about how someone deals with his
material, etc.” A different interviewee mentions her interest in “certain sensuous
qualities, but then in Darmstadt they [other composers at the international
summer courses for New Music] would probably assume I was a romantic,
and I’m really not keen on that idea.”
As previously mentioned, composers write texts as well. Only a few com-
posers might publish theoretical texts, but all of them occasionally write short
texts to accompany programmes or CDs. The purpose of the publication
determines the style of writing and content. Katharina Klement says that her
contributions to programmes “sometimes evolve all by themselves. Sometimes
I add why the piece has that particular title. There usually is a reason, at least
in my case. It often points to something in the content or structure. I can
explain that, and I think that’s good.” But not all composers like to assume
the role of author, as the following excerpt from an interview shows:
I can only speak in technical terms. […] Of course I can write, but then
these sentences come out that, well, [breathes out deeply] who’s it for?
Obviously, sometimes the audience likes to hear composers talk about
their piece, and I think it’s okay for composers to try and make their
work accessible. But what I find strange is when people say a piece offers
resistance or something, against politics.
This composer evidently feels the pressure from the commissioning party or
audience, expecting her to justify herself. Not everyone shares this feeling,
however. One interviewee remarked on the purposefulness of programme
texts and concluded:
I position myself very clearly to show what I’m about. In radio interviews
as well, et cetera. Of course I always say the same things. When I say,
okay, so-and-so interests me the most, I know what effect that’ll have. Of
course you can say, it’s a fad. But everything you say assumes a certain
label. I question my motives too. Is it still authentic, is it still about the
content? As long as that’s the case, I’ll keep saying things very clearly. […]
But even that’s a bit of a reaction. Because I know that in the new form
of music that became the fashion after 1945 or so, you always have to
have ten pages of introduction, so you can understand it, with quotes by
Adorno and so on and so forth. That’s always got on my nerves, right
from the start. […] I suppose I could stop giving interviews, say nothing
else, just the bare work. But that’s the worst fad of all.
Even though our composers have different opinions on their role as authors
of texts, consensus still emerges: their ambivalent attitude towards intellectual
expectations. Some consider it a real strain “because it’s become almost a
neurosis, where you can’t write a single note without justifying it somehow.”
1.4.2 Notations
It is probably difficult to imagine our daily lives without written language.
Writing a text message, reading newspapers and books, or handwriting a
shopping list are a daily matter of course and a firm part of our lives, without
us thinking much about them. This literality that constantly surrounds us,
however, also has a different effect, as Walter Ong (1982: 78) notes: “More than
any other single invention, writing restructures consciousness.” This applies not
only to verbal language. With the invention of notation systems, music –
which until then had only had an existence in sound and performance –
achieved a sign-bounded objectivisation, which gradually changed musical
thinking. Erhard Karkoschka (1972: 1) views a notation system, on the one
hand, as a tool “to make possible the construction, preservation and commu-
nication of more complex kinds of music”. On the other hand, however, he
points out the very significant fact that “the technical possibilities of a notation
system also influence the act of composing – the entire thinking of all musi-
cians”. As media, then, notation systems are absolutely not epistemically
neutral. The technical reproducibility of performed music since the end of the
19th century, as well as its digitisation about a century later, in no way changes
the structuring and generative impact of notation systems.
Notation systems consist of a limited number of signs, of a syntax and
semantics. Following Ernst Cassirer (1923/1953: 161), we view notation systems
and artificial languages not primarily as “product (ergon), but [as] an activity
(energeia)”, whose “true definition can only ever be genetic”. Notation systems
make possible activities such as forming, organising, representing, recombining
and sharing musical thoughts, or coordinating several members of an orchestra.
To speak here of symbolic or cognitive affordances provides an interesting
analogy to the concept of material affordances that we have already discussed.
Adjectives such as “symbolic” or “cognitive” should here be understood as
being practice-bounded. The use of notation systems resembles the writing of
texts in that it is not an immaterial and purely mental act, but a core element
of the practice of composing. Like every other practice, reading and writing – or
rather the ability to read and write – are the result of exercise and education.
For Ludwig Wittgenstein (1969/2005: 6),
[i]t is misleading then to talk of thinking as of a “mental activity”. We

may say that thinking is essentially the activity of operating with signs.
This activity is performed by the hand, when we think by writing; by the
mouth and larynx, when we think by speaking; and if we think by
imagining signs or pictures, I can give you no agent that thinks.
Music notation systems are not comparable to verbal languages because they
contain hardly any references to the extra-musical (see Kneif 1973: 137). To that
extent, notation signs are not symbols referring to something complex and con-
cealed, but primarily encoded instructions to act. Hence music notation systems
are described as partial writing systems. They enable us to notate things that
cannot be captured with verbal language. There are two main types of notation
system: action notations and sound notations. Action notations direct musicians
in what they have to do. Karlheinz Essl used such notations in his piece “Her-
becks Versprechen” (see Figures 4.4 and 4.5, Chapter 4). For this work, he
developed a new electronic instrument, for which “there is no real notation. I
have a kind of action writing with commentary, where I know what I’m doing
but at the same time the commentary always explains or reminds me what
should happen in terms of sounds.” Sound notations, by contrast, mainly refer to
sound results. The two types of notation system have to some extent grown
closer to each other over the course of their historical development, so that some
action notations now hint at sound conceptions or even integrate sound nota-
tions, and vice versa (see Mahnkopf 2003: 54f.). Bertl Mütter works not only
with conventional note signs, but also incorporates images into his scores, as he
explained during his interview about his composition “dsudl (das schwere und
das leichte)” (2011). It happens, he says, that he tells his musicians:
Right, now we’ll play this picture here from the Prinzhorn Collection [a
famous collection of art brut]. […] There are so many … irritations. I
would write “Your ad could appear here” in a score. […] There are so
many possibilities and ideas. Of course [he points at an illustration in his
score], some things are notated gesturally too, such as – it’s a Brownian
motion of molecules.
As this example shows, images can notate things that cannot be captured
using musical signs.
Every music notation system and every actual score contain numerous
indeterminables and imponderables, which can ultimately only be worked on
during rehearsals. Indications on dynamics, for instance, are always relative.
Timbre and the balance between instruments are also difficult to notate pre-
cisely. And as with the different communication practices we described in
composers’ interactions with musicians (language, gestures, singing, etc.),
there are similar strategies for dealing with notation systems. Every notation
system has its limits for representing musical ideas, and thus tends to restrict
musical thinking at the same time. Every notation system, however, also
expands the limits of every other notation system. This once again demon-
strates the cognitive pluralism already discussed: several forms of articulation
are used, which complement one another by partially removing each other’s
limitations.
Hence it is only partly true that scores can be characterised as sets of
instructions. Scores are sequences of signs, which always open up a space of
interpretation and at the same time leave much implicit. The relation between
music notation and sound event remains underdetermined. It has to be prac-
tically revealed, tried and negotiated through playing. While Carl Dahlhaus
(1970: 65 – our translation) states that “the reading of sheet music […] is
always accompanied by acoustic imaginings”, this is neither entirely true nor
completely false. Acoustic imaginings do not have the sensory concreteness of
sound events because they always contain vagueness. They consist of acoustic
impressions that those reading the score already have in their aural memory
from previous experiences. That can be the only explanation of why, for every
piece of music, there is always a spectrum of different interpretations that are
deemed legitimate by a community of shared cultural practice.
If we define scores as the outcomes of intentional acts because they are
primarily aimed at performers, then there must be case-specific criteria for
success. The writing and finalising of scores is then an activity that requires
various competences to meet these criteria. Performing musicians read the score
by starting with the notation signs and then channelling towards the musical
meaning. The directionality of their reading is crucial. It has an underlying
aesthetic intentionality even in the absence of any intended musical meaning –
for instance, in Dadaistic concepts – and even where composers try to be
illegible by deliberately including discontinuities, polyvalent marks and allit-
erations. Both reading and writing are procedural acts, which implies that they
weigh potential meanings. Importantly, this includes implicitly taking into
account those aspects which cannot be represented through a given notation
system. All composers are aware of the multi-layeredness and ambiguity of
writing processes and reading. Clemens Gadenstätter approaches the issue
pragmatically and with a relaxed attitude: “[Helmut] Lachenmann”, he says,
developed a fantastic notation system, “and I don’t see any reason to re-invent
the wheel when it’s already great. […] Anyway, one thing’s obvious: there’s no
such thing as a perfect notation.”
1.4.3 Algorithms and software

Previous sections have repeatedly demonstrated that it is now impossible to
imagine the practice of composing without technical apparatuses, and espe-
cially without computers with specific programs. The importance of algo-
rithms in this cannot be denied, either. However, our empirical material on
the topic is too limited. Consequently, we will address the subject only briefly,
with a few fundamental reflections on the significance of algorithms for the
practice of composing.
Algorithms existed long before modern computers were invented and have
been used in various ways in composition processes. Historically, we know of
algorithmic approaches from the Middle Ages onwards, and in 1787 Mozart
invented a musical dice game. It is only from the 1950s onwards, however,
that they gained in importance (see Essl 2007). Algorithms are formal
instructions or calculation models for generating, processing, transforming
and selecting musical material. Their five main characteristics are: (1) being
based on rules, (2) consisting of non-arbitrary and (3) calculated operations
that follow a fixed sequence and, (4) in a finite number of calculation steps, (5)
produce a result (see Vempala 2014: 38). Gerhard Nierhaus (2012: 4f.) specifies
different types of algorithms used in the process of composing, such as stochastic
models, generative grammars, recursive transition networks, chaos and self-
similarity models, genetic models, cellular automatons and neural networks.
If we look at their operative effect, we can define other groups, such as algo-
rithms with memory functions, random functions and exclusionary functions.
Using algorithms in connection with digital computers produces a sort of
“assisted composing”. Algorithms deliver impulses for composition and are
therefore epistemically relevant. Elisabeth Harnik, an improvisation musician
and composer, says in an interview (in Nierhaus 2012: 28) that “certain proce-
dures and sets of rules” act like a “counterpart” and “fundamental stimulus”
for her. Furthermore, the use of algorithms increases formalisation, under-
stood as the possible ways of abstracting work processes. It also raises the
level of rationalisation (closely linked to formalisation), understood as the
conscious ordering, controlling and accelerating of work processes.
However, in practical terms, there are limited possibilities of formalisation and
rationalisation. In close cooperation with other composers, Gerhard Nierhaus
(2012, 2015) has tried to formalise composition decisions in an experimental
setting. In a dialogue format, eight selected composers who generally do not
use algorithms to compose articulated their structural ideas for generating
and working on musical material. A program was subsequently developed to
implement the ideas. The composers were confronted with the results by being
given a limited amount of algorithmically generated musical material, which
they commented on and evaluated. Further programming steps and discussion
of the results followed. The aim of the experiment was not to replace the
composers’ artistic intuition by an individually tailored program, but to shift
the focus of music analysis onto the level of intuitive evaluation. The study
shows that even when composers have at their disposal an elaborate set of
formalised rules in the shape of algorithms, they do not necessarily accept the
results it generates, yet nor do they think them trivial.
Algorithms are immaterial tools, which – like musical instruments – can
only be used meaningfully with effective artistic practical knowing. Many of
the fundamental problems of creating still remain, such as having to confront
imponderability, semantic openness, potential alternative choices and con-
tingence during the decision-making process. The deployment of artificial
intelligence is consequently limited. If, hypothetically speaking, the composers’
intelligence in music composition was entirely transparent to them, would
they be in a position to compose faster and better? It is doubtful. The social
and cultural complexity of the creative process cannot be eliminated because
composing is embedded in concrete social contexts, which precede the action
of composing and pre-structure it. Composers are neither completely con-
scious of these contexts, nor can they clearly grasp them. The contexts remain
silently effective and escape formalisability. Even those composers who work
with algorithms still struggle to make the right artistic decisions – as do all
composers. In his diary, Karlheinz Essl describes several attempts to achieve
various effects, such as “colouring the granulated sound current using con-
volution”, which were ultimately unsuccessful. He experimented “with other
plug-ins […]. Many of them are useless for my purposes, but in Spectral-
Shuffle I finally find exactly the effect that I’d imagined soundwise”. After
devising his software instrument, he “plays with it for hours” and improves
the program. Essl says of subsequent work steps that he is thinking of “very
different scenarios as realms of possibility”, but that they would have to be
structured so that listeners “can follow”. Again and again, he listens to the
provisional results several times over and decides what he likes. Some things
are not clear: “I’m not sure if I should really leave in the ‘singing’ with the
flanger melody. It doesn’t seem to fit with the overall progression. The passage
sounds ‘great’ in itself, but it’s definitely strikingly different.” Karlheinz Essl
writes no meta-rules for making aesthetic judgements on his material. Even if
he did, he would then need further rules for further difficulties in deciding –
meta-meta-rules – so as to be able to continue, until he encountered new
difficulties requiring new rules to solve the problems of the meta-meta-rules.
In short: the result would be a rule regression that would permit almost no
practical action (see Zembylas 2004: 286–303). He therefore relies on his
artistic and practical experience and his sensory and aesthetic intelligence to
make decisions and finish composing his piece.
Composers in the field of computer music always work at the interface of
music, information science and technology, which requires a triple expertise.
The computer composer Mikhail Malt states in an interview that a composer
who creates a new Max patch to try out new sound possibilities (Max patches
are programs, or rather routines, written in the programming language Max/
MSP) has three perspectives on the patch. First, the composer’s viewpoint, in
which the patch itself is less interesting than the aesthetic output. Second, the
performer’s perspective, for whom the patch has to be ergonomical to a cer-
tain extent: the patch must be of accessible design and simple build so that
the performance can unfold without problems or glitches. Third, the instru-
ment-maker’s viewpoint, whose motto is: the better designed the patch, the
more operations it makes possible; but the more complex it becomes, the
more difficult composition ideas are to express.
Even the most powerful computer cannot replace a composer. There are
two things computer programs cannot develop: a practice community and a
socially generated artistic identity. Both community and identity are recipro-
cally constituted by continuous practical interaction, in which composers
attain a shared intelligibility through collective processes of learning and the
negotiation of meanings and values. There is one further reason why pro-
grams and algorithms cannot replace a composer. Algorithms can be
“described as formalisable and abstracting processes that deliver solutions for
certain tasks” (Nierhaus 2012: 1), but this does not deprive composers of the
opportunity to make decisions. Rather, the use and design of algorithms as in
a Max patch demands “a differentiated approach, which ultimately remains
the artistic responsibility of the composer” (Nierhaus 2012: 2). It is possible
to write an algorithm to choose the sound that has the least interference, or
the highest or lowest level measurable on a scale of a certain sound feature.
An algorithm can certainly accomplish this with high precision and in never-
ending loops without any loss of quality. But artistic work includes activities
that algorithms can only carry out to a limited extent or not at all. They have
no sensory experience, because they only calculate. They also lack the possi-
bility of developing, confirming or discarding aesthetic preferences jointly
with other members of a practice community. Not least, they do not possess
the corporeality required to perceive and judge the sound material they have
generated on a sensory and emotional level.
1.4.4 Summary
In conclusion, we hold that immaterial objects have three functions. As tools
of cognitive practices, they possess a generative and a transformative function.
Different notation systems enable composers to represent sounds or ideas for
sounds using different symbolic shapes. Music-aesthetics discourses – to
mention a second example – help to develop or organise thoughts and thus to
generate new ideas and composition concepts. At the beginning of the com-
position process, especially when the first ideas are being generated and
notated, verbal means and musical notation signs act as vehicles for artistic
and creative processing. Writing down composition ideas or first concepts in
notebooks or sketchbooks not only works as a reminder, but also drives the
generation of ideas. When finalising and fixing musical ideas, notation systems
make possible detailed work, precision, revision and further development of
parts of the piece. Immaterial objects can vastly expand the possibilities of
human cognition by decisively widening imagination, processing power and
memory capacity. This in turn boosts the intramusical complexity of
achievements in composition. And finally, signs have a coordinating function.
Towards the end of the composition process, musical notation functions as a
structuring instance during rehearsals. Here, notation signs are catalysts for
social interactions.
Notes
1 Theodore Schatzki criticises Becker’s approach as a variant of methodological
individualism and argues that actions always take place in “constellations of practice-
material bundles” (Schatzki 2014: 17). The terms “constellations” and “bundles” here
refer to a level of aggregation that exceeds immediate micro-sociological interactions
and actions. “Practice-material bundles” structure the social setting for the actions
and interactions taking place before they take place. (For a development of the con-
cept of “joint action” from a practice-theory perspective, see also Barnes 2001:
17–28.) Pierre Bourdieu (1992/1996: 204f.) in turn accuses Becker’s generalised
concepts of interaction and cooperation of masking the objective structures of the
artistic field, which arise from the unequal distribution of resources and power, as well
as the antagonisms and struggles that this generates. Arguing from a perspective of
symbolic interactionism, Becker (1982/2008: 372–386) responds that Bourdieu’s
concept of the field looks as if social relationships were shaped by some sort of invi-
sible forces. Becker, on the other hand, focuses on interactions to explain how human
beings develop their activities and attitudes in these interactions with others.
2 A network analysis for British composers can be found in McAndrew & Everett 2015.
3 Similarly, many writers who mainly work on a computer will print out partial prose
texts because printed paper creates a certain distance and at the same time provides
a better overview (see Zembylas & Dürr 2009: 31, 47, 110f., 114).
4 The embedding of artists in existing traditions has been associated with the notion
of influence. The art historian Michael Baxandall (1987: 59) has elaborated an
alternative interpretation of influence which emphasises the manifold and active
relations of an artist to artistic models. This relation might be to “draw on, resort
to, avail oneself of, appropriate from, have recourse to, adapt, misunderstand, refer
to, pick up, take on, engage with, react to, quote, differentiate oneself from, assim-
ilate oneself to, align oneself with, address, paraphrase, absorb, make a variation on,
revive, continue, remodel, ape, emulate, travesty, parody, extract from, distort,
attend to, resist, simplify, reconstitute, elaborate on, develop, face up to, master,
subvert, perpetuate, reduce, promote, respond to, transform, tackle”.
5 As a kind of text, the diary possesses certain formal and characteristic features – for
instance, text media, format, type of writing, writing tools, and others – that con-
firm its identity as an autobiographical text.
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2 The processuality of composing
We have so far taken for granted that composing can be characterised as a

process, trusting to the reader’s general sense of that concept to make
further explanation unnecessary. In this chapter, however, the processuality
of composing moves centre-stage, making a more precise definition crucial.
Understanding music as a dynamic process becomes pivotal from the
moment we first conceive of music not primarily as a “text” – as the textu-
alist paradigm within musicology suggests – but rather as a performative
phenomenon. Some musicologists, such as Philip V. Bohlman (2001: 18; see
also Cook 2001: § 5–7), argue that music should be seen as a process altogether,
not as an object:
The metaphysical condition of music with which we in the West are most
familiar is that music is an object. As an object, music is bounded, and
names can be applied to it that affirm its objective status. […] By con-
trast, music exists in the conditions of a process. Because a process is
always in flux, it never achieves a fully objective status; it is always
becoming something else. As a process music is unbounded and open.
One way of analysing the creative process in art is to draw for instance on
Henri Poincaré (1908/1914: 50–63) and Graham Wallas (1926/2014: 39) and
subdivide it into stages: preparation, incubation, illumination, verification.
That would certainly structure the process and also make it possible to find
out what problems and challenges are characteristic to each individual stage.
However, any explanation of processes that uses stage models (e.g. Katz &
Gardner 2012: 110–120) also risks imposing a development structure on the
different composition processes that conceals their contingency and diversity.
As Friedemann Sallis (2015: 7) rightly points out, “[t]he sheer diversity of
working methods should make us sceptical of attempts to define stages of this
activity all too precisely.” In this chapter, we will take a different path and
concentrate on the dynamic unity of cognitive and performative aspects. Thus
our reference point will not be stages, but rather the composers’ activities. We
will examine what precisely composers do during composing, and how their
activities are intertwined.
We aim to show that composition processes are goal-directed but not goal-
driven. The final gestalt of the piece is not known beforehand – except that it
must be a finished composition that corresponds to the specific contractual
agreements – but only emerges during the creative process. The composed
piece thus represents the result of focused work, whose progress we view as
neither linear nor rational. Drawing on Karin Knorr-Cetina’s (1981: 113)
laboratory studies, we might say that the working process “is dominated by
what could be the case, and what should or might be done”. Composers seek
ideas, but do not always know what exactly they are looking for. They may
keep an open mind and try out sounds that leave potential for unpredictability
and association. Such openness, curiosity and willingness to experiment are
the result of a historical cultural process as well as the musical tradition of
western contemporary art music. They are not primary characteristics of
individual psychology. They manifest themselves in composing practices,
without excluding or eliminating the effectiveness of other habitual thought
patterns or routines.
If we consider the concept of process in terms of an “ontology of becom-
ing” (Pickering 2008: 12), we notice that it contains the idea of duration. The
composition process consists of a temporal interconnection of action and is
therefore not an event. After all, compositions do not simply fall into the
composer’s lap, however many ideas he or she might have. At first sight it
might seem self-evident to view process and event as opposites. On closer
inspection, the relationship between process and event is more complicated. A
process has a duration whose beginning and end may be vague. An event, on
the other hand, is a one-off occurrence that can largely be dated and identi-
fied precisely. And yet in any composition process there can be events that
shape the process. While open-mindedly trying out instruments and sounds,
composers can make discoveries that trigger a rethinking of the composition
process. These seminal events during the course of the creative process can
be described using such metaphors as “forking paths” (Becker, Faulkner &
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2006: 5) or “turning points” (Schwarz 2014: 13f.).
Prominent events emphasise the non-linearity of creative processes and their
openness in terms of results.
And yet this should not shift the analysis of composition process too far
towards singular events. An event – be it a new idea, a meeting with a per-
forming musician or a rhythmic sound heard by chance at the cinema – is
interpreted as a “forking path” or “turning point” only in retrospect. That
does not automatically discount the interpretation, but it must be justified by
the overall picture of the composition process. Processuality cannot be frag-
mented into innumerable events since that would dissolve the connection
between composition activities. “Process” and “event” are thus different con-
cepts, but not mutually exclusive.
This brings us to a further characteristic of composition processes: they are
dynamic and incremental. Incremental (Latin incrementare, make bigger)
because their complexity – meaning the extent of their internal interactions
The processuality of composing 59
and variables – increases over the course of the creative process. Dynamic
because the nature of the variables changes over the course of the creative
process. Activity Y has an impact on subsequent activity Z, and changes the
way in which one perceives preceding activity X. Processuality as a temporal
interconnection therefore also denotes a dynamic interdependence between
individual activities.
Complexity is, then, one of the defining features of creative processes.
Composition processes consist of myriad attempts, intuitive and emotion-
based decisions, thoughts, and small piecemeal processing steps, making them
particular and non-repeatable. “The difficulties are always new, or at least
they feel new each time”, Marco Ciciliani observes. The way composers deal
with this intrinsic complexity varies. We can distinguish two work-mode
ideals. Some composers design a synoptic plan at the beginning of the work
process, to which they will adhere more or less strictly. It thus determines
their subsequent work steps to a certain extent. Other composers pursue a
more heuristic approach, where the composition only develops gradually
during the writing process (see Donin & Féron 2012: 19). Fritz Böhle (2009)
likewise distinguishes between exploratory actions and those carried out
according to a plan, insisting, however, on the limits of the planned approach.
Complex work actions always rely on exploratory, corporeal and sensory
knowledge that is guided by experience.
The relatively long duration of composition processes in art music and their
complex and incremental character cause problems for our empirical study. It
is clearly impossible to document a work process lasting several months
without omissions. We thus asked the case-study composers to keep a work
diary to note down their activities. These work diaries were begun at the start
of the composition process and ended with the finished composition. It was
left to the composers to decide on the form of their diaries. Karlheinz Essl
and Katharina Klement kept a written diary; Marko Ciciliani and Joanna
Wozny made spoken recordings and submitted additional written notes.
These diaries give us an insight into the composers’ daily routines, when they
worked on particular parts of the composition, and what activities they
engaged in. Once we received these documentary materials, however, it was
obvious that it is impossible for composers to verbalise all work steps, ideas
and sensations. Even when they tried to set out their working processes to the
best of their knowledge and belief, they instinctively resorted to narrative
patterns that convey a specific image of the creative process. Furthermore,
they could only communicate what they were conscious of. Missing from the
diaries, therefore, are activities that escaped their attention at the time. This has
resulted in an additional empirical and interpretative difficulty. Since the core of
our analysis consists of the composers’ personal reports and descriptions –
alongside sketches, sound recordings and videos – many of the more peripheral
and discreet activities leave hardly any traces. Examples of these are compo-
sers re-reading their own musical marks (Notate) to consider how to continue
the writing process, or listening to partial recordings of their own composition
during its creation – made using appropriate programs – to advance the work.
Composers can only discuss such processes to a limited degree because,
during the re-reading or listening, their attention is focused on the “making”
and not on themselves (see Polanyi 1958: 55ff.).
2.1 Exploring – Understanding – Valuing – Making

Reflective and conceptual activities have a crucial role in artistic practices. In
contrast to the conception of mind as essentially a black box, we conceive
reflective and conceptual activities as inseparable from physical activities and
thus as observable activities (cf. Schatzki 1996, 2001; Schmidt 2017). Fur-
thermore, monitoring – whether during an action or afterwards, whether by
oneself or by others – is, to quote Shove, Pantzar and Watson (2012: 100),
“part of, and not somehow outside, the enactments of practice”. As mentioned
previously, the composition process interconnects numerous activities: generating
ideas, collecting material, researching, working out a concept for the time
structure or dramaturgy, exploring sounds or families of sounds by experi-
menting on an instrument or a music computer, tentatively combining existing
ideas, trying to ascertain what preceding steps and current results mean,
making musical marks, linking partially worked-out fragments with each
other, perhaps programming software, making a first written version of the
score, developing certain solo passages and the various instrumental voices,
finishing the fair copy, etc. This great variety of activities can be grouped
together in four categories: exploring, understanding, valuing, making. We
would briefly like to discuss them.
There are numerous examples in the diaries of ideas being generated,
musical material being collected, targeted research, references to other musical
works, etc. We subsume these within the verb “explore”. However, such
exploring cannot be neatly defined since practices of exploring vary. The great
variety of activities and forms of exploring arises firstly because of composers’
habitual approaches and working methods and secondly because of the parti-
cularity of each single composition situation. We thus use the verb “explore”
in the very broad general sense of an activity governed by knowledge and
rules, which employs material and immaterial tools (e.g. pens, paper, software
programs). To say that the practise of composing is rule-governed does not
mean that rules determine it (see Winch 1958/1976: 48ff.; Taylor 1995). For a
start, experienced composers follow rules quite differently from beginners (see
Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1986: 16–51; Neuweg 2004: 300–316). Second, rules
always leave a “back door” open (see Wittgenstein 1969/1975: § 139), mean-
ing that their practical implementation by experts cannot be reduced to a
mastery of the respective implicit and explicit rules. In other words, the prac-
tice exceeds its rules (see Zembylas 2004: 294).
Wherever we use the verb “understand” in what follows, we need to take
into account that understanding has deep roots in the intellectualist, mentalist
and textualist tradition of the humanities and social sciences in Europe. It
usually means intellectual and linguistic “generation of meaning”. Both the
historically powerful dualism of body and mind and the practice-related
forgetfulness of modern rationalist philosophy and later idealist philosophy
still have an impact today. They uncouple “meaning” from making and posit
it as an independent entity or an inherent characteristic of an object. The
text-centredness of hermeneutics and the influence of semantics and semiotics
in musicology have done the rest. Sociology likewise neglected the significance
of the body for a long time (cf. Turner 2008: 33) and strongly focused on text-
based attempts instead of on practical accomplishments in situ (cf. Martin
2006). Within this theoretical heritage, understanding appears as an interior,
contemplative, language-bounded reflective act by rational subjects. To free
ourselves of these conceptions, we view understanding primarily as a practical
and domain-specific ability. The philosophical groundwork for this was
already laid by Martin Heidegger (1927/1979: §§ 31–32; see also Dreyfus
1992: 142f., 184f.), who interpreted understanding as the main feature of
human existence (Dasein); by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953/1968: §§ 150, 154,
182; see also Coulter 1989: 61), who saw it as the skill or rather as the ability
of language users; and John Dewey (1910: 116–134; see also Jung 2010:
147f.), who considered it the organism’s practical response to its environment.
Drawing on this perspective, we regard processes of understanding not pri-
marily as contemplative acts of sense-giving, but as activities that are inte-
grated into practice and take place directly within actions such as seeing,
listening, researching, writing, trying out, etc. (see Schön 1983: 49ff.).
Similarly, we conceive valuing as a situated weighing of alternative actions
that directly or indirectly leads to the carrying out of further actions. Valuing
does not necessarily precede action. It can just as well be integrated into the
flow of action. In this, the aspect of consciousness – for instance, being conscious
of the reasons behind a decision that one has taken – is not relevant here.
Like exploring and understanding, valuing is based on rules or valuation criteria,
where the connection between the activity (the valuing) and the criteria is not
causal, but case-specific. “We do not learn the practice of making empirical
judgments by learning rules: we are taught judgments and their connexion
with other judgments. A totality of judgments is made plausible to us”
(Wittgenstein 1969/1975: § 140). The same is true of aesthetic judgements, or
valuing. Valuing cannot be comprehended by an aesthetic rationality, but
only within the specific artistic practice community. It is the shared artistic,
practical and epistemic ground that makes individual valuations comprehen-
sible and acceptable to third parties: a shared music tradition, similar prior
understanding and convictions, similar models and paradigmatic examples
(see Born 2010: 192; Heinich 2014: 229), and above all a common musical
practice (see Wittgenstein 1953/1968: § 241).
Viewed in isolation, many micro-acts of understanding and valuing appear
peripheral. However, in their cumulative interconnectedness, they correlate
with an ability to act that we term making. The verb “make” should not be
misunderstood in this context. Clearly, exploring, understanding and valuing
are also composition activities. Here, however, making explicitly refers to
bringing to fruition and thus to genuine acts of creating the musical work.
These include not only writing and inserting musical notes, but also deleting
them. Writing is a particular kind of conceptual practice. It depends on
knowing how to use characteristic symbols (e.g. different notations) to realise
a musical score. Without making – in other words without the specific objec-
tification of the work – the composition process would remain unfinished.
Andrew Pickering (1995: 115) calls this competence “disciplinary agency”,
since symbolic systems and forms (discourses, notation systems, etc.) “discipline”
and “force” the human agent to undertake actions. However, we do not wish to
overstate the importance of making. During most composition processes, there
are days of few ideas and very meagre work results. Such work days are just as
important as days with clearly measurable outputs: composers eliminate spe-
cific options by heading into impasses, as it were – by trying out things and
then discarding them. These acts mean that the “unproductive” days are
simply productive in a different way. Making cannot be reduced to efficient and
effective action.
These four clusters of activity are to some extent comparable to an
analytical schema proposed by Hans Roels (2016), which also posits four
main composing activities: planning, exploring, writing and rewriting. But
there are notable differences. We merge the activities related to planning
and exploring into our concept of exploring since most composers in the
real world act in a way that partakes of both ideal types (where the first
type works more deductively, starting from a synoptic plan, and the
second type proceeds fragmentarily and heuristically). Furthermore, we
subsume writing and rewriting within one category – making. Finally,
while Roels (2016: 422f.) emphasises the difference between activities
“outside the sequence” (planning and exploring) and “in sequence” (writ-
ing and rewriting), we highlight the blurred boundaries and the inter-
penetration of such sequential moments, e.g. reflecting and acting,
exploring and creating.
Regardless of the designation of various activities and the way they are
divided, however, we stress that composition processes take place in an
emotional atmosphere, often one of tension. John Dewey (1934/1980: 50) com-
ments on the “anticipation of what is to come” as follows: “This anticipation
is the connecting link between the next doing and its outcome for sense. What
is done and what is undergone are thus reciprocally, cumulatively, and con-
tinuously instrumental to each other.” Our interviewees spoke of the agony of
success, the frustration of daily distractions, the fear of spiteful critics, and the
uncertainty of how collaborators would react to their suggestions. Obviously,
there are positive states of mind too – such as happiness at a good idea,
contentedness with progress made and feeling moved by realising content that
feels very personal to them. This means we need to consider the immanent
goal-directedness of processes as well as their mood. We encompass both in
the concept of teleo-affectivity, which consists of the integration of ends,
preferences, interests,
generated criteria
Understanding Valuing
on
iti
im
tu
ag
in
in
at
io
prior understanding,
n
abilities
gestalt perception
Exploring Making
experience,
knowledge
Figure 2.1 The interrelatedness of various partial activities
projects, aims, tasks, beliefs, desires, commitments and emotions in the

accomplishment of practices (see Schatzki 1996: 89f., 99–101). (“Emotion”
contains the word “motion”, indicating that emotions also contain impulses
and motives for actions: “I’m moved.” Similarly, an affect is something that
affects both us and others. From a praxeological perspective, affects are
closely linked to actions – see Reckwitz 2012: 250).
Composers undertake various activities, which are practically interconnected.
They are set in motion in order to advance work on the composition and in
order to bring it to completion. Figure 2.1 clarifies this “in-order-to” relationship
of various activities and relations. Partial activities are always connected
with each other and only attain their full significance in their unity and
interrelatedness.
2.2 The cohesion of activities inherent in processes

In this section, using two of our empirical case studies,1 we will illustrate the
cohesion of activities inherent in processes. We will take into account the
particularity of every composition process that shapes the interrelation and
configuration of the activities. The particularity of Karlheinz Essl’s composi-
tion process, for instance, consists among other things of the fact that he was
the intended performer of his composition “Herbecks Versprechen”. That left
him with two challenges to meet: to create a work as a composer and to
perform it as a musician. His diary begins on 30 November 2013 and ends on
18 February 2014.
For raw material, Karlheinz Essl has a tape from the 1980s, which contains
a recording of Ernst Herbeck2 reading his own poems. In his diary, Essl notes
that he was familiar with Herbeck’s poems from his school days and that he
was “moved” by the poet’s voice when listening to the recording. How
Karlheinz Essl appropriates the raw material at the start of the composition
process is shown in two diary entries:
[13 Dec 2013] First experiments with the spoken material. I choose Her-
beck’s poem, “Das Leben”3 and start stretching the length of the record-
ing (using the audio editor DSP-Quattro). I layer the various stretched
versions (by a factor of 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8) on top of each other using the
DAW [digital audio workstation] Reaper. But the results don’t sound
particularly interesting – I stop the experiments. I make a further attempt
to edit the spoken recording with my own granular synthesis software.
This time the results are much more promising. As I slowly and manually
scan the sound file, I’m able to isolate Herbeck’s intonation: he speaks in
B minor!
[9 Jan 2014] Experiments with the Ircam software TRAX, which allows
me to manipulate the structure of the speech formants. For example, you
can change a man’s voice into a woman’s or into a whisper. […] I
program a software instrument called Herbeck Stretcher in MaxMSP for
further experiments: once again, the starting-point is the paradigm of the
granular synthesis, whose parameters and algorithms I’ve entirely adapted
to Herbeck’s voice. So as not to lose sight of the many creative possibilities, I
program a pre-set structure to obtain reproducible results.
The predominant activity at the start of the composition process is one of

exploring, which happens on two levels. The composer tries out different
possibilities of processing and transforming sound, and approaches the raw
material practically so as to get to know it and familiarise himself with its
particularities. This exploring is characterised by a playful trying-out, during
which sounds are generated that may or may not subsequently be included in
the work. It also has an analytical level in that Karlheinz Essl methodically
aims to dissect the sound material. With the help of software, he makes
acoustic features of the material come to the surface that would normally
elude audibility.
Exploring is preconditionally dependent on the composer’s knowledge of
tonality as a systemic foundation (“Herbeck speaks in B minor!”). This also
demonstrates that Essl’s exploring, despite its ludic nature, is both rule-governed
and knowledge-governed. It would be impossible even to embark on this type
of exploring without expertise in music software and without providers and
developers of such software as well as broad experience in purposefully
creating results and categorising them musicologically.
From the first tasks onwards, acts of valuing occur, for instance in Essl’s
choice of the poem “Life”. Essl makes no further comment on this selection
in his diary. When asked, he explained that the poem had moved him. It was
“a repetitive poem”, he said, and he found it remarkable that Herbeck
repeatedly spoke of a beautiful life despite “not having had one himself”.
Essl’s choice of the poem was, then, primarily guided by its content and not
by the sound quality of the recording, as he himself informed us. In his diary,
he also articulates an appraisal (i.e. valuing) of the first results yielded by his
exploring. Here, we assume that this valuing occurred in actu during
the exploring and was entered into the diary later. Even in the first phase of
exploring – long before the material has been comprehensively examined and
the shape of the work has crystallised – there already exist criteria for valuing
which influence the composer’s making, even though they remain unspoken.
Exploring and valuing thus interact by generating and excluding possibilities.
Understanding is likewise inherent in Karlheinz Essl’s exploring, since an
implicit notion of which additional steps may be meaningful co-exists with
exploring and valuing. Understanding largely occurs on a sensory and auditory
level. Furthermore, reflective activities of understanding are linked to an
aesthetic competence in valuing, which Karlheinz Essl has incorporated into
his hearing after years of auditory training and experience as a composer and
performing musician. Borrowing from Theodor W. Adorno (1963: 184), we
might say that one aspect of composition work consists of “thinking with your
ears”. The ear is an intelligent organ, which accompanies the compositional
making, but also the compositional exploring, understanding and valuing.
The following diary entry illustrates the dual perspective of composer and
performer inherent in Essl’s exploring with performance in mind:
[16 Jan 2014] I continued work on the MaxMSP Patch Herbeck Stutter,
started yesterday, which is increasingly becoming a software instrument
for playing the middle movement live. I fine-tune the algorithms by closely
defining the system parameters and their mutual dependency. […] Having
added two sound processors (flanger, frequency shifter), I can now give
the primarily noise-like, spoken material harmonic colour, which
further increases the possibilities for creative expression during a live
performance. Finally I integrated a reverb with a freeze function. It can
be used to create an infinite reverb from time to time which “freezes” the
generated stream of sound.
Here, Karlheinz Essl is not focused on examining and developing the musical
material, but on developing and implementing the software instrument. In this
context, his exploring, understanding, valuing and making unfold along the
central question: what is the optimal software instrument for this performance?
The question keeps him occupied for several days.
[22 Jan 2014] The whole thing works magnificently, but I’m still looking
for a universal solution for the piece. Instead of developing software for
each movement, I’d rather develop all three movements using the same
approach, a general meta-structure. […] I also subject the MIDI controller
to critical scrutiny. I now check whether my kalimba equipped with a
contact microphone can serve as a touch controller and soon realise that
it would use up too much energy and time to program the device. I drop
the idea. Slight frustration is spreading. I need to find a totally different
way. […] I now incorporate the audio plug-ins SoundMagic Spectral into
my Herbeck Stutter to further transform the result of my granular
synthesis and experiment with the various plug-ins. I prick up my ears at
DroneMaker. I’ve finally found the tool I was looking for to change
Herbeck’s voice into long-drawn-out sound structures. I’m thrilled and
moved. But now starts a phase of intensive trying-out of the possibilities
for composing. The interaction between the various parameters has to be
tested and understood.
This entry documents an evaluative reflection on the process to date, with a

view to the performance. The focus of Essl’s work temporarily shifts from the
material to the implementation of ideas. Exploring no longer occurs in ludic
mode, but to confront a specific problem – it is fundamentally shaped by
practical understanding and valuing. Throughout this, Essl’s technical ability
and experience come to bear. It is the only way he can anticipate problems
and find solutions.4 This work phase, which aims to simplify the performance,
is also characterised by pragmatic decisions.
[23 Jan 2014] I need to make many small changes and adjustments to the
various system parameters to achieve fluid and intuitive mastery of the
instrument. Since the individual segments of the composition cannot be
viewed in isolation, I try to save certain settings using presets so that I
can compare the various settings better. […] I now get the impression that
I’ve more or less finished developing the instrument. All the controls on
my MIDI controller are taken up too, which means further expansion
would not be sensible. You have to stop at some point! Now it’s time to
compose!
“Changes and adjustments” require selections and decisions. That gives

valuing a predominant role in developing the instrument. These selections
and decisions, however, are not generated “in the mind” and then imple-
mented. They come about during the making – while exploring software
solutions and trying out possibilities for implementation. Throughout, the
opportunities offered and limits set by the performance instrument (the MIDI
controller) regulate Essl’s imagination, help him to make decisions and even
consciously to conclude tasks.
[11 Feb 2014] Now I need to clear a path through this landscape that my
listeners can actually follow. Under no circumstances do I want to do this
as didactically as Herbert Eimert did in his “Epitaph für Aikichi
Kuboyama” (1960–62), where the original voice is increasingly defami-
liarised in a series of “variations”. But then I’m pursuing a totally different
formal strategy: Herbeck’s original voice will only become audible during
the course of the piece, and then only as a small quotation. I want his
voice to slowly be distilled out of “abstract” sounds, which start off sound-
ing like human breathing. […] Here is the – still incomplete – progression:
1. Breathing > sputtering; 2. Sputtering > stuttering; 3. Stuttering >
whispering; 4. Whispering > chorus 5. Chorus > groove; 6. Groove >
slurring; 7. Slurring > speaking. Each of these formal parts will be
described in detail in a sort of performance score. […] All afternoon I
define the various sections and simultaneously try them out on the soft-
ware instrument. I’m very satisfied with it because I’m no longer con-
sidering a free improvisation (which would also be within the realm of
possibility).
The sketched-out progression of Essl’s piece is the result of an extensive pro-

cess of exploring, in terms of both the raw material and the software instru-
ment. Karlheinz Essl gained a deeper practical insight into both, and realised
how to develop his instrument further. This is paradigmatic of the way
exploring, understanding, valuing and making unfold: they are not only gov-
erned by knowledge, but generate new knowledge as well. Similarly, during
composing, comparisons with other works occur which are acts of valuing.
Thus, one aspect of the process of exploring can be about who (peer-orientated)
did what similar work (music-history-orientated), how it was done (music-theory
and composition-orientated) and to what extent (comparison-orientated) it
could be used as a reference point – including for a quotation or for differ-
entiation. Contextualising one’s own making helps to expand ideas and
develop them further. Essl’s decision not to include any “free improvisation”
can here be interpreted as a “forking path”: it definitively excludes a possibility
that had been considered.
In the following days, Karlheinz Essl works on composing the piece, an
activity we call making.
[12 Feb 2014] More work on the formal progression of the piece to
complete the ending: the speaking becomes “singing”, which develops
into “bellowing”. For the “singing”, I develop a method of giving the
speech particles harmonic colour using a flanger. For this, I use the scale
(c# – d – e – f – g – a♭– b – c), whose notes are chosen at random. Its
middle note g is the “tonal” centre of the piece, already hinted at in earlier
sections. […] I start the first trial recordings of the piece. I like the third
recording, Herbecks-Versprechen_24590.aif, even after repeated listening.
Nonetheless I recognise that the ending doesn’t cohere yet: still too much
going on there. Editing is called for!
Since the formal structure of the composition (see previous diary entry) has
already been developed, Essl’s composing now follows an established path
specifically regarding individual parts of the piece. Once again, hearing is
crucial. Essl’s concentrated re-listening to the provisional reference recordings
of his piece also changes the directionality of the listening. On a case-by-case
basis, this can lead him to focus on different aspects. His “repeated listening”,
however, does not follow any set plan with pre-fixed focal points. As Essl
explains, he uses the reference recording to “change perspective”. He likens
this to dancers who film and then watch themselves so as to be able to see the
choreography and sequences from the spectator’s perspective. While listening
to the reference recording, he pays attention to “the timing, transitions, flow
and energy”. If he has an idea for reworking a section, he makes a short note
indicating the time.
During the final days of work, valuing is employed to polish the composition.
The recordings here give Karlheinz Essl the necessary reference points – any
reworkings need to be realised in sound so that he can check the results of his
making.
[13 Feb 2014] As I play the piece several times, the progression becomes
more and more polished. […] I try to make the textual notation (the “score”
of the piece) as clear as possible using different colours, font attributes and
indents. I ban all superfluous elements and all not-immediately-necessary
representations of the system parameters from the GUI [graphical user
interface]. […] I eliminate everything that could distract.
[14 Feb 2014] I’m not sure if I should leave in the “singing” with the
flanger melody. It doesn’t seem to fit with the overall progression. The
passage sounds “great” in itself, but it’s definitely strikingly different. It
seriously disrupts the whole structure: the piece disintegrates into individual
segments.
[18 Feb 2014] Small cosmetic changes to the graphical user interface and
minimal corrections to the score. Then I make two reference recordings.
After listening to both recordings, I feel the piece is finally finished.
As this case study demonstrates, the meaning of exploring changes with time
from an open and exploratory activity to a focused activity, depending on the
specific situations, tasks set and challenges met. Further activities, such as
understanding and valuing, are also orientated towards the making of the
final composition. They are supposed to capture the possibilities of the sound
material so as to anticipate roughly what the software instrument has to
deliver. Understanding and valuing are often sensory and auditory, and thus
give hearing a central role. Because of Karlheinz Essl’s dual composer-performer
perspective, there is a pendulum swing between his creative making of the
composition and his operative making related to the performance. While
repeatedly listening, he develops existing ideas and structural concepts and
decides whether the overall piece is coherent. In other words, at certain
moments Essl anticipates and incorporates the audience’s perspective alongside
the composer’s and performer’s perspectives.
Let us now look at a second case study to analyse the cohesion and inter-
dependency of exploring, understanding, valuing and making: Marko Ciciliani’s
work “LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs (Gloomy Sunday)”. It was created in about
six months between September 2013 and February 2014. The particular
parameters of this creative process stemmed from the fact that the piece is the
fifth part of Ciciliani’s cycle “Suicidal Self Portraits”. And like Karlheinz
Essl, Marko Ciciliani immediately knew that he would be perfoming the piece
with his ensemble Bakin Zub, with him playing keyboards and electronics. He
also planned a video projection. In Ciciliani’s case, we have an audio diary
and copies of his writings. In what follows, we will refer to both.
On the first day of his diary entries, Marko Ciciliani says he has already
decided that this fifth part will be the last of his composition cycle. He then
reflects on what he has done in the previous parts, in terms of both composition
and performance technology. The audio diary thus starts with a reflective
introduction, in which the composer presents his understanding of the situa-
tion. He describes the cycle’s thematic and musical terms of reference, and
how he might respond to them. For the time being, this centres on a thematic
exploring, interpreted as a search for inspiration. The exploring is not entirely
open-ended, since the established cycle prescribes various points of orientation:
thematical (suicide), musical and instrumental (his own ensemble), temporal
(duration of the cycle’s other parts) and pragmatic (performance date and place).
To gain a closer understanding of the composition task he has set himself,
Marko Ciciliani – like Essl in the previous case study – evokes another composer’s
work for comparative purposes, namely Luciano Berio’s cycle “Sinfonia”
(1970). He states that the last part of his own cycle should not attempt to pick
up and resolve any loose threads from its previous parts. He always “very
much regretted this in the fifth movement of Berio’s ‘Sinfonia’, where he does
exactly that and where I got the impression that he’s apologising after the fact
for the things he dared to do in the first four movements.” Ciciliani continues:
[28 Sep 2013] Apart from that, I’d like to have a small video interlude
again, just as I did in all previous pieces. Mind you, it could also extend
into the piece and not remain an interlude, but flow into the last piece.
Then I did a bit of research on possible themes to address in the fifth
part. […] In any case, it would be logical to do something that deals with
the media or pop culture again in some shape or form. I really can’t say
anything more on that for now. I just need to keep researching and try to
narrow it down.
[29 Sep 2013] Today I did some more research on potential themes and,
as part of that, looked at the website www.secret-confessions.com. But
then I realised that I don’t really want to do another piece about con-
fessions. […] But since the title, at least, contains the subject of suicide –
even though I don’t interpret it as killing oneself – I did some more
research into what things might be possible, i.e. connections between
pieces of music and suicide. And I stumbled across a quite interesting
song from the 1930s, by a Hungarian, Rezső Seress, who is supposed to
have written a song [Gloomy Sunday], after which quite a few people
committed suicide. Perhaps I could look to that for a point of contact
and compose a piece that’s in some way a very free, elaborate cover version
of that piece.
Because of his plan to create a link to his cycle “Suicidal Self Portraits”,
Ciciliani already addresses important pre-compositional decisions in what
is only the second entry in his diary. Acts of valuing predominate here.
His statement about possibly working with the piece “Gloomy Sunday”
points out that the material (the piece of music and its historical context)
motivates and energises him. It encourages him to continue down the path he
has taken and at the same time stimulates ideas for his composition. However,
this also changes his acts of valuing, as can be seen in his written notes of 10
October 2013. Here, he wonders whether “Gloomy Sunday” might be “a bit
too banal” and whether the song might be a reference that “nobody gets
anyway”. The criterion on which he bases his valuing is directly named – the
contrast of banal vs. original, challenging, interesting. What exactly Ciciliani
understands these to mean, however, he does not specify.
Pragmatic considerations also emerge from his acts of valuing the material,
for example when he notes: “The final part [the fifth part of the cycle] should
have some substance, i.e. it should last ten minutes, give or take a bit. The
song probably doesn’t yield enough material for that kind of length.” He also
continues to look for reference points for the content of the work and writes:
[27 Oct 2013] Earlier in the week, I happened to come across a news item
about an American singer who has undergone quite a lot of cosmetic
surgery to resemble Justin Bieber as much as possible. I found that a
pretty interesting story in its absurdity. And I thought, the whole topic of
plastic surgery obviously has to do with redefining the self as well, which
is in keeping with my topic.
Quite by chance (“I happened to come across…”), Ciciliani finds a possible

topic for his composition – though this chance needs to be put into context.
After all, Ciciliani already has a certain thematic interest because of the
cycle’s earlier parts. His intentionality is thus already formed. In the following
days, he further refines certain aspects of the work.
[1 Nov 2013] I started by looping two dozen cover versions of the song
“Gloomy Sunday”, which I’d downloaded yesterday. I mean, I organised
them by key and then looped them in such a way that they replace each
other fluidly, i.e. by overlapping slightly. And I did a … well, a transpo-
sition or an abrupt modulation from C minor via G minor via D minor
to A minor. And, yes, on the whole I like it. But it hasn’t yielded anything
substantial yet. I kept having this idea that the layerings of the various
cover versions could create a sort of background texture, and then I could
sort of put the actual instrumental parts on top. As if it was a painting
with a primer coat. […] Then I had the idea that maybe this “Gloomy
Sunday” could play as a kind of ad music, with a film showing at the
same time. […] And that’s how I finally realised – since “Gloomy
Sunday” is a fairly melancholy song – that it probably isn’t best suited for
affirming cosmetic surgery. So I composed a version in a major key,
which could work very well for that. But most of all, this version makes it
possible to flow into a minor version and do a nifty transposition. And
that would clear the way for stacking all the other cover versions on top
of each other. […] And I really quite like that, somehow. Somehow the
piece is starting to take shape after all, even though I still don’t know
what the piece is… well, how it will continue. […] I also want to watch a
documentary about plastic surgery today. And in parallel, I’m also
watching a DVD put out by the ZKM [Centre for Art and Media,
Karlsruhe, Germany] about the history of video art in Germany from the
1960s to today.
This is the first time a musical making – in other words, an action of musical
bringing-to-fruition – comes into play, based on Ciciliani’s knowledge of
musicology and structural techniques. This making correlates with a compo-
sition idea: creating a “background texture” of sound (see Figure 4.6, Chapter
4). However, his actual treatment of the song “Gloomy Sunday” does not put
an end to the process of exploring. Rather, this aspect is displaced onto the
video recording. Ciciliani’s research aims to generate ideas for this. Here,
exploring means finding out what might be on offer, what Marko Ciciliani
might do.
The following diary entry shows that in Ciciliani’s as in Karlheinz Essl’s
composition process, hearing is an act of valuing and verifying as well as a
generation of ideas.
[3 Nov 2013] This morning I first listened to the sequence of the cover
versions again and then looked for reverb variations that ended up
replacing the real recordings to make the whole thing a bit fluffier and
muffled, so that it can act as more of a background texture. I like the
result now. I mean, there will probably always be small things to do here,
but I think I’ll consider it finished for now.
Ciciliani’s diary does not report how he listens or how the directedness of his
listening differs from case to case. This creates a blind spot in our empirical
material, which is understandable since, when listening, the composer focuses
his attention on the sounds and does not explicitly inform us whether the lis-
tening is valuing, verifying or generating ideas. These aspects of listening
remain tacit and leave hardly any traces in the diary entries.
Other situations reveal additional functions alongside the valuing, verifying
and generating functions of listening. Marko Ciciliani has to find his way
back into the composition after an involuntary break brought about by
another commission lasting several weeks. This is an experience-governed
process5: 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
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
effects valuing. Like Karlheinz Essl, Marko Ciciliani reports that he repeatedly
listens to what he has created in order to fine-tune it.
In his final diary entries, he mentions work on the video and the fine details
of the composition.
[10 Feb 2014] The last time I stopped at a passage where the drums come
in and where texts are meant to be spoken too, over drum rhythms. Texts
that are derived from pop songs and sing about different areas of the
body. But all pejorative. And it was supposed to be a sort of “before”
section, to be followed by an “after” section. When I say before and after,
I mean those photographs that you often see next to each other, […]
where you see the person’s state before the cosmetic surgery and then
after it. And I’m not sure yet what the “after” section will look like, but
this was the “before” section, where these texts appear, and here the car
on the video will be more prominent. […] I integrated a change in tempo,
which then creeps back into a 5/8 rhythm, like before. And now I’ve
written in cadences with false resolutions, like at the start of the piece.
And these deceptive cadences in a way introduce the “Gloomy Sundays”
that you can hear at the start of the piece and that keep popping up
during the piece, like a background primer coat. […] So I’ve got these
deceptive cadences connected in a series, which leave behind single notes
in both the violin part and the organ part, which form diatonic clusters,
or in the case of the violin chromatic clusters as well, and in that way
lead back to a sort of compression of the texture. And I don’t know
where exactly this might lead. One idea is to have another large sounds-
cape of “Gloomy Sunday” here. Either in the shape of compressed layers
of “Gloomy Sunday” or, as I’ve done before, by having a spectral freeze
swell very prominently.
The last part of this entry in particular illustrates incremental actions in

composing. The deceptive cadences influence the composing of the violin and
organ parts, which changes the importance of the violin, which in turn has an
effect on the required foundations, meaning the soundscape. In other words,
the change or introduction of a new aspect (the deceptive cadences) changes
the significance of individual parts. Ciciliani repeatedly reports in his diary: “I
don’t know where exactly this might lead.” Changes to individual parts also
imply (at times unpredictable) changes to the whole. When introducing
something, for example when composing a part for an instrument, Ciciliani
gets the feeling that other parts – such as the “background primer coat” –
also need to be looked at anew. Composing is no linear process, but an
incremental and network-like development with several interdependencies.
Ciciliani’s last written notes, from 14 to 20 February 2014, are all about
detailed composition decisions. He is trying to finish the composition process.
On 16 February 2014, four days before the last entry, he fixes the total length
of the piece at 12 to 13 minutes.
2.3 The artistic creative processes as a dynamic interlinking of actions
In the introduction to this chapter, we mentioned several characteristics of the
concept of process. They were not at all intended to provide a universal defi-
nition of the term, but a clarification meant for artists’ creative processes. The
starting-point is the temporal interlinking of actions. Our entire empirical
material confirmed that composition processes are goal-orientated but not
goal-directed, since the piece still has to be created and since even detailed
specifications do not determine the final gestalt of the piece. Katherina Kle-
ment compares the creative process to a “hike”, during which you have to
adapt to the terrain on the ground because “you’ll be sorry if you take a path
that you believe you absolutely have to take”. This metaphorical comparison
also contains the reason why we assign such attributes as “open”, “explora-
tory” or “experimental” to these processes.
Composition processes are open as to their results, but beyond that they are
shaped by a fundamental cultural expectation: they are expected to produce
something new (Groys 1992/2014; Zembylas 2004: 187–204).6 This culturally
generated expectation has a transindividual effect and influences not just
composers’ professional self-image, but also their composition practices.
Hence the receptiveness and willingness to experiment of many composers
whom we met, interviewed and observed are not primarily characteristics of
their individual psychology, but rather of their practice community. Here, we
posit a fundamentally different interpretation from many other analyses of the
creative psychology involved in composition processes (see Csikszentmihalyi
1996: 58ff., 110ff.; Feist 1998; Katz & Gardner 2012; Schubert 2012).
Our rejection of individualistic or actor-centric attempts to explain creative
processes should not automatically be taken to imply that we favour collectivistic
analyses or indeed analyses drawing primarily on system theory instead. We have
emphasised that every process is characterised by different results, which are the
foundations of its particularity and contingency. Some results can open up new
paths for a composer to pursue (or not). Others can cause disruptions in the work
process and lead to certain guiding principles being abandoned. All in all, unpre-
dictable and unplanned results mean that composition processes are non-linear
and non-deterministic. By emphasising the uniqueness and particularity of com-
position processes, however, we also stress the individually skilled and intelligent
response to various artistic, technical, pragmatic and emotional challenges. These
challenges are the subject of the next chapter.
The myriad different facets of the creative process can be clearly outlined
using “thick descriptions”.7 We have identified the activity clusters presented
above – exploring, understanding, valuing and making – in other composition
processes as well. As such, we consider them to be transferable as abstractions –
as long as the particularity of individual composition process, work habits
and abilities is not ignored. To that extent, no overarching theory can
be derived from the case studies, but they do provide results that elucidate
composition processes and make them comprehensible.
Individual cases can be connected and compared in different ways. We did
not present the work processes of Karlheinz Essl and Marko Ciciliani as
contrasting cases (cf. Roels 2016) because our primary purpose was to bring
out their incremental dimension. By incrementality we mean the gradual
development of a network of interdependencies between parts of the work
during the creative process. This network is barely tangible and only develops
slowly. Composers often begin by working out the details of individual segments
that are separate from each other. At some point thereafter, however, a point
almost impossible to determine, every further making – meaning every new
creation, insertion, displacement, deletion or reworking of existing segments –
has a significant effect on the already existing work. This situation requires a
comprehensive perspective, which reveals the composers’ experience. They
know that “the individual segments of the composition cannot be viewed in
isolation” and that “interaction between the various parameters” (Essl) must
be critically examined and understood. As long as the emerging shape of the
work is still mutable, the creative process remains open until all segments have
been shaped or even fully composed and work on the details can be fore-
grounded. During the long phase of openness – when new things are still
being added and when the understanding and valuing of what has already
been created could change, and even change significantly – everything
remains provisional. Marko Ciciliani’s repeated comments in his diary that he
did not know whether something would remain as it was, or did not know
where something might lead, are an exemplary proof of the plasticity and
contingency of exploratory creative processes.
Figure 2.1 neatly presents the cohesion of several different activities that
people may consciously experience as primarily mental or corporeal. This
dualistic division – the body-mind dualism – is conceptually misleading. In
every search for ideas, in every pausing and concentrated listening, in every
reflection and weighing-up, in every playing or experimenting, and in every
act of writing, several activities occur at the same time and with varying pre-
dominance (see also Gelineck & Serafin 2009: 3f.; Roels 2016: 426–431). For
the sake of simplicity, we have grouped these activities into four categories:
exploring, understanding, valuing and making. We use the broken arrows to
hint that the connections between the various activities depend on several
factors or events: experience, knowledge, previous understanding, habituated
ways of seeing and hearing, ideas, aesthetic preferences, technical ability and
skill in artistic practice, situated feeling. These factors are the subject of the
next chapter. During acts of exploring, understanding, valuing and making,
constitutively different forms of knowledge are at work, which the composers
appropriate and continually update and expand in their composition practice.
Notes
1 The compositions can be heard on our project website at http://www.mdw.ac.at/ims/
kompositionsprozesse
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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3 Orchestrating different forms
of knowledge
In our chapter on the processuality of composing, we discussed the intertwining

of exploring, understanding, valuing and making. All these activities are
simultaneously corporeal and cognitive, a fusion perfectly articulated by the
expression “embodied mind” (cf. Lakoff & Johnson 1999; Shapiro 2014).
Their objective is the primary goal of composers: to create a musical work of
art. The score as symbolic form and its realisation-in-sound during a perfor-
mance are meaningful; they signify because they make aesthetic experience
possible. Experiences are closely linked to our conceptual, sensual and practical
understandings, competences and skills (cf. Noë 2012: 2). Moreover, experi-
ences are not fleeting episodes. They leave traces that shape our actions and
thoughts, as John Dewey (1934/1980: 44) emphasises: “The scope and content
of the relations [between action, its consequences and the perception of both]
measure the significant content of an experience.” We depend on corporeal,
sensory, practical or communicative experiences and, as a rule, rely on them
because as basic “excerpts of the world, they do not leave us indifferent. Such
excerpts of the world are meaningful for an agent because he or she pursues
goals, follows inclinations and tries to implement plans, and because these
excerpts concern the agent in some way” (Taylor 1986: 195 – our translation).
Composing as an artistic activity is – sentimental though it might sound – a
sensory and feeling approach to perceiving the world; a way of exploring,
understanding, valuing and making the world; and a way of intervening in the
social realm (see Merleau-Ponty 1964/1993; Noë 2004).
In this chapter, we will concentrate on forms of knowledge that shape the
composing agency. By agency, we mean the ability to carry out something
corporeal and intelligible or corporeal and cognitive, such as calculating,
imagining, desiring or formulating something. Here, we adhere to a central
thesis of contemporary social sciences: that the human capacity for action
presupposes, as Hans Joas (1996: 148) writes, a “specific corporeality and
primary sociality”. It is inseparably and reciprocally connected to shared
social practices and regimes of competence (Wenger 2002: 136f.) or rather to
socially organised activity fields (see Bourdieu 1992/1996). Michael Lynch
(1997: 337) is right to emphasise that “[p]ractices are associated with socially
credited skills”. Dvora Yanow and Haridimos Tsoukas (Yanow & Tsoukas
Orchestrating different forms of knowledge 81
2009: 1349) concur, adding that “practitioners, like others, act in a world
already interpreted and already constituted; they achieve understanding
through being and acting in it, not through isolated cognition of it.” Our non-
individualistic approach does not discard the significance of the individual.
Although agency is socially generated, it is not impersonal, let alone anon-
ymous. Rather, it relates to those persons who have made relevant experiences
and acquired abilities, and are therefore in a position to carry out a practice
successfully and develop it further – so that peers, too, acknowledge their
mastery (see Polanyi 1958).
The practice of composing is anchored in cultural traditions, past experiences
and habituated modes of thinking. That does not mean that it is pre-
determined. After all, present-day actions take shape within their specific
situations: “Our perception of the situation is predefined in our capacities for
action and our current disposition for action” (Joas 1996: 161). This is a core
concept of pragmatism and approaches derived from Vygotsky’s activity
theory (see Gallagher 2009: 35–51; Wertsch 1985: 112, 199ff.). Situations,
however, are not unambiguous phenomena. First and foremost, they are
grasped implicitly. Situations constantly reconfigure existing connoisseurship
and mastery, and thus generate new situation-bounded ad-hoc knowledge.
Furthermore, “situations are not mute, they demand that we take action”
(Joas 1996: 160). This is why John Dewey combines individual situative
experiences with the social nature of “learning by doing” to explain the
development of agency (see Jung 2010: 145–165). Similarly, Fritz Böhle (2015:
34–63) emphasises the co-existence and effectiveness of four kinds of experi-
ential knowledge: as the distillation of already acquired experiences (“wealth
of experience”); as routines that are formed through repetition and practising;
as contextual knowledge; and as sensory knowledge that develops situatively
and is guided by experience.
The concept of knowledge that is emerging here will be central to this
chapter. Like many other concepts, “knowledge” eludes a strict definition.
Rogers Albritton (1959/1970: 233) points out this recurrent problem: “We are
unable clearly to circumscribe the concepts we use; not because we don’t
know their real definition, but because there is no real ‘definition’ to them.”
In addition, within academic discourse “knowledge” is discussed in different
theories (anthropological, epistemological, ontological, sociological, cognitive
psychology), which imbues it with an unavoidable ambiguity. We therefore do
not base our approach on any particular definition, but focus first of all on
the actions of composing. Only in the second stage will we examine the concept
of knowledge analytically so as to determine in detail the many forms of
knowledge. By different forms of knowledge we mean significant differences in
their development, sphere of application, manifestation and intertwinedness with
various practical and institutional contexts. The concept of knowledge, however,
should not tempt us towards implicit ontological beliefs, such as: “Knowledge
exists.” In fact, what we observe – and this is a daily experience – is that
people develop skills and cope with tasks in different situations with differing
82 Orchestrating different forms of knowledge
levels of competence. Varying levels of dexterity and mastery are also revealed
when using material and immaterial tools.
Philosophers frequently refer to the concept of knowledge, psychologists to
the concept of intelligence and social scientists to the concept of competence
as though they had found, in these concepts, the cause of successful actions
(see Taylor 1987/1995). We do not pursue any fundamental approach and
therefore use the concept of knowledge primarily as an explanatory tool
without ontological claim. And even though we posit that actions are guided
by knowledge and rules, mastery in fact exceeds every set of rules and every
set of explicit knowledge aspects that academics are able to identify (see
Zembylas 2004: 291–294; 2014: 112–116). Whilst our fundamental thesis is
that people act knowingly – where the suffix “-ing” expresses precisely that
idea of knowing-as-doing (Dewey 1916: 331) – this does not mean that there
is causal determination. According to our conception, the relationship
between knowledge and action is reciprocal. Specific concepts of knowledge
such as “tacit knowledge”1 or “artistic practical knowing” offer conceptual
help with interpreting practices as intelligible or as the results of learning
processes. It is obvious that such concepts of knowledge have inherent limits.
First and foremost, they suggest that the acting subject as carrier of knowl-
edge or possessor of mastery has sovereign control over himself or herself and
over the situation in which he or she acts. This perspective masks two factors:
first, the latent and at the same time ineliminable fragility and ambiguity of
actions, and, second, the presence and effectiveness of a community of practice,
which shapes the criteria for success and thus also the recognition of mastery
through regimes of competence. We therefore use the concept of knowledge
with a degree of epistemic caution concerning its actual explanatory force.
Since we do not wish to fix our concept of knowledge in advance, we will,
in the following sections, give precedence to our empirical material. After all,
composers did not first acquire knowledge or learn competences or techni-
ques, and only thereafter compose. Agency in composing is not the cause of
actions – it develops during composing activities. Rogers Albritton’s (1959/
1970: 233) remark on verbal language is thus also true for the practice of
composing: “For remember that in general we don’t use language according
to strict rules – it hasn’t been taught us by means of strict rules, either.” We
can only meaningfully refer back to the concept of knowledge and explain
its epistemic usefulness from within the description and interpretation of
composing practices.
3.1 The various manifestations of artistic practical knowing
3.1.1 Experiential knowledge as knowledge of the work process

Both our sample of composers for the case studies and individual interviews
mostly consisted of people with professional experience who have been regularly
composing for at least fifteen years. One result of the knowledge of the work
process and the wealth of experience that these composers have acquired is a
basic confidence in their own mastery. This phenomenon is well-known in
expertise research and the psychology of work: “When things are proceeding
normally, experts don’t solve problems and don’t make decisions; they do
what normally works.” (Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1986: 30f.) Thus, as Christof
Dienz says:
I mean, to some extent it’s true that you develop patterns or sleights of
hand over the years. You have aids, tools or work processes that become
a bit of a habit, and then they’re always more or less the same. And you
know that, if you use them, you get results. That’s definitely an area
where routine or experience makes it sort of easier to compose pieces.
Precisely because you have processes that help you get results.
This fundamental self-confidence not only comes into play in familiar tasks,
but also when composers face new challenges, which always require an
increased level of attention and effort. For Marko Ciciliani, “The difficulties
are always new, or at least they feel new each time. I think what changes is
perhaps a certain confidence, whereas 15 years ago I would have panicked:
‘I’ll never finish the piece’!”
Professional knowledge that results from being experienced is a practical
knowledge of the conditions and peculiarities of work processes. Composers
pay attention to such aspects, meaning that their experiential knowledge
shows through in their daily practice. It is a “personal knowledge” (Polanyi
1958) of the aspects that promote or else hinder their productivity. Judit
Varga’s insight into what is meaningful for her own work methods therefore
does not necessarily hold true for other composers:
Something I do a lot when I’m completely stuck is force myself to write

or improvise something – no matter what – just before I go to sleep. But
not much. I stop before lots of negative feelings come up; maybe half an
hour. I don’t try to judge how bad it is either. It doesn’t matter, I’ll let it
stand. Then I go to bed. And usually I’m already awake and writing at 6
the next morning.
Occasionally, Judit Varga has to protect her emerging work from self-doubt
and self-criticism. Mastery is based on an implicit structure of skilfulness and
self-confidence, which is why too much self-examination and hyper-reflexivity
can have a negative impact on the creative process. A centipede that thinks
about every movement of its legs and how to coordinate them while walking
will never move from the spot. Judith Unterpertinger similarly remarks: “On
the one hand, I notice that when you read a lot, you know a lot more, but on the
other hand you become more critical. So knowledge can also block you.”
There is a “dangerous practice of thinking” (Boreham 1994) that must be
selectively avoided. Clearly, competent persons do not function entirely
without self-reflection. Rather, they have a sense based on experience of when
reflection might be necessary and when it would disrupt the creative process.
This knowledge is not general or abstract, but situative and case-specific (see
Shove, Pantzar & Watson 2012: 100f.). If a composer is stuck, the ability to
assess correctly when it is better to put aside his or her work and when it is
best to keep going to resolve a problem is a form of practical insight, or even a
kind of wisdom. Such wisdom is indispensable for productive composing. As
we have previously hinted, freely designed artistic and creative work always
encompasses certain habits and routines, which have evolved through practice
or specific resources and parameters. In other words, work routines are no
“automatic reaction to habitual stimuli” (Weber 1922/1978: 25), but in most
cases a form of intelligent action without reflexive self-monitoring.
Creative processes require a high degree of concentration and a continuous
focus on the task. John Dewey (1916/1941: ch. 10) interprets discipline – on
the condition that it be voluntary – as the attitude necessary to perfect an
ability or reach long-term goals. An undisciplined mind is impatient and
sloppy and therefore produces little of quality. This is why Dewey considers
discipline to be a necessary but insufficient component of agency and mastery.
Discipline is practised and habituated. Karlheinz Essl demonstrates this when
he says: “When I’m in a composing phase, I set the alarm even if I don’t have
any deadlines. I prefer to be awake by seven, half past seven and start the day
as early as possible.” But this discipline also shows in the ability to focus
quickly and work concentratedly for long hours, as Clemens Gadenstätter’s
remarks: “I write until I sort of lose concentration or get hungry. […] Luckily,
I no longer need to tune in to work. I just sit down and work. That’s it. Only
when I’m really agitated or totally stressed, I might need half an hour till
I’m ready.”
An additional type of knowledge of the work process – which develops
cumulatively based on experience – is the technical and practical know-how of
handling instruments and apparatuses; understanding their range of affordances
and constraints, and using them in a smart, situation-specific manner to obtain
certain results efficiently and exhaust their affordances (see also Reitsamer 2013:
96–104). This knowledge is not merely formal or theoretical – even where writ-
ten technical instructions are available. Technical knowledge can sometimes be
articulated without any major effort, as the example of composing electronic
music reveals. Using his laptop, Karlheinz Essl can easily explain and demon-
strate to us precisely what certain algorithms can do:
This is the scan algorithm. That’s the one you can hear right now. Hang
on, I’ll return to the original situation [plays a part]. And then I can
change the speed. Slower or faster, within a certain range. Or I can switch
to automatic, then this change in speed happens sort of automatically.
And the second mode is jumping. It doesn’t play regularly in this mode,
but jumps here and there. You’ll see what I mean. But the distance it
jumps also depends on the speed. So there’s a coupling of parameters.
During their training, composers learn some of the technical knowledge
required to select and apply algorithms for creating or transforming certain
sounds. Ultimately, however, they have to acquire the processes through
practice. And yet the application of technical knowledge in any given com-
posing situation remains subtle. It is barely necessary for composing to theo-
rise or formalise technical and practical knowledge because its application is
usually coupled with the composer’s sense of hearing. And his or her actual
situative hearing experience in turn cannot be grasped theoretically because it
is fundamentally case-specific and tacit.
3.1.2 Hearing: auditory knowledge as experiential knowledge and

knowing-in-action
Up to this point, we have dealt with experiential knowledge or knowledge of
work processes that derives from past experiences. The concept of experi-
ence, however, has one further meaning: it also refers to sensory perceptions.
Sensory knowledge guided by perception develops passively when we per-
ceive something in our environment that we did not intentionally or actively
cause to happen. It also develops actively when we deliberately participate
in the perception of the phenomenon – listening, pricking up our ears,
looking closely (see Szivós 2014b). Acts of perception generate a situative
form of experiential knowledge that, drawing on John Dewey and Arthur
Bentley (Dewey & Bentley 1949) as well as Donald Schön (1983), we will
call “knowing-in-action”. Feeling an instrument while playing it (the result
of tactile, proprioceptive and kinaesthetic perception) and hearing the
sounds that the instrument directly produces are corporeal transactional
events that endow with meaning – because the relationship between the
perceived object and the act of perception is not a one-way relationship (see
also Noë 2012: 22; Leman & Maes 2014: 83f.). The meaning of the percep-
tion is integrated into the practical accomplishment of an action and does
not develop through reflective thinking. Making, sensory experience and
situative knowing (for instance, of the actual sequence of sounds) form an
amalgam. From a praxeological perspective, we must therefore emphasise
that composers create primarily through trying-out. The following quota-
tions both refer to this fact:
Hearing is important because it makes the things I’m trying out somehow
not abstract. I listen to them, and my hearing is the control function that
tells me whether it actually works. It’s a sort of interactive loop.
(Karlheinz Essl)
I’m writing it for three wind instruments. And I’m taking part myself as
well. I play bassoon, zither and two clarinets. So of course I try it out to
see whether it makes sense or not.2
(Christof Dienz)
The primacy of sensory and situative experience does not negate the
importance of the reflexive, discursive and intellectual components of com-
posing. Perceptual judgements are preconditionally dependent on a certain
practical, cultural and epistemic background (see Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina &
von Savigny 2001: 2f.; Nicolini 2011). And yet such judgements are formed
spontaneously and intuitively – “you can hear it”, “you can feel it” – and not
primarily through analysis or reflection. If they were, composers would be
able to justify them (see Polanyi 1966; Standish 2015). The sense of touch in
the composer’s fingers, his or her sensitive ears and other sense organs are
valuing “agents” to which he or she refers to gain practical certainty. The
knowledge of fingers and ears is mute, and, as a rule, only becomes discursive to
any extent in situations where composers convey or justify themselves – in
other words, with explicit reference to music-theory or aesthetic aspects of
their work. However, the ability to explain what you are hearing or doing and
to justify why you have done something is quite different from the ability to
compose itself – otherwise, musicologists and music theorists would be the
best composers.
“Trying out” is the central verb here. It is the entry-point into exploratory
experiences and generates knowing-in-action. Certain insights and solutions
are only made possible experimentally, through playing around. All of the
composers we interviewed talked of trying out and playing around. The
following are just two examples of many:
Playing around can just be a form of trying-out. Where I try out different
constellations of material. […] But in any case, when I play around, it’s
usually on the computer. I’ll have some material and try to vary it in
different ways or put it into new constellations.
(Marko Ciciliani)
It took me a long time to find the range where the voice can be slowed
down or speeded up. I mean, I really tried for a long time. If I slow down
the voice by 50%, it sounds totally unnatural [speaks slowly]. When I
make it faster [speaks fast], it’s stupid as well. I really tried out lots of
things, and I worked out that 70% is too much, but 75%, well, it fits like a
glove. Same thing for the accelerated voice. I just experimented with it for
a really long time, till I got the impression those are my limit values, and
they’re acceptable.
(Karlheinz Essl)
Trying-out expresses a situative and abductive3 method not guided by

principles that is typical for artistic creative processes (see Zembylas & Dürr
2009: 104ff.; Bassetti 2014: 95ff.; Trajtenberg 2014: 172ff.). The knowledge
that derives from this method is linked to the person who does the trying-out
in a specific situation and perceives the results with his or her senses. During
trying-out, reflection is not switched off, but neither does it guide or monitor
action. It should be seen as a “concurrent thinking” and a “fully attentive
being-immersed” (Böhle & Porschen 2011: 60; see also Schön 1983: 49ff.).
This state is also known as flow and is distinct both from self-conscious per-
ception (“I perceive that I am thinking”) and from the non-aware state of
doing something casually, without focal awareness (see also Böhle & Porschen
2011: 60).
At what point(s) is the composer’s sense of hearing4 particularly crucial?
Marko Ciciliani believes that “basically, my sense of hearing is important
in the phase where the concept starts to sort of stabilise”. Christof Dienz
points to a different kind of situation: “The biggest difficulty are the bal-
ances, in other words the dynamic that’s written down there [in the
score].” This is why the composer’s presence at rehearsals is vital for clar-
ifying fine details in situ. For Joanna Wozny, hearing becomes essential
when she composes for instruments that she does not play herself. She
explores their sound possibilities not “in books about playing techniques,
but in […] other pieces. Then I know how instruments sound in certain
contexts and use that to compose.” For Katharina Klement, hearing is an
empathetic, intuitive and feeling approach to the city of Belgrade, of
which she has been composing an “acoustic city portrait”, as she notes in
her diary:
Again and again the dogs bark down in the park. At noon, the wonderful
sounds of the bells from the Church of Saint Sava – pentatonic. Again
and again car alarms start up and emergency vehicles make their sounds.
[…] There’s a soft/gentle feel to everything, despite the noise – e.g. when
people introduce themselves with their name, they do it with a gentle
handshake and voice. Even the sound of the bells has something soft
about it.
As these examples illustrate, the answer to our question – at what point(s)

hearing is especially important – cannot be reduced to a formula. The sig-
nificance of sounds derives from each composer’s sense of hearing and therefore
cannot be formalised.
3.1.3 The body as a knowing unity

The composer’s sense of hearing is part of a whole that is ever present and
active during composing: the composer’s body. His or her body
accomplishes much: it is a synaesthetic, knowing, sentient and engaged
living organism; it is the foundation of existential certainty; it creates
conceptions of space and time (see Shusterman’s concept of somaesthetics,
Shusterman 2000: 137ff.; 2008). In fact, it is almost impossible to provide
a full list. The body’s multi-functionality is often viewed as “embodied
intelligence”. However, this view has implications for the widespread
understanding of knowledge as an immaterial, purely intellectual
entity whose existence is bounded by symbols. In the following section, we
will discuss the role of the body in various situations during the process of
composing.
Bodies are trained to handle complex situations. Karlheinz Essl refers to
this aspect when he describes using a MIDI controller with his hands:
It requires a lot of fine motor skills because the controls are very
small. It really is precision work. […] I mean, when I play around
with these three controls, there are so many interdependencies that it’s
incredibly complicated to monitor them. That means I have to do
insane amounts of practice and gain a lot of experience so that I
know exactly which control does what in which position and how to
adjust.
When he performs his piece, he has to accomplish his actions fluidly and
intuitively: “I mean, I have to look at the screen, obviously, because that’s
where my sequences [the score] are written down – the things I have to do.
But I make sure that I move the controls by touch.” Necessarily, Essl
rehearses intensively and for a long time so that knowledge is worked into his
fingers. We use this metaphorical expression because locating knowledge and
skilfulness is problematic. It is evidently nonsensical to speak of disembodied
skills or disembodied cognition – and yet the “fingers’ knowing” has no separate
existence and is not an object. “Knowing” thus indicates a performative
ability that develops from the synergetic effect of many different aspects,
including motor learning, sense of hearing, power of imagination, sensations
and aesthetic preferences. This holistic understanding of ability should not be
lost in location metaphors. It demonstrates that neither a subject nor a mind
nor a corporeal “I” is the carrier or foundation of the knowing or acting (see
Taylor 1987/1995, 2006).
Practising also drills the body. However, a body that constantly makes
experiences and thus has already learned a large amount can do more than
just reproduce what it has practised. The body can be creative. Composers
need to put their bodies into a certain mood. This is done subtly – by creating
body tension, for instance by working standing up; or by relaxing the body by
lying down comfortably; or by stimulating the body by consuming chocolate,
coffee or a glass of wine, etc. In a manner of speaking, the body is prepared
for accomplishing something. Bertl Mütter reports that going for a jog can be
a catalyst of ideas for him: “Afterwards [after the jog], I go home, I’m all
sweaty, and I have to write something down quickly and hope that I’ll still be
able to read it after my shower. It’s like waking up from a dream and having
an idea, where you have to write it down quickly as well, or it’s gone. […]
Those are moments where thoughts think around you.” These everyday
situations of getting the body into a certain mood or posture usually occur
under the threshold of awareness. Harry Collins (2010: 86) defines this as
“weak or relational tacit knowledge”. They can, however, be grasped
reflexively when the person concerned directs his or her attention onto his or
her body’s activities. Karlheinz Essl, for instance, describes his posture during
performances as follows:
My hands are vital during performances. I mean, the whole physicality of

my fingers and also my movements while standing. That’s why I make my
reference recordings and then perform my piece standing, and not sitting
down. […] I mean, I’m sitting down while developing the piece. But when
I’m performing I’ll stand whenever possible. […] It gives you a different
posture than when you’re sitting down. You’re not flexible sitting down.
[…] Standing, 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. So I’m convinced that when I do
the whole thing sitting down, I’m not as responsive as I am standing.
During playing and trying-out, intuitive sentient judgements are made: “it
fits” or “it sounds right”. But what does the pronoun “it” refer to here? Why
not have an “I” as the subject of the sentence? We could simply point to lin-
guistic conventions and refrain from further interpretation. But when we ask
composers, they refer to the immediacy of these judgements-by-the-body: they
do not make their decisions after analytical reflection. According to Maurice
Merleau-Ponty (1945/2005: 114f.; see also Dreyfus 2002; Shusterman 2008:
63f., 67ff.), bodily perception has a gestalt effect, that is to say, it generates
whole and intelligible impressions rather than collecting elementary and
unrelated information. And the gestalts that it generates culminate in these
judgements that feel like direct evidences and certainties. Michael Kahr, for
one, prefers composing on the piano because, while playing and trying out, “I
[develop] a sense on the piano: now it fits. […] For me, composing also has a
physical aspect. […] For example, if you play a rhythmic figure, that figure has
a certain feel on the piano. Some figures are angular and have sharp edges.
They don’t feel nice.” (On the significance of the body as a source of music,
see also Shilling 2005: 127–132; Crossley 2015: 483ff.) Alongside the embo-
died gestalt perception, there is also an embodied memory and an established
sense of time for processes and chronology, which develop through repeated
rehearsing. Karlheinz Essl knew that his piece “Herbecks Versprechen” lasted
about 11 minutes and 30 seconds, “but I deliberately didn’t write it down”.
He developed an “internal timing” during rehearsals and was thus able to do
without an external chronometer. This takes not only practice but concentra-
tion and discipline as well. Essl remarks: “You do have to watch out that
you’re not swept away by your feelings and start clowning around. Obviously,
that’s always a bit of a risk when you’re playing live. You have to discipline
yourself and say: ‘Right, this part of the piece is done, now you have to keep
going.’ But without a stopwatch.”
Even though the composing of contemporary art music is generally
viewed as an “intellectual activity”, composers rely heavily on their bodies.
Katherine Balch describes her work processes as “very kinaesthetic, […]
very playful. When I work I like to move and touch things and be actively
involved, and that helps me think.” Javier Party also refers to this physical
and practical approach: “When I was writing an octet for eight violins, I
bought myself a really cheap violin. There were certain things I wanted to
feel, even though I already knew a lot about the violin. But feeling a bit is
helpful too.” Through trying-out, Party performed the playing sequence
with his own body. In other cases, composers ask musicians to show them
certain ways of playing. Christof Dienz gives an example of this: “If you
want to do a superfast trill on a clarinet, or a trill with a larger interval,
there are positions that work well and others that are torture. So you ask to
be shown what works well, so that you don’t end up torturing the musician.”
Katherine Balch confirms this: “The physical playing of the instrument is
the critical part of writing.” It is important to be able to re-enact “what it
feels like to be in the body of the instrumentalist”. Balch and Dienz here
refer to knowledge of the musicians’ physical processes and efforts during
playing. This knowledge is not only a form of “knowing that”, it is also
anchored in practice: either the composers themselves play the instrument
for which they are composing, or else they discuss directly with instrumen-
talists what specific playing techniques are associated with what specific
physical endeavours.
3.1.4 Rules, criteria and the modus operandi

The physical feeling and physical certainties we discussed in the previous
section are neither arbitrary nor subjective sensu stricto, since the composers’
subjectivity develops within a shared musical tradition and rehearsed practices
of composing. Drawing on Etienne Wenger (2002: 86), we view practices of
composing as results of “shared histories of learning”. The direct judgements
and valuations that occur during composing – “it fits” or “it’s right” – are
seldom derived from abstract and explicit criteria. And while in some (but not
all) cases, composers can cite criteria for their decisions, such criteria are
not causally related to action. Rather, the criteria primarily refer to the fact
that practices are rule-bound (Winch 1958/1976: 52). However, rules and criteria
are not necessarily accessible to the composers’ reflection – they are inherent
in the practice and effective. This is comparable with learning one’s mother
tongue. Small children first learn to speak; they do not first learn the gram-
matical rules of their language. These rules are in fact inherent in the modus
operandi – in other words, in the speaking (see Albritton 1959/1970). As
Faust puts it, “In the beginning was the deed” (Goethe 1804/1974: 41), and
not the word or the rules, both of which require a practical world to make
sense. By rules and criteria in practices of composing, we mean an abstrac-
tion: something that we extrapolate by analysing practices of composing, but
which does not initiate actions. Bernhard Gander describes his composing
method as follows:
Obviously you have too much material at the beginning. But at some
point the writing process develops its own dynamic, and it falls into place
to quite an extent. […] I often have a kind of superficial way of looking at
it. That means the stuff is lying on my desk and I have a quick look at it.
At that point, it’s much more important to have something jump out at
me. Because I know if I want to look for something, the filters are already
set in some special way and I’ll find the right thing.
Once again, the statement contains the anonymous pronoun “it”. However, it
falls into place by itself only for those who have mastered composing.
Experienced practitioners have their “filters” and are thus in a position to find
and do the right thing without analytical reflection. Philosophers frequently
use the term “intuition” to describe this phenomenon.5 Examples from our
empirical material draw a complex picture of the intuitive work mode.
I: And when or how do you know that it fits? I mean, what makes you
certain?
Katharina Klement: Well, I think you feel it straightaway. Today I
thought: “Hmm, how did [Iannis] Xenakis do that?” And you look at his
scores and see how he divides time. Or you read articles about it. At these
points, I look in my sketchbooks and I’m glad that I keep collecting stuff
like that. […] And then this morning, I returned to the idea and listened to
my sound installations – they’re electronic sounds, obviously – and I
thought: “Well, why not try and transcribe it for instruments?” And with
that, I got some clarity and thought: “Ah, now it fits, I’ll do it like this.”
And then there was suddenly a lightness to it. And I thought: “Right, this is
the path I’m taking!” I mean, those are experiential values, perhaps. […]
That really made me happy. I thought: “Well, why not do it like this, it’s
much smarter this way.” There is a coherence.
I: When you say it made you happy, did you feel happy as well?
Katharina Klement: Oh, yes. And then I try to go on in the state I’m in
because you’ll be sorry if you take a path that you believe you absolutely
have to take. Because then you have to stay on that path to the end,
obviously. […] That’s why I prefer to spend more time in the beginning
phase, where the decisions are taken that really lay the foundations.
Where I can’t yet really gauge the whole thing myself. You can’t know at
that stage how to approach it properly. A great deal only develops as the
work unfolds, but it still depends on the first decisions. And so I at least
try to be careful that I stick to mine.
Subjective certainty has many anchor points, such as models and convictions,
experience and somatic sensations. Together, they enable agency and also
explain the perceived immediacy of the composers’ aesthetic judgement (see
Born 2010: 192). Recognising whether a composition concept or specific
sound results are coherent has less to do with a logical rigour conferred by
their conformity to rules and explicit criteria than with visual gestalt perception:
the ability to perceive the significant properties directly at first glance.
The connection with experience is twofold. Experience necessarily correlates
with a certain age, or rather with a certain duration of working in a field of
practice. Second, it hints that judgements are not arrived at arbitrarily or by
chance. As Katharina Klement insists: “Where the decisions are taken that
really lay the foundations [of the work …], I at least try to be careful”.
Action – unless it occurs under time pressure (see also Ross, Shafer & Klein
2006) – also encompasses conscious considerations. A composer can engage
in an appraising reflection or seek external advice. Katharina Klement mentions
such a case:
I: Does it ever happen that a musician says “That’s impossible to play,

please rewrite it”?
Katharina Klement: Of course. Yes, that’s happened to me several times.
Usually it’s something that had given me a headache as well. […] They
were always things that were too complicated, so it was good to rewrite
them more simply.
Bodily-somatic sensations and emotions are present, but often not pervaded
by analysis or reflection. The composers sense something, but cannot give
reasons for it until someone else has helped them gain insight – in other
words, provided the impetus for seeing certain aspects clearly. Clemens
Gadenstätter also invokes a kind of intuitive authority. His statement is fairly
representative of conversations with professionally experienced composers:
I: When you make sketches, do you also keep in touch with colleagues to
discuss the sketches?
Clemens Gadenstätter: Not really. Composing is … I mean, there are
people you talk to, that you tell things, that you exchange with a bit. But
when it clicks and suddenly makes sense, that’s something […] that you
sort of feel: ah, now it has clicked! Yes, now it makes sense! Now I’ve
immersed myself in the idea and structure to such an extent that every-
thing links up almost automatically. At that point, connections and logic
arise that I didn’t really believe I was able to think up.
One possible way of interpreting this sudden intuition is that the composer’s
awareness of his aesthetic and practical judgement – “ah, now it has
clicked” – correlates with the implicitness of the criteria for composing. In
their five-step model of skill acquisition, Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus (Dreyfus &
Dreyfus 1986: 19ff.) include a specific trait for “proficiency” and “expertise”:
those who act proficiently or expertly replace the explicit and formal rules
with “situational discriminations” (Dreyfus 2002: 370). This ability to dis-
criminate can be demonstrated using an example from a Gerhard Nierhaus
(2012: 31 – our translation) study. In it, he asked the composer Elisabeth
Harnik among others to choose the best version out of a wealth of musical
material that had been generated by a computer algorithm. Harnik remarked
that this evaluation was difficult. “With ‘manual work’”, she said, evaluation
and choice were already integrated into the process of generating material:
“First, because I reach my intuitive decisions much more quickly, since the
choice is reduced, and also because I put the material directly into the context
of composing. For me, the computer results created a sort of ‘isolated’ material.”
Indeed, a music computer simply operates on the basis of a syntax. By contrast,
composers also use cultural semantics that constitute their understanding of
musical material. They view the sound material (e.g. a sequence of notes, a
sound structure) holistically, which means they view it both from an internal
musical perspective (what is written down before, what follows after?) and
from a cultural perspective that generates imageries, meaningful relations and
tentative associations. In other words, subtly differentiated perceptions by
experts usually result in the ability to make very case-specific judgements and
take case-tailored action. In the daily work routine, such subtle perceptions and
discriminations unfold during the flow of actions and make non-intentional,
implicit learning possible. As Polanyi (1958: 50) summarises: “Rules of art
can be useful, but they do not determine the practice of an art; they are
maxims, which can serve as a guide to an art only if they can be integrated
into the practical knowledge of the art. They cannot replace this knowledge.”
3.2 The centrality of learning

Many psychologists emphasise the importance of being gifted and talented,
characteristics which are usually mentioned in the subject literature alongside
the physiological requirements for top-level sports (see Chambliss 1989) and
for the arts (see Weisberg 2006: 769f.). Both concepts are legitimate, but they
should not be understood to mean that an individual’s innate disposition or
“inner quality” can shift the central importance of learning. Gifts and talents –
the two concepts that now replace the older terminology of “genius” – are still
being used today by conservatoires to legitimise their procedures for selecting
students. The concepts are also a widely accepted explanation of artistic success.
However, their meaning, which is both simplifying and opaque, masks the
social and competitive nature of artistic professions and thus makes artistic
success seem “natural” (for a more elaborate analysis, see Tschmuck 2010:
ch.10; Menger 2014: ch. 4). In other words, the concepts have an ideological
impact in that they consolidate a presocial, and sometimes an other-worldly,
conception of artistic practice.
The discussion of processes of learning and skill acquisition opens up a
completely different perspective onto artistic abilities. Learning enables people
to take up and transform practices and thus reproduce and refine a tradition.
Etienne Wenger (2002: 96) puts the central importance of processes of learning
thus: “Learning is the engine of practice and practice is the history of that
learning. […] To assert that learning is what gives rise to communities of
practice is to say that learning is a source of social structure.” Here, Wenger
takes up John Dewey’s holistic notion of learning as being linked to having
experiences and hence always being a “learning by experience” and a “learning
by doing” (see Dewey 1916/1941: ch. 11; Tiles 2010: 101–122). Activities
(which include objects), know-hows (which include training but also nego-
tiating meaning and valuing) and learning (which builds on shared under-
standings and participation) can therefore be considered integrated processes.
Wenger thus perpetuates Dewey’s non-intellectualist understanding of learn-
ing and education. Furthermore, he uses Jean Lave’s concept of “situated
learning”, which conceives learning as a situated activity carried out in formal
and informal practical settings. Wenger’s and Lave’s conception of learning
thus differs from the conception traditionally used in the psychology of
learning, which is cognitivistic and tends to be individualistic:
Conventional explanations view learning as a process by which a learner

internalises knowledge, whether “discovered”, “transmitted” for others,
or “experienced in interaction” with others. This focus on internalisation
does not just leave the nature of the learner, of the world, and of their
relations unexplored; it can only reflect far-reaching assumptions con-
cerning these issues. It establishes a sharp dichotomy between inside and
outside, suggests that knowledge is largely cerebral, and takes the individual
as an unproblematic unit of analysis.
(Lave & Wenger 1991: 47)
Learning is a practical activity carried out interactively with others and with
the involvement of others. It is, in other words, a profoundly social activity,
which in many cases is institutionally organised, as Jean Lave (1993: 5)
remarks: “it is difficult, when looking closely at everyday activity […] to avoid
the conclusion that learning is ubiquitous in ongoing activity, though often
unrecognised as such”. Consequently, learning also occurs non-intentionally,
as a side effect of other activities.
Without exception, all the composers we interviewed learned to play one or
more musical instruments in childhood. Retrospectively, they all view these first
learning experiences as foundational. Karlheinz Essl, for instance, remarks:
At seven, I was taking piano lessons. My teacher did music theory with
me from the start. Which means that I had to play cadences, and modulate
and transpose and all those things. We also did ear training and hearing
tests. It really irritated me. But I’m eternally grateful to the woman for
making music theory a part of the instrumental lessons from the start.
All the interviewed composers also studied at conservatoires – some studied

composition, some certain instruments. It is also notable that almost all the
interviewed composers told us that they had already written their first com-
positions as teenagers. Their similar musical education, or their shared
knowledge of relevant pieces of music, is so self-evident for them that most of
them did not explicitly refer during the interviews to their embeddedness in a
specific musical tradition. Usually, this embeddedness would go unremarked
because the composers’ shared tradition is both the bedrock for their current
participation in the contemporary-music sector and fertile ground for new
ideas. Shared knowledge and common preconceptions about the significance
of artefacts (other pieces of music, instruments, software) and the relevant
institutional structures of the music sector are praxeologically important
conditions (see Shove, Pantzar & Watson 2012: 56f.). The relationship
between composers and their musical tradition, shared knowledge, material
objects and practical frameworks is hence predeterminant in that it founds
composers’ agency and enables them to participate in a practice community.
There is no doubt that the similarity in composers’ education – their
“shared histories of learning” (Wenger 2002: 86) – is very marked in classical
and contemporary art music. It consolidates a shared musical practice and
facilitates cooperation. But learning does not end with the composers’ gra-
duation from academic or postgraduate studies. Rather, it continues during
their work as musicians and composers because “practice [… is] the site of
knowing” (Nicolini 2011). Some learning experiences have a long-term effect
since learning shapes habits and work routines. Many composers, for instance,
when commenting on their way of writing indicate that they learned to work
by hand from the beginning and have kept the habit to this day.
Equally, composers make fundamental new learning experiences during their
professional lives that cause them to change direction. Their perspective of cer-
tain aspects changes. This new way of seeing, or rather the dawning of an aspect,
points to the reciprocal relationship between seeing, knowing and interpreting.
As Wittgenstein (1953/1968 Part II xi: 193e) explains it with reference to picture
puzzles: “But we can also see the illustration now as one thing now as another. –
So we interpret it, and see it as we interpret it.” Noticing specific aspects is thus
an important element in every practice domain (see Fleck 1947/1986: 129–151).
It is an ability, linked to composers’ individual sensibilities and aesthetic aspira-
tions. Marko Ciciliani makes the following comment on the shift in the interplay
between hearing, understanding and valuing:
If I really think back to the very beginning, I realise I sometimes attached

huge importance to things when I was composing, whereas today I can just
say to myself, I think that’s unimportant right now. For example, in some
contexts, tone pitches simply make no difference. And fifteen years ago, I
would’ve lost sleep over whether to put in an F or an F sharp, things like
that. Now, in certain situations, I just write something, anything. […] I think
perhaps I see more clearly now which parameters play an important part in
my music and which are simply less important.
Here Ciciliani not only points to a shift in his thinking, but also to a quali-
tative change in his making. Sensory experiences change with his increasing
experience as a composer. The catalyst is not some theoretical knowledge, but
a form of learning that is fully integrated into practice and results in ability.
Thus, when we observe composers while they are creating music, we also
notice how they are implicitly learning to create music.
Artistic practical knowing comes from learning by doing and while doing.
Such learning begins with artists familiarising themselves with a practice
domain, then finding their bearings and knowing their way around. This leads
to maturity and in certain cases to above-average mastery, meaning a clar-
ification and consolidation of artistic goals, increased skilfulness and accuracy
in determining the appropriate criteria, and ultimately wise artistic decisions
(see Aubenque 1962/2007: 66, 139f.; Shotter & Tsoukas 2014). This schematic
description of the process of achieving mastery should not be taken to be a
reformulation of the five-step model devised by the Dreyfus brothers (Dreyfus
& Dreyfus 1986: 19ff.), which contains a phenomenological analysis of the
way beginners develop into experts. Our reason for not adopting this model is
because we regard the objectification of artistic quality – namely, differ-
entiating between a good and a bad composition – largely as the result of
social negotiating processes that lie beyond the individual’s sphere of influ-
ence. The definition of mastery described by Dreyfus and Dreyfus is proble-
matic in art because the recognition and appreciation of artistic achievements
is highly dependent on contingent social factors.6
Transformative learning processes based on experience change what we are
able to do and consequently what we are – our very identity. The extent of the
changes is hard to measure because they are subtle. Bernhard Gander
describes his own transformation in these terms:
It has somehow got easier, because 20 years ago I was still a novice. I
mainly knew the things I didn’t like or didn’t want to do, or absolutely
had to avoid so I didn’t copy so-and-so’s clichés. So I defined myself largely
by negation. Now, I define myself more by positive things. I remember at
the beginning it took ages till I was satisfied with something. Insane
amounts of sketches and graphical notes to find a melody or a chord. A
lot of thought went into it. Now, over the 20 years, certain things or
preferences have got reinforced. Now it just works quicker.
Skills may be learned by doing or through vocational training, but proficiency can
only be acquired through wide experience and rich reflective practice (see Schön
1983; Winterton, Delamare-Le Deist & Stringfellow 2006: 26f.; Nicolini 2011).
When Marko Ciciliani was younger, he had several jobs as a sound technician.
The experiences he gained were helpful “because I actually studied instrumental
composition, but I soon started using electronics more and more” (for the concept
of transferable skills, see Shove, Pantzar & Watson 2012: 51, 128).
What, then, constitutes competence in composing? However detailed the
list of general knowledge and specific abilities might be, the answer will always
be incomplete. Competence not only necessarily requires a multitude of elements,
their interaction, fine-tuning and manner of complementing and completing
one another are important as well. And all the elements that constitute mastery
cannot be represented exhaustively because they cannot be analysed and
comprehended in their entirety. We observe, therefore, that composing has
two levels of achievement: the work being created and the artistic practical
knowing that has been generated. The new artistic practical knowing may be
helpful to composers in future composing situations. Proficiency in composing
is not a static state, but a dynamic process that cannot be concluded. It
remains fragile because it is linked to an appraising field of practice that itself
is in constant flux. We therefore understand proficiency to be fundamentally
social, meaning that it is interdependent on the societal organisation of the
artistic practice concerned.
3.3 Forms of knowledge in composing processes: an interpretative order

Frequently (but not always), composing processes contain complex tasks that
indicate challenging achievements. This is why these creative processes often
take months. During that time, various work modes occur: intuitive and
reflective, exploratory and systematic. In this section, we will be using a plural
concept of knowledge to explain agency in composing. This concept encom-
passes jointly generated contents and abilities that can be learned and trans-
formed. Additionally, the meaning and value of any kind of knowledge are
negotiated socially. Appreciation and success therefore depend not only on a
person’s knowledge or artistic achievement, but also on collective processes
within the art world. However, we want to clarify that we do not posit any
causal relation between forms of knowledge and agency or mastery. A person’s
real performance exceeds the identifiable or assumed knowledge that scholars
ascribe to him or her. In other words, the concept of knowledge cannot
answer all questions concerning human agency (see Zembylas & Dürr 2009:
125–130, 141–146). Nevertheless, we consider a differentiated concept of
knowledge to be useful for three reasons. First, it replaces opaque concepts
such as talent, and musicality, and individualistic attributes such as intelli-
gence and creativity. Second, it demystifies complex and demanding achieve-
ments without trivialising them because it requires practical knowledge (in the
sense of proficiency), commitment, experience and insight. Third, it embeds
agency in a collective practice without masking or marginalising individual
qualitative differences in performance.
Drawing on the concepts of knowledge proposed by John Dewey, Gilbert Ryle
and Michael Polanyi, we can contrast two basic forms: 1) artistic practical forms
of knowledge (Figure 3.1), among which we count knowledge of work processes,
situative knowledge and body knowledge; 2) formal propositional forms of
knowledge (Figure 3.2), including scholarly knowledge, local knowledge and
formal technical compositional knowledge. This subdivision is for analytical
purposes. In the observable processes of composing all forms of knowledge
always appear in a dynamic mutual relationship and as an amalgam.
Situative knowledge
Body knowledge
Knowledge of work processes
Situative knowledge Situative knowledge

Body knowledge Body knowledge
Knowledge of work processes Knowledge of work processes
Figure 3.1 Artistic practical forms of knowledge
Scholarly knowledge Scholarly knowledge

Formal technical knowledge Formal technical knowledge
Local knowledge Local knowledge
Scholarly knowledge
Formal technical knowledge
Local knowledge
Figure 3.2 Formal propositional forms of knowledge
3.3.1 Artistic practical forms of knowledge

Because of the central role we attribute to experience, we have repeatedly
referred to John Dewey and emphasised, as he does, that past experiences
leave traces and have an impact on the way people cope with present-day tasks.
This form of knowledge is revealed, for example, in the way the composers
organise their work processes. Knowledge of work processes as represented in
Figure 3.1 designates the construction of an evolved competence based on
gradually accumulated, past practical experiences. In other words, knowledge
of work processes points to the manner in which composers tackle certain
tasks, the things to which they pay attention while carrying out actions, how
they anticipate critical situations, and what precautions they take to prevent
problems from becoming virulent and uncontrollable. This results in a famil-
iarity with the task, or a subjective confidence concerning creative challenges.
Here, familiarity and confidence are not primarily meant as psychological
concepts but as a kind of “knowledge by acquaintance” (William James,
Bertrand Russell). And they derive from the tacit dimension of all knowledge,
as Michael Polanyi (1958: 266) sums up:
Tacit assent and intellectual passions, the sharing of an idiom and of a

cultural heritage, affiliation to a like-minded community: such are the
impulses which shape our vision of the nature of things on which we rely
for our mastery of things. No intelligence, however critical or original,
can operate outside such a fiduciary framework.
This is why composers’ knowledge of work processes is largely informal,

meaning that it cannot be grasped in its entirety and cannot be fully repre-
sented by a closed set of rules. In the same way that the game of experienced
chess players displays strategic moves, but also has to remain flexible and
spontaneous in order to surprise and beat their opponents, so knowledge of
work processes consists of intelligible routines and habits which must remain
modifiable whenever the work situation requires it. A composer who persists
in his or her routines is “frozen”, emprisoned by his or her sphere of experi-
ence. To act based on experience is thus not always connoted positively. The
risk of slipping into routines and habits, and thus losing all potential for
innovation, is just as present (see Neuweg 2004: 344–347). The challenge for
experienced practitioners is therefore to apply simultaneously stable and flex-
ible approaches to professional tasks (see Volpert 1974: 48), to feel secure in
dealing with situations, but without ignoring their specifics and nuances, and
to know their own effective work modes and yet time and again expose
themselves to new challenges. Frequently learning more goes hand in hand
with unlearning. To sum up, we understand knowledge of work processes to
be the result of the processing of previous experiences, conscious that knowledge
must always remain mobile and subject to review.
It is logical, therefore, that “situative knowledge” refers to the adaptability
or fine-tuning of actions for contingent and imponderable occurrences (see
Brown, Collins & Duguid 1989; Lave & Wenger 1991). As their experience
grows, people can follow general practical rules in ways that are situatively
appropriate. They are thus in a position to vary their behaviour without it
becoming random. Sensory experiential knowledge that arises in actu – for
example, when we concurrently perceive, reason and act – is a variant of
situative knowledge. It is not previous experiential knowledge that is adap-
tively updated in a given situation. Rather, situative knowledge emerges ad
hoc, but not ex nihilo, and is an indispensable precondition for dealing with
unpredictable and contingent occurrences (see Böhle 2004; 2009). Composers
constantly generate and rely on their situative experiential knowledge because
there are certain problems and challenges they can only tackle through trying-out
and experimenting.
Drawing on the phenomenological philosophy of the body, the sociologist
of work Fritz Böhle (2015: 44f.) emphasises the subjectivising moments of
becoming aware of a situation: a sound can be perceived as “warm” or
“rounded”; a section of a score causes headaches; a melody agitates (see also
Shusterman 2000: 137ff.). This subjectivising sensory mode of expression in
situative actions rests, on the one hand, on the impossibility of forming a
precise concept; on the other hand, it is an affective response (in some cases
we may also speak of “affective resonance”) that often accompanies and
characterises the practical accomplishment of an action. Maurice Merleau-
Ponty (1964/1993: 135f.) observes that according to Descartes “there is no
vision without thought: but it is not enough to think in order to see. Vision
is a conditioned thought; it is born ‘as occasioned’ by what happens in the
body; it is ‘incited’ to think by the body.” The sensations of experienced
people are relevant for a theory of knowledge because they are in a
dynamic interdependence with the specific situation (see Griffiths & Scarantino
2009; Standish 2015: 303f.). The sensory, feeling and somaesthetic thinking of
experienced practitioners correlates with Dewey’s holistic interpretation of
experience as a transaction between the human organism and its physical and
social environment. Sensations are perceived as being immediate because they
appear ad hoc, but they are embedded in a practical context of which the acting
person is not completely aware.
As a knowing unity, the body is an intelligent entity that is always present
and active: now it reaches for an instrument, tries out some sequences and
improvises freely around them; now it reaches for a pencil, sketches geometrical
shapes, crosses something out, draws new figures, connects them with arrows,
occasionally holds still to focus on certain activities, moves in the room to
stimulate certain thoughts, turns to the computer and looks for something on
Youtube, stops again and listens concentratedly, types something on the
computer, sits down at the keyboard for a moment, etc. A person hears, sees,
touches and feels, imagines, weighs up, remembers, compares, searches,
judges. And in so doing, he or she often interacts with a great variety of
material objects. This is why we speak of body knowledge, or rather knowledge
through the body, in two respects:
First, body states are meaningful. The way the body resonates with percep-
tions and situations – for instance, through goose pimples, accelerated heartbeat,
shivers down the spine, laughter, etc. – contains valuations or judgements.
Such resonances can hence be interpreted as intelligible body responses to
situations, objects and persons. As situational body sensations, they contain a
“kinetic” energy that stirs composers into acting correspondingly – by keep-
ing a sequence of sounds, deleting it, reworking it, etc. Composers react
bodily to sounds, rhythms and volume, but their intelligibility rests on a cultural
musical background that consists of a collectively shared tradition, earlier
experiences and beliefs (see Taylor 2006: 26ff.; Nicolini 2012: 77–95). For
Wittgenstein (1988: § 624) this background exists to an indeterminate extent:
“We judge an action according to its background within human life, and this
background is not monochrome, but we might picture it as a very complicated
filigree pattern, which, to be sure, we can’t copy, but which we can recognise
from the general impression it makes.”
Second, musicians speak of “fingers’ knowing” (see also Sudnow 1978/
2001: 18, 71, 79); a great many of the composers we interviewed referred to it
as well. They sit at the piano, and their fingers tell them whether a sequence
of notes feels good or whether a given passage can be played – in physiological
terms, this is known as body or muscle memory. But beyond this, there is
knowledge of other bodies, too. Composers consider the performing musicians
who, during the concert, might “like to show their virtuosity” or should not
“be annoyed the whole time” by an extremely difficult sequence of notes. The
concept of body knowledge therefore also has an inter-subjective facet. Merleau-
Ponty calls this inter-corporeality: “It is through my body that I understand
other people, just as it is through my body that I perceive things” (Merleau-
Ponty 1945/2005: 216; see also Gallagher 2014: 10–16). Composers try out
things using their own bodies and have a common musical practice, so they
develop a shared bodily implementation of experiences. This common body
enables composers to anticipate the body perspective of musicians whilst they
are composing (see Gebauer 2009: 97–101).
3.3.2 Formal propositional forms of knowledge

It would be grossly negligent to overlook the composers’ broad cultural
knowledge or to underestimate its significance for their composing practice.
All the composers we met are frequent and intensive listeners, have a sound
knowledge of the historical and contemporary repertoires of their music culture,
are well-informed about contemporary discourses in music theory and concern
themselves with a broad spectrum of texts from various disciplines. Their
explicable knowledge is not merely academic theoretical knowledge, but relevant
in several ways. One composer described pieces of music and books that
inspire him as “sockets” into which he plugs. In certain situations, he “charges
his batteries” with music or philosophical thoughts to generate ideas for his
pieces. This kind of cultural knowledge does not lack practical relevance since
it is simultaneously a product of and a prerequisite for participating in a cultural
practice. It supplies a semantic framework that gives, for instance, a certain
meaning to the structural relationship between individual notes or associates
musical quotations and stylistic elements with a certain aesthetic. Codified cultural
knowledge is, as Paul Duguid (2005: 114) points out, “remarkably powerful,
but its power is only realised through the corresponding knowing how”. The
relevant, practice-based “knowing how” denotes not just the understanding of
semantic meaning but also the understanding of how relevant a particular
knowledge is in a given situation. Formal propositional knowledge, however, is
not genuinely practical because it is not a direct prerequisite for agency in
composing. That agency also requires domain-specific, artistic practical knowing.
Scholarly knowledge (see Figure 3.2) refers to contents that are system-
atically collected, discussed, verified and evaluated. Generally, scholarly
knowledge is deemed to consist of (preliminarily) justified true beliefs whose
validity is always provisional and bounded by paradigms. Composers
absorb different scholarly texts dealing with music history and theory, musical
analysis, aesthetics and philosophy, the psychology of listening, organo-
logy, acoustics and much more. This knowledge is propositional, in other
words, it is articulated in conceptual, mathematical and technical languages.
Its acquisition is preconditionally dependent on composers’ being highly, text-
specifically competent in reading and understanding. Some composers also
took academic degrees alongside their composition studies, usually in musi-
cology or philosophy. Their access to scholarly knowledge thus oscillates
from a professional grasp of meaning to more associative links and tentative
interpretations of scholarly texts.
We use the expression “local knowledge” to encompass, for instance,
knowledge of the professional networks in the local art world, of music
agencies, publishers and funding organisations, of the activities of colleagues,
contents of newspaper articles and information about performances and
festivals. Such knowledge not only relates to discursive aspects, but also
influences practical actions. Local knowledge is distinct from systematic
scholarly knowledge because it primarily evolves out of social participation
and communication in everyday contexts and not academic scholarly contexts.
Practitioners judge its validity and relevance based not on the differentiation
categories true/false or justified/speculative, but on their own involvement,
interests and collectively established “regimes of competence” (Wenger 2002:
136f.). Local knowledge includes key information for everyday conversations
and professional interactions. It guides composers in their everyday lives,
shapes their identity and consolidates their belonging to their professional
practice community.
By formal technical knowledge, we do not mean practical technical skills,
but explicit knowledge of the way objects function and of their technical
characteristics, for example knowledge of the range of notes and volume
levels of individual instruments, possible ways of combining different instru-
mental sounds, the various types and possible applications of music software
for certain tasks, and various devices. This knowledge is largely formal and
propositional, meaning that there are corresponding texts, instructions and
descriptions. Knowledge of technical contents by itself does not generate
practical technical competence. Formal technical knowledge is important to
be able to write for specific instruments, use the instruments’ sound potential
and possible play techniques in a differentiated manner, accommodate room
acoustics, and communicate with other specialists.
All forms of formal propositional knowledge that we have mentioned
are codified by language or symbols. They are general knowledge since people
have not necessarily gained them through personal experience. People acquire
scholarly, local and formal technical knowledge through reading, commu-
nication and other researches. As with artistic practical knowing, these three
forms of knowledge are also simultaneous. Our conception of formal propo-
sitional knowledge as encompassing scholarly, local and formal technical
knowledge is therefore not hierarchical.
3.4 The synergy between the various forms of knowledge
Recognising that there are many different forms of knowledge raises the
question of their relationship to each other. Here, the contrasting forms of
knowledge – “knowing how” versus “knowing that” (Ryle), “tacit” versus
“explicit knowledge” (Polanyi) and “knowing” versus “known” (Dewey) –
need to be considered synergistically to prevent discussions from reductively
stressing their differences. Most theories of knowledge discuss this synergy,
but they emphasise different aspects of it. Some give epistemic priority to the
bodily dimension (e.g. Merleau-Ponty 1945/2005: 216) or the tacit dimension,
as Polanyi (1964/1969: 144) writes:
We have seen tacit knowledge to comprise two kinds of awareness, subsidiary

awareness and focal awareness. Now we see tacit knowledge opposed to
explicit knowledge; but these two are not sharply divided. While tacit
knowledge can be possessed by itself, explicit knowledge must rely on being
tacitly understood and applied. Hence all knowledge is either tacit or rooted
in tacit knowledge. A wholly explicit knowledge is unthinkable.
Such prioritising, however, does not suggest that some forms of knowledge
are more valuable than others. Rather, it assumes that the forms are inter-
linked. Conversely, other approaches attempt to reduce practical knowledge
to propositional knowledge. For instance, Jason Stanley and Timothy
Williamson (Stanley & Williamson 2001: 444) assume that “all knowing-how
is knowing-that. The intellectualist legend is true”. John Hawthorne and
Jason Stanley (Hawthorne & Stanley 2008: 574) remark that “[i]f you know
that p, then it should not be a problem to act as if p”. These approaches do
not draw on the immanent critique of rationality and representationality that
is so crucial to the theories of Dewey, Polanyi, Ryle and Merleau-Ponty (see
e.g. Duguid 2005; Jung 2012: 31–77).
Composing practices consist of interwined activities and are complemented
by paratexts and wrapped around with aesthetic and ethic commitments, in
other words, by statements made before, during and after the various actions.
Discourses, propositional contents and conditions of production are a com-
pound that forms an integral part of practices (see Zembylas 2004: 89–96).
Expressions in conceptual, mathematical and technical languages are also
constituents of practices. Language and symbolic forms are involved in
everything we perceive, think and do, as well as in all our sensations, wishes
and intentions. The interleaving of doings and sayings and of practices and
discourses is also operative in spontaneous results, for instance in gestalt
perception. Allan Janik’s (1994: 41f.) remarks on medical activities thus hold
true for composers:
Learning to see is thus learning to judge “at a glance” that this complex
before me is a significant unity, a Gestalt. This is a matter of judgement
[…]. “Seeing” in such situations is anything but a matter of perceiving
discrete sense data, collecting them and then synthesising them. […] For
that we need to have a set of categories and concepts drilled into us, if we
are to orient ourselves. This conceptual orientation is precisely what we
receive in the course of our professional enculturation.
The conceptual orientation that evolves through enculturation is not only

intellectual, but also linked to acquired sensorimotor skills (see Noë 2012:
25f.). Wittgenstein (1953/1968: § 19, 23, 304; 1967: § 532–534) views it in the
context of practical rules, examples and analogies (see Williams 1999: 200f.).
Anthropologically speaking, humans are quintessentially shaped by the symbolic
means that they themselves have created and use. As Charles Taylor (2006:
32) writes, it is virtually impossible to draw a clear boundary here:
It is not only that any frontier is porous, that things explicitly formulated
and understood can “sink down” into unarticulated know-how, in the
way that Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus [1986] have shown us with learning,
that our grasp on things can move as well in the other direction, as we
articulate what was previously just lived out. It is also that any particular
understanding of our situation blends explicit knowledge and unarticulated
know-how.
Similarly, analytic propositions cannot be clearly demarcated from synthetic

propositions, nor formal propositional knowledge from artistic practical
knowing (see also Quine 1951; Lakoff & Johnson 1999: 19f.). We therefore
want to emphasise the following: first, composers’ formal propositional
knowledge is not simply theoretical and abstract, but intrinsically interwoven
with other sensory and motor skills. Second, the oscillation between a flow of
action and a conscious distancing from the material – in other words, between
the intuitive and the reflective work mode – is a typical trait of complex and
challenging activities, such as composing.
Consequently, we regard music-aesthetic theories and musicological elements
not as “external objects” at all, but as systems of beliefs entangled with
musical practices. Under certain circumstances, some of them might be con-
ducive to experimental approaches; others might reinforce canonical ideas
associated with traditional trajectories. Thus, generally speaking, we argue
along with Juniper Hill (2012: 87ff.) that music theories and aesthetic ideas
may encourage or inhibit musical activities and, consequently, we consider
them to be conditions that afford agency. While being educated and having
broad propositional knowledge is not evidence of mastery, the two forms of
knowledge – propositional and artistic practical – cannot be uncoupled. As
Jeff Coulter (1989: 15f.) states:
Knowing what people are doing (including oneself) is knowing how to

identify what they are doing in the categories of a natural language,
which requires knowing how to use those categories in discursive contexts,
which includes knowing when to utter them. All of these types of knowledge
are logically interrelated. They are all constitutive of human conduct.
Furthermore, western contemporary art music requires conceptual thought.

Such conceptual thinking and the genuine musical making of a composition
are not disparate competences. Tore Nordenstam (1983: 85) expresses this
from a Wittgensteinian point of view: “Conceptual competence is internally
related to action competence.” Conceptual competence is decisive because it
enables a way of seeing things – a “knowing with” and a “hearing with”
(think also of a “hearing that” and a “hearing as” – see Broudy 1970; Schön
& Wiggins 1992; Davidson 1997). Conceptualisations form a framework
within which and through which composers think, without this framework
necessarily being present to them in each mental process (see Zembylas &
Dürr 2009: 123). This does not negate the relevance of practical sense and
experiential knowledge, but the how (the knowing how, the skilfulness)
cannot achieve anything on its own. Artistic performances are evaluated
contextually, making the what and why of actions equally significant in the
process of aesthetic appreciation (see Aubenque 1962/2007: 138f., 187;
Schatzki 2001: 50–53; Shove, Pantzar & Watson 2012). Artistic competence
must therefore be understood broadly. It is the ability to carry out an artistic
practice – in this case, composing – and to develop it further in a context-
specific manner.
To summarise, we understand knowledge of work processes, situative
knowledge and somatic or somaesthetic knowing to be different forms of
artistic practical knowing. By analogy, we view scholarly knowledge, formal
technical knowledge and local knowledge as forms of formal propositional
knowledge. While this separation of forms of knowledge has served us well in
this section to establish an analytical order and explain the specifics of indi-
vidual forms of knowledge, it is obvious, in conclusion, that this separation
can only be maintained in part. In certain situations, practitioners and scho-
lars are primarily aware of one form of artistic practical knowing, pushing the
others into the background. When composing, as Figures 3.1 and 3.2 make
clear, all of these forms of knowledge must be considered in their varying
simultaneity and their mutual interdependences. Certain forms of knowledge
may appear to predominate in some activities. This predominance does not,
however, disempower the other forms of knowledge. They too are continually
present, and they too constitute artistic agency.
Notes
1 While Michael Polanyi (1958) introduced only a very loose differentiation between
active and passive modes of tacit knowledge, Harry Collins (2010: 85ff., 99ff.,
119ff.) distinguishes three kinds of tacit knowledge: relational, somatic and collective.
Mihály Szivós, who worked with us on this research project, identifies four types of
tacit knowledge: tool-centred, environment-centred, personal relation-centred, and
social institution-centred (Szivós 2014a: 24–27). For an analysis of the meaning of
“tacit”, see also Neuweg 2004: 12–24; 2006.
2 Clearly, at times it is also possible to compose without using instruments. This
method is even quite common “because you have that wealth of experience. You’ve
got certain recordings of split sounds or things that work well. That’s something
you also learn over the years,” according to Christof Dienz.
3 Generally speaking, an abductive procedure is characteristic of creative and experi-
mental thinking. It forms evidence-based, ad-hoc hypotheses out of existing
empirical data, knowledge and clues. Such ad-hoc hypotheses are generative since
they create paths for further research. During such an exploration, several ad-hoc
hypotheses can be developed, expanded or discarded on the basis of new data and
clues. The exploration is concluded when an explanation based on these hypotheses
has been found that integrates the available empirical data in line with a purpose.
4 Mihály Szivós (2014b) elaborates four types of acoustic attention: unconscious
hearing, background hearing, hearing with a distal awareness, focal attention.
5 Intuition, however, has several meanings: intelligibility without concepts (Kant),
empathy (Bergson, Lipps), a way of seeing the world, e.g. aesthetic experience
(Gadamer), non-conceptual understanding (Wittgenstein), sensing (Heidegger),
anticipation of thought (Polanyi), a situative corrective to schematic identification
without claim to real cognition (Adorno).
6 For a critique of the applicability of the Dreyfus model to artistic professions, see
Zembylas & Dürr 2009: 142–144; on the concept of quality in art, see Zembylas
2004: 205–219; on the contingency of aesthetic assessments, see Zembylas 1997.
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4 Musicological perspectives
on composing
Andreas Holzer
Scholarly interest in the processes of composing in their entirety and with all
their associated requirements and conditions is a relatively recent phenomenon
in musicology. There was, however, interest in certain aspects from about the
mid-19th century, for example, in the form of sketch studies or an exploration of
the psychology of creative processes. This chapter is therefore divided into two
sections. The first will provide a historical outline of attempts that did not
examine the result of a creative process (usually a work based on a score), but the
process itself. The second section will explore composing-as-process using
current theories, not least to answer the question of the extent to which an
amalgamation of contemporary sociological and musicological perspectives
generates new, or at least apt, insights into a subject that continues to be con-
sidered highly problematic by broad swathes of musicology. For John Sloboda
(1986), for instance, the process of composing represents a phenomenon simply
too complex to be accessible to any musicological scrutiny. Robert Schumann’s
claim that humans have “a distinct awe of the workplace of genius” and there-
fore wish “to know nothing of the causes, tools and secrets of creativity” (Schu-
mann 1835: 50 – our translation) can be found in a very similar version in a
recent publication. In the preface to the sketch diary kept over several years by
Robert Platz (2010: 7 – our translation), Stefan Fricke asks the following
questions – rhetorical though they may be – about the composer’s method: “Was
this really a good idea? Do the writings not reveal too much of the writer? Does
he not grant us an insight far too profound, far too intimate into the close
surroundings, everyday life and professional practice of the freelance artist?” At
the very least, the statement (Schumann) has turned into a question (Fricke).
However, such scepticism is not exclusively due to the idea that the process
of creating artworks eludes investigation because of its complexity, that it is
too intimate, or that embedding it into everyday life somehow demystifies art.
Yet when Theodor W. Adorno pushes the genesis of an artwork into the
background (which he does by allotting this aspect an extremely marginal
role in his Aesthetic Theory, if nothing else), he has a quite different aim:
In art the difference between the thing made and its genesis – the
making – is emphatic: Artworks are something made that has become
112 Musicological perspectives on composing
more than something simply made. This was not contested until art
began to experience itself as transient. The confounding of artworks with
their genesis, as if genesis provided the universal code for what has
become, is the source of the alienness of art scholarship to art: for artworks
obey their law of form by consuming their genesis. Specifically aesthetic
experience, self-abandonment to artworks, is indifferent to their genesis.
Knowledge of the genesis is as external to aesthetic experience as is the
history of the dedication of the Eroica to what musically transpires in that
symphony. The attitude of authentic artworks toward extra-aesthetic
objectivity is not so much to be sought in how this objectivity affects the
process of production, for the artwork is in-itself a comportment that
reacts to that objectivity even while turning away from it.
(Adorno 1997: 179)
Admittedly, our research project pursued quite different questions and there-
fore need not attach any importance to Adorno’s disregard for the genesis of
art. And that is certainly true as far as the forming of aesthetic experiences is
concerned, let alone evaluation: neither of these plays a prominent part in our
project. It is not the case, however, as per Adorno’s thesis that artworks
follow a “law of form”. Any examination of their genesis would then have to
focus on the musical material and internal work criteria, but not on the
creators’ forms of knowledge. In the recent past, composers as well as
philosophers have occasionally made similar announcements that artworks
determine their own organisation to a certain extent. In an effort to overcome
subjectivist explanations, the German system theorist Niklas Luhmann (2000:
245f.) regards artworks as entities that “converse with one another”, and by
doing so, contribute to their own “selfprogramming” as well as to the formation
of a collective memory in the art system. Within musicology, the question of
where to locate the artistic subject in such art production has led to general
resistance to, or ignorance of, the system-theory position. For instance the
musicologist Ulrich Tadday (1997: 14) accuses Luhmann of radically
neglecting the role of the artistic subject, its intentions and its poetical ideas.
Luhmann has also been resented in various quarters for degrading the concept
of genius – still not completely vanquished in the art world – to an evolutio-
nistic phenomenon by positing that the term “genius” stands “for the
improbability of emergence [of innovative artworks]” and that geniuses are
“products, not causes, of evolution” (Luhmann 2000: 224).
4.1 Perspectives on composing-as-process: a historical outline
4.1.1 Sketch studies

Most retrospectives of the history of sketch studies point to Gustav Nottebohm’s
(1865) analyses of Beethoven’s sketches as the historical starting-point of this
musicological research topic, and also declare that those same Beethoven
Musicological perspectives on composing 113
sketches will continue to form its core subject. As Lewis Lockwood (1992: 2) was
compelled to summarise in his Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process,
Nottebohm’s impetus had virtually no impact until the 1950s, when the Beethoven
Archive in Bonn started to think about publishing the sketches; and after
that, nothing noteworthy appeared until Douglas Johnson, Alan Tyson and
Robert Winter’s book, The Beethoven Sketchbooks: History, Reconstruction,
Inventory (Johnson, Tyson & Winter 1985). It is obvious that sketch studies
were not rated very highly within the discipline of musicology. Since the early
1990s, however, there has been a marked re-appraisal:
Cooper (1990), Kinderman (1991), Lockwood (1992) and others have

published extensive studies on Beethoven;
Ulrich Konrad (1992) has contributed in several works to the belated
demystification of the Mozart myth,1 according to which Mozart “completed
everything in his mind”.
The anthology Vom Einfall zum Kunstwerk [From idea to artwork]
(Danuser & Katzenberger 1993) widens the observable horizon from the
heroes of the 18th and 19th centuries to the 20th century.
In close succession, two volumes appeared that were based on an evaluation
of sketches from the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel (Oesch 1991,
Meyer 1993), an institution that has in the recent past established itself as
an influential research institution in this field and is now home to sketches
and documents by numerous living composers.
In 2009 the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique
(Ircam) in Paris started an extensive project examining the composition
methods of well-known composers from the mid-20th century onwards,
using their sketches and other sources (works by Pierre Boulez, Bernd
Alois Zimmermann, Gérard Grisey, Marco Stroppa and Stefano Gervasoni,
among others).
Over time, the orientation and limits of the issues raised within sketch studies
have also changed and expanded. In keeping with 19th-century musicological
research, which focused on masterpieces by geniuses, sketches were initially
assigned a status comparable to relics, supposedly able to give insight into the
mysteries of the creative process. In his attempt to get as close as possible to a
composer’s intentions, Heinrich Schenker was a pioneer of urtext research in
the early 20th century. Using sketches (and focusing once again on Beethoven),
he tried not only to illuminate the genesis of works and locate it in the composer’s
biography, but also to make it productive for a more specific understanding of
the pieces in his analyses. Schenker, like August Halm and Ernst Kurth, con-
tributed to replacing “a normative-dogmatic music theory, whose last out-
standing representative seems to have been Hugo Riemann” by “capturing,
through ever more differentiated analyses, the particularity of the work”
(Dahlhaus 1989: 2, 262 – our translation). Schenker apparently felt compelled
to justify having included sketches in his analyses of Beethoven because the
predominant and clichéd understanding of the manner in which geniuses
created art was that it was effortless. He does so, for instance, in his discussion
of the second movement of the “Piano Sonata op. 111”:
Sheet by sheet of images of the hardest struggle and torture of the soul.
Unfortunately, these are quite inaccessible to the imagination of the
layman or uneducated musician, who simply cannot believe that Beethoven,
in spite of his most extraordinary gift of improvisation and his experience
of having already created such a large number of works, and even in his
most advanced age, was still not spared the struggle of having to conquer
every single note of a variation movement with an easy arrangement,
almost as if he were a novice.
(Schenker 1916: 55 – our translation)
Despite the turbulent reception afforded his works because they included
sketches in musical analysis, Schenker’s contribution had no significant impact.
This was due not least to the widespread opinion that the genesis of an artwork
was not only irrelevant for understanding the latter, but was moreover also a
private matter for the composer. Theodor W. Adorno was a prominent
representative of this position, as the above quotation reveals. A few of
Adorno’s contemporaries did experience a sort of reversal of values, but for a
long time this had no effect on musicology at all. Thus, Walter Benjamin’s
(1928/1979: 65) statement that “[t]he work is the death mask of its conception”
chimes with Paul Valéry’s argument (Valery 1962: 70 – our translation): “In
me lives a primordial inclination, an insurmountable inclination – it may well
be despicable – to view the completed work, the finalised piece, as a sort of
expulsion or discard, as a dead thing.”
After the Beethoven Archive in Bonn planned to publish the sketches in the
1950s, a similar decision was also taken at the drafting stage of the complete
Schönberg edition, in the 1960s, to integrate sketches – a procedure that has
since become the norm. This complete edition as published includes, alongside
the notes and critical commentary, extensive chapters on the genesis of works
as well as on printing, performances and various versions. Since it also collected
testimony by Schönberg and members of his circle, and the most varied
documents from the context of the complete process of creation, it could be
considered an anticipation of the requirements of critique génétique. This
branch of literary criticism developed in France in the 1970s and attempted to
explore individual processes of writing by integrating all available sources,
even previously neglected peripheral ones. To the best of my knowledge,
musicologists did not make a firm case for embracing critique génétique in
musicological practice until the 1990s.
The Paul Sacher Foundation mentioned above has not only vastly extended
its collections by including living composers, it also, in line with critique
génétique principles, gathers a large variety of sources, which in turn enable a
large variety of perspectives onto creative processes. The prefaces of the series
“Source Studies” that have emerged from the Foundation equally emphasise
that the research interests markedly transcend any purely philological dimension:
“Only where the philological findings are successfully related to the compo-
ser’s creative-poetical and aesthetic conditions is it possible to come close to
the complex process of creating” (Meyer 1993: 7). In contrast to Adorno’s
verdict, these studies likewise champion the belief that knowledge about the
process of composing does contribute to a more comprehensive understanding
of the finished composition. Thus, a great variety of sources can show the
different ideas or even fractures that may develop over the course of the different
phases of the process of composing, which substantially relativise the very
persistent notion of a piece of music as an “inevitable result of musical planning”
(Meyer 1993: 8 – our translation). Every result could always also have looked
different. This underlines the question of where to locate the “actual act” of
composing, if the intention is to differentiate such an act from precompositional
phases of organisation.
Friedemann Sallis’ most recent research (Sallis 2015) also far exceeds mere
philological interests. His case studies, which extend over the past 400 years
of the history of composing, are more closely focused on the processual aspect
of composing than his previous appraisals. This is partly shown in the fact
that he both takes into account the relevance of objects used during composing
and delineates the problem areas that might arise due to the integration of
sketches into music-analysis practice.
Regardless of all the afore-mentioned transformations and expansions of
research perspectives, however, contemporary musicology still overwhelmingly
focuses on gaining a deeper understanding of the finished product, rather
than on the specific nature of the creative process. The fixation with written
sources remains just as marked, even in cases where it would be possible to
interview their creators.
4.1.2 Asking the composers

Friedrich von Hausegger, the music critic and lecturer in aesthetics and the
history of musical art, was probably the first scholar to deal extensively and in
several publications with artists’ creative processes by using more than just
the available scores and work sketches. He still credited the genius, whom he
contrasted with “smaller minds” (Hausegger 1903: 356 – our translation),
with finding his path independently of direction, environment or zeitgeist. He
did not, however, regard this as an insurmountable obstacle to rational
examination. In view of the emerging psychology of music, Hausegger (1903:
369) saw the “psychic state of the artist” as a suitable research topic, which
might give listeners a closer understanding of the essence of a piece than the
then-predominant approach of the “formal aestheticians”, who used art
objects. As he argued: “The artist speaks to us through his musical work, and the
work appears to us as the revelation of his essence, but only if the performing
artist does indeed know how to put this essence into the work. However, that
is what we demand of him” (Hausegger 1903: 366). A central aspect of
Hausegger’s method was an extensive survey of artists from various dis-
ciplines, in which he informed them of his research interests and confronted
them with a detailed catalogue of questions. This catalogue demonstrated a
level of differentiation lacking from most subsequent projects, which is why
we reproduce it in its entirety here:
Which external conditions have an influence on your willingness and

ability to engage in artistic creation? (loneliness? environment? external
stimulus; day, night; bodily disposition, etc.)
Where, in relation to your state and ability, do you see the difference
between moments of willingness to create and moments of reluctance?
How do you get the ideas for your artworks?
How do you proceed with the design, and what internal reasons convince
you to choose what design?
To what extent, and in what manner, do unconscious influences assert
themselves in this?
Do dreams or states of psychic exaltation play a role in your creativity?
Are you at all subject to vivid dreams or exalted states?
Do you sense the worth of a product made by you whilst willing to create,
in contrast to one made whilst reluctant to create?
How does this conviction about the work impose itself? As a vague feeling
or as knowledge based on certain attributes?
To what extent is your creating shaped by intentional or willed activities
and to what extent by unconscious or internally driven ones?
Does an interest in knowing or any particular desire (external purposes)
have any influence on your creative ability?
When and under what circumstances did your creative ability awaken for
the first time? (Hausegger 1903: 375f. – our translation)
The particular philosophical conception of a psychophysical subject that

clearly underpins the catalogue of questions as a whole is typical of its time,
as is the recourse to psychological states (“dreams”, “psychic exaltation”).
Hausegger’s desire to differentiate between “knowing” and “vague feeling” is
likely to derive from Leibniz’s distinction between obscure and clear knowl-
edge, but could also be analogous to the modern demarcation of explicit
versus implicit forms of knowledge. Even so, Hausegger also brings “bodily
dispositions” into play as decisive factors, although this is not necessarily
comparable with the dominant role the body assumes in more recent socio-
logical theories of practice. Finally, it is remarkable that the majority of the
artists contacted by Hausegger in 1896 were indeed prepared to respond to
his questions, a fact which runs contrary to the clichéd conception of artists
at the time not wanting to throw light on the enigma of their own creativity.
Some of them did with alacrity and interest; a few even quite extensively
(Wilhelm Kienzl, Felix Weingartner, Richard Strauss). In addition to those
three, Hausegger reproduced the replies of the following composers in their
entirety: Hans Sommer, Nikolaus von Reznicek, Engelbert Humperdinck,
Camillo Horn, Peter Rosegger (for others, he gave a short summary of their
answers).
A few years later, Max Graf, who lectured at the Vienna Academy of
Music and Performing Arts, devoted himself to the subject of the process of
composing in its totality – whilst apparently unaware of Hausegger’s work.
Although Graf also relativised the mystery of Romantic inspiration from the
start, he did so with a view to pointing out that even the “most sober average
person” was no stranger to unusual psychological states, inexplicable moods,
apprehensions and “accesses of melancholia” (Graf 1910: 2 – our transla-
tion). He maintained, however, that artistic creation was founded on a special
“strength of the unconscious”, not dissimilar to the state of lunacy, which led
to an inner excitation of such intensity that it “had to break through to the
outside” (Graf 1910: 15). The extent to which Graf ’s thinking was anchored
in this universe of Romantic and psychological ideas is also revealed in his
chapter on sketches. It is no accident that he directed the reader’s attention
first onto artists who created quickly and without much sketch material, such
as Mozart or Schubert. Inevitably, however, this led him into a crisis of justi-
fication concerning Beethoven. Graf was determined not to give the impres-
sion that Beethoven’s extensive sketch material was the sign of a sober and
systematic approach. Rather, these “fragments and debris of music” were
likewise “brought to the surface by the violence of passionate affects” (Graf
1910: 134).
The anti-Romantic discourse of the 1920s was similarly reflected in
attempts to demystify the artistic creative process. Among the manifold efforts
being made in a variety of places, Viktor Shklovsky’s (1917/2004) treatise Art
as Technique, one of the founding texts of Russian Formalism, was particu-
larly early and interesting. The most extensive and elaborate attempt in music
was made by Julius Bahle, who devoted three books to the topic between
1930 and 1939, some of them very comprehensive. They were based on wide-
ranging analyses of contemporary psychological research, Wilhelm Dilthey’s
hermeneutics, aesthetic theories for instance of Friedrich Theodor Vischer
that were no longer entirely current and previous studies including Hau-
segger’s. Bahle primarily critiqued the Romantic view of creative processes
and the notion of a compulsion to express oneself because they dis-
proportionately focused on rather inaccessible notions such as “idea” or
“inspiration”, which he considered to be merely “scattered highpoints of the
creative process” (Bahle 1936: XIII – our translation). He believed that, on
the contrary, “an activity structure that was founded on experience, purposeful
and aware of values” should be ascribed to composing, in which conscious and
unconscious factors were superposed and which took into account even
apparently simple, everyday occurrences (Bahle 1939: 3). Bahle also criticised
the predominant focus on the musical works (Werkästhetik) that was widely
practised in musicology at the time.
Bahle aimed to transcend Hausegger’s (1903) study in which composers
were only asked general questions. He encouraged composers to engage in
self-reflection directly after they had finished an act of composing. During his
first empirical investigations at the Institute for Psychology and Pedagogy at the
Mannheim School of Commerce in 1927–28, he was accused of having cre-
ated laboratory situations (his findings yielded the book Zur Psychologie des
musikalischen Gestaltens [On the psychology of musical creation], Bahle
1930). In his next book, Der musikalische Schaffensprozess [The creative pro-
cess in music] (Bahle 1936), he tried to pre-empt his detractors, inter alia by
approaching more than 30 renowned contemporary composers (including
Richard Strauss, Alfredo Casella, Arthur Honegger, Karl Orff, Ernst Krenek)
and asking them to choose one of eight specified poems and set it to music
(with the option of using another poem of their choice instead). He included
fairly comprehensive “guidelines on self-observation”. No less than 27 com-
posers accepted his request, of whom 18 chose one of the specified poems.
Bahle then extended the results with further questions and interviews and com-
pared them with detailed historical examples. His third book, Eingebung und
Tat im musikalischen Schaffen [Inspiration and deed in musical creation]
(Bahle 1939), dealt in more detail with individual perspectives, such as
inspiration, experimentation and the role of creative pauses.
While Bahle’s extensive studies had no real successors, they did meet with
vehement criticism: “Here is someone who draws conclusions on musical
creation based on the babblings of a few self-important amateur bunglers”,
declared Paul Hindemith in response to Bahle’s first book, which did not
include any notable composers. Given the significant role that Hindemith
attributes to technical craft in composing, it is paradoxical that he, more than
almost any other composer of his time, believed to an almost pathetic extent
that the heart of any artistic existence lies in inspiration, in musical vision: “If
we cannot, in the flash of a single moment, see a composition in its absolute
entirety, with every pertinent detail in its proper place, we are not genuine
creators” (Hindemith 1952: 51).
The fact that so few scholars drew on Bahle’s work in the decades that
followed might be explained by two factors. First, his studies encountered
heavy resistance from representatives of the aesthetics of inspiration (along-
side Hindemith, for instance, Hans Pfitzner took up the cudgel in an
impassioned polemic). The picture of the genius as someone who can spon-
taneously imagine an entire piece of music, a picture based primarily on
Mozart, had by no means disappeared in the 20th century, as Paul Hindemith’s
quotation above illustrates. Arnold Schönberg made similar statements – “A
composer conceives an entire composition as a spontaneous vision”
(Schönberg 1946/1967: 1) – as did Karlheinz Stockhausen – “I wake up and
the entire pieces are in me” (quoted in Mountain 2001: 274). Second, after
World War II, in some parts of the composing world, for instance Darmstadt,2
the person of the creator was relegated in favour of the material or structural
level of the work.
Bahle’s research has been met with scepticism even in the more recent past,
despite being appreciated to some degree for demystifying the process of
composing. This scepticism was partly due to the following issue: to what
extent can generalising statements be extrapolated from individual studies?
How to go beyond the simple addition of individual observations is a funda-
mental concern for all such analyses. Quantitative results have a debatable
epistemic value: composers’ ways of behaving and proceeding will above all
display similarities and differences. Entirely misguided, however, are general-
isations that are meant to provide, for example, “evidence for the pattern of
three successive phases of development” (Bahle 1939: XIII) that no artist
can avoid.
For all the above reasons, there were very few analyses of the process of
composing in the second half of the 20th century. Moreover, the books by
Ursula Stürzbecher (1971) and Ann McCutchan (1999) can hardly be called
scholary works: Stürzbecher had conversations with 20 composers (among others,
György Ligeti, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Helmut Lachenmann,
Werner Henze and – for the first time – a woman, Grete Zieritz3) without any
questioning strategy or theoretical background. Similarly, although
McCutchan, who consulted an equivalent number of American composers,
does have a rough pattern of questioning, she shows no specific epistemological
interest or methodical procedure either.
4.1.3 Composers’ self-reflection on their composing as a whole

Composers’ observations on specific aspects of the process of composing are
widely available. For that reason alone, this section only deals with examples
that reflect on the entire process and represent it in writing. I will also refrain
from trying to trace basic patterns and making comparisons. Questions as to
whether sketches were made or a piano was used, whether collaboration with
musicians was sought, whether notes were written on the computer or with a
writing implement, would require a much wider field of survey to give clear
answers. I would, however, consider such quantitative results to be only
moderately interesting. I am exclusively concerned here with the following
dynamic: what intentions and interests might be perceptible behind each
representation of the process of composing that extend beyond the specific
composing habits and technical aspects of composing? I will also be restricting
myself to a few exemplars to discuss certain fundamental and period-specific
aspects.
It seems that, well into the second half of the 20th century, there were no
composers who concerned themselves of their own initiative with the process of
composing as a whole. And yet some responses to surveys, such as Hausegger’s
and Bahle’s questionnaires, were relatively extensive and therefore enable us
to draw at least a partial picture of the various phases of work genesis. In
addition to these two surveys, Richard Strauss also took part in a further
survey in 1910 on the limits of what could be composed. Interestingly, in his
response he put the concepts of “inspiration” and “invention”, which played
a central role in all of the surveys cited, in quotation marks (see Katzenberger
1993: 66). These quotation marks certainly suggest that he was knowingly
deviating from the predominant way of thinking, which understood inspiration
and invention to be an exclusively internal process that was quasi-atemporal
and possibly connected to an agitated emotional state. In sharp contrast to
the widespread cliché and to Hausegger’s question on the topic, Strauss
revealed that he was never internally agitated when composing. Ideas, Strauss
claimed, were never to be interpreted as isolated phenomena, but rather as the
continuation of mostly unconscious processes. However, he also saw ideas as
directly corresponding to the level of (prior) education, and as being followed
by a rather deliberate elaboration. In turn, that elaboration could be viewed
as the basis for further ideas. In contrast with Pfitzner’s mystification of the
process of composing and Hindemith’s conception of inspiration and artistic
vision as something unconditionally given (see Schubert 1993: 219), Strauss
once again displays a different and more modern understanding of inspiration.
He deems it to be intertwined with the technical-composition and aesthetic
conditions of the day – thus explicitly reflecting his own historical position.
Similar attitudes can be found in Ernst Krenek’s or Arthur Honegger’s responses
to Bahle’s survey, for example.
Strauss’s remarks are also interesting in terms of another period-specific
discourse, which comceptualised the artist – that fleet-footed producer of
music – and the composer – labouring at the creative process – as polar opposites.
Krenek portrays this polarity in his opera “Jonny spielt auf” (“Jonny Strikes
Up”, 1926). The autobiographical figure of the composer Max personifies the
second type – to whom Strauss could no doubt relate as well. In the Paris
music world, Krenek had discovered the relaxed side of things not only through
the upcoming jazz music, but also through the aesthetic attitudes of Jean
Cocteau and the Groupe des Six (Honegger, Milhaud, and others). It is possible
that he also knew Erik Satie’s idea of “musique d’ameublement”, according to
which music should just be present and delightful, like a handsome piece of
furniture. Milhaud’s creative processes – and Hindemith’s – were often short
and apparently unproblematic: Hindemith’s “Sonata for Violin op. 31/2” came
into being on the train journey from Bremen to Hamburg.
Iannis Xenakis’ work serves as an exemplary case for the two decades post-
1950, when broad swathes of the avant-garde considered a composition, its
structures and the underlying musical materials as independently as possible
from the artist. In his book Musiques formelles, Xenakis (1963) not only
informs the reader about the manifold formalisation processes that structure
his works, but also about the specific phases of his process of composing – one
of the few composers of his day to do so:
1 Initial conceptions (intuitions, provisional or definitive data);

2 Definition of the sonic entities and their symbolism communicable with
[in] the limits of possible means (sounds of musical instruments,
electronic sounds, noises, sets of ordered sonic elements, granular or
continuous formations etc.);
3 Definition of the transformations which these sonic entities must undergo
in the course of the composition (macrocomposition: general choice of
logical framework […]);
4 Microcomposition (choice and detailed fixing of the functional or
stochastic relations of the elements of 2.), i.e., algebra outside-time, and
algebra in-time;
5 Sequential programming of 3. and 4. (the schema and pattern of the work
in its entirety);
6 Implementation of calculations, verifications, feedbacks, and definitive
modifications of the sequential program;
7 Final symbolic result of the programming (setting out the music on paper
in traditional notation, numerical expressions, graphs […]);
8 Sonic realization (direct orchestral performance, manipulations of the
type of electromagnetic music, computerized construction of the sonic
entities and their transformations).
(Quoted from the English publication, Xenakis 1992: 22)
Even though Xenakis repeatedly stated that any musical phenomenon only
had merit if it could be translated into rational structures, this should not be
taken to mean that he simply used mathematical procedures to extend sounds
into a work. Overall, in this and other texts, Xenakis always proceeded from
musical ideas, which could be inspired by all sorts of impressions, often
visual. He saw mathematical procedures as an “extension of intuition” and as
“tamed and subdued by musical thought” (quoted by Eichert 1994: 35, 3).
Like his initial ideas, the composing decisions he ultimately took were always
determined by genuinely musical thinking (as the phases 1, 2 and 8 of his
outline of the process of composing convincingly show). However, since
Xenakis also emphasised the interchangeable order of the eight phases, it is
generally not possible to determine, for instance, when or where he took
formal decisions, although the sketching out of the macro-structure mainly
occurred at an early stage (see Phase 3).
Since the 1990s, composers have been increasingly reflecting on the process
of composing as a whole, perhaps encouraged by a similar phenomenon in
musicology. For seven years (2000–2007), Robert H.P. Platz (2010) kept a
“Sketch Diary” that was initially intended to be limited to one suite (“TOP”
for orchestra), but ultimately far exceeded it. The American composer Roger
Reynolds (2002) has at length described his manner of composing, which is
extraordinarily methodical and encompasses manifold documentation objects.
His colleague Timothy U. Newman devised his dissertation as a qualitative
case study:
In this self-case-study, I examine creative processes that are operative

during my composition of a short musical work, and the personal and
social context in which this work occurs. Methods of data collection and
analysis used for this study were: technology assisted self-observation,
autoethnographic literary-type writing, computer-assisted analysis, tex-
tual analysis of think-aloud protocol, and deconstructions of my own
writing. Post-composition analysis of “real time” video and audiotape
recordings, MIDI data, and sketches, were used to uncover and examine
issues and themes specific to my compositional process.
(Newman 2008: 3)
The above-mentioned anthology edited by Hermann Danuser and Günter

Katzenberger, Vom Einfall zum Kunstwerk [From idea to artwork] (Danuser
& Katzenberger 1993), also quotes four composers (Reinhard Febel, Alfred
Koerppen, Siegfried Matthus, Wolfgang Rihm), who commented on their
creative process in very different ways. Koerppen and Matthus attempted to
outline the process in all its phases (Koerppen more generally, Matthus using a
specific example); Rihm supplied various reflections on the topic; Febel largely
avoided it. The most striking feature of these texts – and fundamentally dif-
ferent from the earlier examples already discussed – is the composers’ intense
analysis of how to understand themselves as the composing subject. This
philosophical perspective, which may have been inspired by engaging with post-
structuralist critique of the idealistic concept of subject, might also be related to
a need to frame one’s own artistic making within broader perspectives.
Similarly, a text by a participant in our project, Karlheinz Essl, entitled “Wie
entsteht eine Komposition?” [How does a composition come to be?] (Essl 1997:
149), begins with a reflection on the problem of the creative subject who lacks
detachment when speaking about his own creation. That he does so anyway,
Essl remarks, will lead to “philosophical speculations, detailed technical
descriptions and music-theory digressions” that say “less about the work itself
than about its creator or rather perpetrator”. From the perspective of discourse
analysis, the phrase “or rather perpetrator” is revealing. Essl appears to regard
the term “creator” as too closely linked to the Romantic understanding of
inspiration and is therefore inclined to add an alternative that relativises this
individualistic perspective. Like Xenakis a half-century earlier, Essl (1997:
156ff.) arranges his composing process into eight phases, which may of course
overlap in complex ways. Nevertheless, the similarity to Xenakis’s model is
intriguing (I have summarised the phases using key points):
1) Receiving a commission or specific inspiration, which is normally linked

to certain conditions or stipulations;
2) developing a conception of the whole: how can this conception be
described?
3) deriving structural models from the formal development;
4) developing an adequate computer program in a spirit of playfulness and
curiosity; refining the model until the result coincides with his internal
conception;
5) supplying the model with the “right parameters” – trying out many
different variants within a formal part;
6) transposing for the respective instrument (which can be electronic).
7) Diastematic settings always emerge during the composing process and are
usually derived from sound ideas.
8) A final work is created in an “asymptotic process of convergence”
between the computer-calculated structural variants and the composer’s
proper experience and power of imagination as well as the interleaving of
local and global processes.
Obviously, the similarity of the two models cannot hide the fact that sig-
nificant differences may yet appear on the convoluted paths of the composing
process. Moreover, Essl has an incomparably greater repertoire of electronic
resources at his disposal, whose relevance for the way the work’s genesis
unfolds must also be taken into consideration (see below).
Some contemporary composers also appear to be inspired by the idea of
artistic research, which has been much discussed recently. To name just one
example, the composer Marco Stroppa (2012) grapples not only with his
artistic activity in the strict sense, but also with cognitive psychology, IT and
artificial intelligence to enable himself to delve into the practice of composing as
comprehensively as possible.
4.1.4 Recent scholarly observations on the process of composing as a whole

Since the millennium, an increasing number of studies on the entire composing
process have been published that are not – or not exclusively – interested in
interpreting the final product. In the Anglo-American world, there are several
earlier analyses as well. Many of these, however, had a paedagogical motive
and aimed to create “measurable” prerequisites for specific tasks (e.g. inventing
a melody), which puts them in the category of laboratory studies (Collins
2005: 196–199; Collins & Dunn 2011: 47–76).
The more extensive studies focusing on artworks (e.g. Collins 2005; Donin
2009; Donin & Féron 2012) tackle their task energetically. They employ not
only all available written documents (notes, sketches, drafts and the score) but
also sound files, the composers’ work protocols, interviews and, in some cases,
video recordings as well. By integrating theories of creativity and different
approaches to psychological research, they mainly develop a comprehensive
theoretical framework that is intended to serve as the basis for interpreting
the often substantial wealth of material. Analyses of this kind have been
favoured recently, not least because a growing number of composers have
themselves been interested in this research, as previously mentioned. For
instance, when Stephen McAdams (2004) explored the genesis of the piece
“The Angel of Death” by the American composer Roger Reynolds, his work
was not only supported by the artist’s very methodical and easy-to-document
way of working. Right from the start, Reynolds had also kept all documents
relating to his pieces in any way because he considered them a part of the
actual compositions. With his scholarly questions, McAdams was thus able to
latch successfully onto his practice.
To date, the most convincing results in researching the process of compo-
sing have undoubtedly been published by Nicolas Donin, who has conducted
several studies in the milieu of the Institut de Recherche et Coordination
Acoustique/Musique. Two of these particularly deserve to be mentioned:
a) His analysis of Philippe Leroux’s “Voi(Rex)” (Donin 2009) is based on all

written and digital sources, a discussion of these materials, and eleven
extended interviews that aimed not only at reconstructing the process of
composing, but also addressed, for instance, anticipatory thinking
within certain processes, or plans and expectations, none of which usually
even appear in conventional studies. Thus, Donin was able to work out in
detail the extremely convoluted compositional paths of progress. This
renders some of the progressions that traditional analyses deem crucial
rather less so. It also provides ammunition for understanding the final
product.
b) Using a simulation, Donin and Féron (2012) together with the composer
Stefano Gervasoni attempted to re-enact and reflect on the entire process
of composing the first movement of his “Gramigna”. Initially, the only
material basis available for the piece had been the three-page original
manuscript. By interacting with its creator, Donin and Féron were able to
lay bare thought processes that were not legible in the score and to
convincingly show certain musical developments that would not have
surfaced in a conventional analysis. The research perspective and simulation
used for Gervasoni’s “Gramigna”, however, is probably only feasible
within limits: the piece in question is a recent and extremely short work,
composed in one day.
In addition, Donin and Féron raised the important question of whether such
analyses – which are not only elaborate, but may also target pieces that are
only known to a relatively small number of people – can even be justified. At
the very least, they pointed out, this contravened the standard practice of only
considering the works of canonised composers as worthy of analysis.
4.2 The components of composing practices and their interrelations:

present-day observations
This section will address the observation of concrete composing processes and
decisions. It will be based primarily on the case studies conducted as part of
our research project. Since a minute review of all composition processes
would require further time-consuming analyses in collaboration with the
composers, this section will instead explore specific issues using the insights
we have gained as examples. This project has gone beyond the usual written
sources (score and sketches) by including work records and interviews, with
the aim of delving deeper into the way the composition process unfolds. Yet
ultimately even these are texts and not directly observed processes. However
close in time to the composing activity the work records might have been
established, they are still not accurate representations of the composition
process. Rather, these records are the results of selection and interpretation: what
did the composers wish to communicate to us, and how could they verbalise
their thoughts? It must also be remembered that some might have felt pres-
sured to make statements. Conversely, academics run the risks of ascribing an
ordered structure to the described processes that may not correspond to the
way they were practically implemented.
Our analysis has a broader field of survey than the studies by Nicolas
Donin previously referred to. To what advantage? In my opinion, all quantitative
findings are of modest epistemic value – quite apart from the fact that for the
results to be quantitatively relevant, the field of survey would have had to
be substantially bigger still. Questions such as how often composers used a
piano during composing, whether they preferred certain times of day, what pro-
fessions they consciously called on for inspiration and so forth can certainly be of
some interest. First, even without a large-scale quantitative survey, it is possible
to get some idea of the bandwidth of the answers to be expected. Second, it is
ultimately questionable whether a potential result – for example, that 30% of
the composers in a representative survey use the piano during composing – is
epistemologically valuable for understanding an actual process. It is not least
for this reason that our study applied a qualitative approach.
Another fundamental issue is whether generalisations are possible. The
relevant studies usually categorically deny this (e.g. Behne 1993: 310), and
with some reason. Clearly, no activity carried out during a composition process
is entirely unique, individual or new: it always carries within it a collective
component. However, the reverse is not true: one cannot work back from the
individual to the collective, at least not concretely. In this, I follow Howard S.
Becker, who prefaced the analyses in his book “Art Worlds” with the motto,
“Complexity was my goal, not generalisability” (Becker 1982/2008: xix). In
other words, we are more concerned with taking into consideration all the
conditions for carrying out an artistic practice, and thus making the complexity
of composition activities at least dimly perceptible, than with wondering how
generalisable an observation might be. Put differently: what is generalisable is
at best the degree of the complexity we map out, rather than the conclusion
that the respective concrete processes we analyse are transferrable. This may
be a sobering admission: it is possible neither to explicitly verbalise the com-
position process in all its dimensions nor to generalise specific study results.
Nonetheless, academics should make every effort to capture the practical
events adequately.
Since I shall be discussing the case studies of Marko Ciciliani, Karlheinz
Essl and Joanna Wozny in particular, I will begin with a brief overview of
their respective composing processes:4
Marko Ciciliani, “LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs (Gloomy Sunday)”
“LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs (Gloomy Sunday)” is a piece for electric violin,
organ, drum set, electronics and voices. (This piece is the 5th part of the cycle
“Suicidal Self Portraits”: 1. “Crash” (2007); 2. “Going to Hell” (2009); 3.
“Screaming my Simian Line” (2010); 4. “All of Yesterday’s Parties” (2010); 5.
“LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs” (2014).) Commissioned by the Deutschlandfunk
radio station. World premiere on 6 April 2014. During a performance of the
first four pieces, which had not initially been conceived as a cycle (although
“Screaming my Simian Line” was created as a continuation of “Going to
Hell”), Ciciliani had the idea of adding something complementary.
September 2013: Ciciliani reviews the first four pieces and decides he does
not want to tie up their “loose ends” in the fifth, as Luciano Berio had done
in his “Sinfonia”. Starts thinking about themes to do with the media and pop
culture; wants to include videos as well. As usual, he begins his work with
conceptual thinking. During research on the Internet, he chances across the
1930s Hungarian hit song “Gloomy Sunday”, which is so depressing that it
allegedly brought about suicides and thus the destruction of identities. Wonders
whether to do a “very free, elaborate cover version”.
October 2013: Preoccupied with cosmetic surgery as a means of changing
one’s identity. Continues the idea of layering already existing cover versions of
the song “Gloomy Sunday”. Searches for another theme that could “enrich”
the piece.
November 2013: Organises the layered cover versions by keys in a circle of
fifths. The texture this creates will serve as background for the whole piece.
Works on the background texture using variants of resonances. Watches a
documentary on plastic surgery and a DVD on video art in Germany.
December 2013: Buys an organ module as his third synthesizer. This
enables transfers from a software program called Mainstage, which he finds
indispensable but prone to errors. Finds the variants of resonances too intru-
sive; uses spectral freezes to “blur [the background texture] a bit”. Has the
idea of integrating the sounds of different car doors being slammed shut into
the piece.
January 2014: Develops the violin voice based on the melody of “Gloomy
Sunday”. Sections of the wave-like melodics are repeatedly layered using a
loop player. Integrates physical activities: clapping of hands and slapping
against cheek at same time as articulating vowels i, e, a, o, u. Makes up the
title from text fragments taken from pop songs, which replicate the descending
formant sounds of the vowel series: “LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs”. Considers
carrying out “cosmetic surgery” on a computer model of a car. Establishes
the technical sequence.
February 2014: Works on the video of the mutating car. Senses that the
piece is conceptually saturated. Fine-tunes the musical details, especially the
drum rhythm, consolidation processes and virtuoso violin figures. Integrates
texts or rather text fragments from pop songs. Works on the ending of the
piece. Only now, after the entire piece has been finished, does Ciciliani
establish the score (until then everything had been stored on an audio
workstation).
Karlheinz Essl, “Herbecks Versprechen”

Electronic sound performance upon a poem by Ernst Herbeck. World
premiere by Karlheinz Essl at the Novomatic Forum in Vienna on 10 March
2014.
November/December 2013: Talks to Johann Feilacher, the curator of
the Haus der Künstler in Gugging, about a commission for a composi-
tion that tackles works by Gugging artists. Chooses Ernst Herbeck’s
poem, “Das Leben” [Life]. The commission is formalised the following
January.
December 2013: Listens to the original sound material when Herbeck
recited several of his poems. Because of his cleft palate, Herbeck can barely
articulate. Essl is fascinated by his determination to express himself. Starts
electronic processing of the spoken material, including with granular-synthesis
software (filter processes based on spectral analysis).
January 2014: Place and date of the world premiere are set: at the
Novomatic Forum in Vienna on 10 March 2014. Finds the ambiguous title
“Herbecks Versprechen” [“Versprechen” means both “promise” and “slip of
the tongue”], which only contains one vowel, “e”. Initially plans to sub-
divide the piece into three movements. Experiments with various softwares
(alongside granular synthesis, TRAX, SPEAR, etc.) in the programming
languages MaxMSP; develops algorithms: “Really enjoying improvising
with this!” Produces different types of texture. Remembers a soundtrack he
created years ago (“es wird”, generative sound and text installation, 2000)
that also worked on a speech recording, which opens up further and new
possibilities. Further expands and finalises resources for sound processing by
using various sound processors (flanger, frequency shifter) and integrating
audio plug-ins (Sound Magic Spectrals) developed by his composer friend
Michael Norris – “I’ve got the feeling that I’ve more or less finished
the instrumental development now”. There follows a “phase of intensive
rehearsals”.
February 2014: Works on the formal progression, which he intends to
differentiate clearly from his reference piece, Herbert Eimert’s “Epitaph für
Aikichi Kuboyama” (1960–1962). In contrast with Eimert’s distortion of the
original voice, Essl wants to let Herbeck’s voice emerge gradually from abstract
sounds that start off sounding like breathing. Bit by bit, he establishes the
following progression through permanent transitions: “Breathing – sputtering –
stuttering – whispering – choir – groove – slurring – speaking – singing – like
an organ [Orgeln]”. Further fine-tunes the sequence; establishes the user inter-
face or “score”. Records two reference recordings and decides to perform the
pieces using four channels.
Joanna Wozny, “some remains”
A piece for piccolo, bass clarinet, piano, viola and double bass. World pre-
miere on 24 May 2014 in the Erich Hauser Art Foundation in Rottweil,
Germany, by the Ensemble Aventure from Freiburg. (The title of the piece,
taken from a Beckett quotation, only emerged during the final phase of the
composition process.)
Because of Wozny’s domestic obligations (two children, kitchen renovation,
Easter), teaching obligations at the University of Music and Performing Arts
Graz and a parallel Beckett project in Warsaw, work on the piece was partly
carried out under significant time pressure.
February 2014: Begins composing on 25 February by trying out flageolet
combinations on the double bass.
March 2014: Collects musical material for the five instruments; appears to
find multiphonics for the flute and clarinet particularly interesting. Begins
composing the opening, based on the idea of a sound moving slowly but
steadily (linked to the visual idea of a flock of birds or shoal of fish), without
fixed direction. Modifies this idea: does not want the movement (e.g. through
glissandi) to start straightaway, instead decides to leave the opening uncertain.
The subsequent progression is initially determined by a fluctuation of full and
undetermined, almost punctiform sounds taken from the harmonics of the
double bass flageolets. Adds rustling sounds as an additional texture. Subse-
quently fine-tunes the existing material, composes transitions; a structure with
the central notes d, e, c emerges out of the flute multiphonics. Somewhat
dissatisfied, not sure in which direction to continue. Has just over two minutes
of the piece.
April 2014: By the middle of the month, Wozny has produced a clean
copy of the first section (about 4 minutes, 47 beats; crotchet = 44–46). The
next section has a higher tempo (crotchet = 66–69) and, to begin with,
consists primarily of repetitions of note groups and tremoli, without piano.
Extends this part, which had originally been planned as an insertion (its
length is already about 7 minutes, which is the desired total length), but
still needs an end. Has an idea for the end while remembering another
piece. Reworks the piece again and again; feels pressurised because of the
little time left before the premiere. (Wozny retrospectively linked the piece
with a short text by the Polish writer Bruno Schulz, murdered by a
Gestapo officer in 1942. This connection has no relevance for the composing
process.)
4.2.1 How composers position themselves and how that impacts on the
composing process
The composition of any musical work is shaped by the composer’s aesthetic
attitude, which mainly develops out of a conglomerate of artistic experience
and an artistic practice embedded within a network, as well as his or her
reflections on them. Other works precede the aesthetic attitude, meaning that
it is both shaped and confirmed by works (or else betrayed and changed by
them). In addition, many composers reflect on their aesthetic positions in
texts – often to convey understanding and justify their work. They also
always act within a network of extremely varied, case specific components: for
example, if the commission comes from an ensemble, it will be immediately
associated with a certain idea of the kind of music the ensemble already has
in its repertoire. Similar factors are at play when the commission is made by
an institution or festival. This creates shared aesthetic conventions, which can,
of course, be modified to a certain extent or even breached. In the latter case,
conflictual situations or resistance may arise. Based on these shared conven-
tions, we can identify different areas within contemporary music, which are
characterised by specific aesthetic orientations.
The three composers portrayed in the case studies above work under quite
different conditions. Joanna Wozny emphatically sees herself as aligned with
the tradition of New Music – a tradition shaped by such names as Luigi
Nono, Helmut Lachenmann and Gérard Grisey around the conviction that
composers should use the most advanced musical material possible. Given
her aesthetic position and the works that materialise from it, Wozny can
count on various ensembles of international renown, such as the Klang-
forum Wien, the Ensemble Intercontemporain from Paris, the Ensemble
Modern from Frankfurt or the Ensemble Aventure from Freiburg (which pre-
miered her piece “some remains”). Their competences are proven: for
instance, various playing techniques and sound production methods that have
emerged from the New Music tradition. These can be considered shared
knowledge that is constitutive for the composing process. Wozny does not
necessarily need to know the specific competences of each musician in the
various ensembles for this.
Marko Ciciliani’s starting-point is very different: he “sometimes has the
feeling of being caught between two stools”. He has largely distanced himself
from his training as an instrumental composer by including elaborate electronic
resources in his compositions, but he does not necessarily see himself as a
“real academic electronic composer” either because he frequently uses tradi-
tional instruments. And while he considers some of what he has produced
recently as belonging to media art, he does not feel himself to be anchored in
that milieu as much as, say, the “Ars Electronica people”. Ultimately, he does
not fully identify with the improvisation scene either. In contrast to Joanna
Wozny’s situation, there are hardly any ensembles standing by who are practised
in the unusual combination of Ciciliani’s compositional components (com-
mitment to tonality, electronic sounds, improvisational practices, visual
materials and elements of pop culture). Equally, the pieces that this combination
produces do not fit into the programmes of many leading festivals of New
Music, such as Wien Modern, Musica Viva in Munich or Donaueschingen.
In 2005 Ciciliani thus founded his own ensemble, Bakin Zub, in which he is
active as a musician and for which he has composed a large number of works.
The shared experiential knowledge they have accrued must have an impact on
the composer’s musical conception.
In any case, his feeling of “being-caught-between-two-stools” is linked to
the fact that the artistic direction he has chosen does not correspond to the
paths that have what one might call discursive priority. The orientation of
artistic fields in Bourdieu’s sense – including, for example, the subsidising of
ensembles and festivals – is determined not least by the dominant discourse.
As a self-reflective composer, Ciciliani appears to feel the need to engage with
this discourse and take a stance. In his essay, “Vom Kanon der Verbote und
der medialen Musik” [On the canon of prohibitions and electronic music]
(Ciciliani 2013), for instance, he discusses the stubborn persistence of taboos,
such as the prohibition of tonality. While nowadays hardly anyone still refers
to this former (or perhaps not quite former?) taboo, he finds it to be still
surprisingly in force. Ciciliani considers the “musical clichés” of the Avant-
garde or New Music to be just as biased and hackneyed as the clichés of
tonality. Moreover, “the primary focus of artistic activity [should] no longer
be the treatment of the material” (Ciciliani 2013: 4). Accordingly, he posits
that the “primacy of structure” (Ciciliani 2013: 4) – which demands a “com-
posing focused on a memorising listening” (Ciciliani 2013: 5) and continues
to be seen as the only criterion for adequacy – needs to be overcome. After
all, he says, we should also accept works whose textures focus on the com-
municative potential of the resulting sounds. Ciciliani’s decision to enter the
aesthetic discourse linguistically is probably linked to a certain self-justifica-
tion as well, which we can assume plays a part in every aesthetic positioning.
On the other hand, Ciciliani revealed in an interview that he no longer feels a
great need to justify the material that he uses.
The constellations are very different for Karlheinz Essl. He has composed
a great number of pieces whose performance involves other musicians.
However, he is both composer and performer of the electronic work com-
posed as part of this project, “Herbecks Versprechen”. As with others of
his electronic pieces, the specificity and complexity of the playing instruc-
tions makes it almost impossible to hand it over to other performers. As he
points out, however, even with works that have both instrumental and elec-
tronic segments, problems often arise in the performance context because
not all musicians are willing to engage with electronics. Furthermore, he
explains, it is not easy to find the appropriate verbal or graphic instructions
to represent a progression of electronic processes; collaborating with inter-
ested individuals is therefore easier to manage. Essl’s decision to compose
mainly electronic music may well have been influenced not just by aesthetic
elements, but also by a need for independence. He points out that electronic
pieces or pieces that require one additional person could be performed and
re-performed without much organisational or logistical effort, but that it is
more common in the New Music sector for the composer to be exposed to
a great many dependencies, especially if he or she composes for larger
ensembles.
4.2.2 Ideas, strategies for exploration, playful proving grounds,
trials, and decisions
Ideas
The conception and elaboration of artworks incorporate individuals’ ideas.
Nowadays, however, few people would claim that these ideas stem exclusively
from a self-contained subject. Even the theory and history of art, both rather
slow in this regard, can no longer ignore the philosophical critique and
transformation of the concept of the subject, which have been mainly driven
by French post-structuralists. Since this philosophical topic has already been
referenced at the start of the chapter and elsewhere in this book, let me
merely, and representatively, foreground Pierre Bourdieu’s (1967/2005: 225)
influential concept of habitus, “through which the creator partakes of his
community and time, and that guides and directs, unbeknownst to him, his
apparently most unique creative acts”. I will also forego detailing the ways in
which having ideas depends on the parameters and specific context of the
work’s genesis, topics which have already been covered elsewhere.
Whenever artists are consulted about the genesis of their works, a question
is put to them that had already been raised in Hausegger’s (1903) precocious
study: “How do you get the ideas for your artworks?” The answers usually
refer to two aspects: in what life situations do ideas primarily emerge, and
from what sources. On the first point, we may be informed that, for instance,
one artist likes to go to a coffeehouse for inspiration while another prefers the
calm of a private ambience; that one has her best ideas while doing sport
while another swears by her sofa. Sources and situations of inspiration are
manifold and can be intrinsic or extrinsic: imagined sounds, literature, visuals, etc.
There could be further differentiation: some proceed strategically, others prefer to
drift; a few perceive the exploratory approach as pleasurable, others as torture.
Finally, through their choice of words some present themselves as discoverers,
others more as receivers of ideas. (Whether there really is a tendency for
female artists to place themselves in the latter group while male artists tend to
present themselves as the former – which is what the sum total of our interviews
seems to suggest – is a question that I will have to put aside here.)
All kinds of answers can be of biographical interest, and there can be no doubt
that they are meaningful for analysing actual works as well. It is noteworthy in
this regard that when composers have to write introductions for concert pro-
grammes, as they often do, they very frequently refer to the initial idea for their
piece. Much more rarely do they go into the technical details of composing. But –
leaving aside the fact that the particulars of the answers are unpredictable – is it
ever possible to find out anything fundamentally new in this way, anything that
would not already be present in the imagination even without any enquiry?
Information on different personal circumstances and on the most varied
resources for ideas does not in itself disclose anything about the why of selection
or the how of ideas within the specific unfolding of the creative process.
As alluded to in the introduction, the challenge is to trace fundamental
aspects by going beyond the mere enumeration of the manifold possibilities
for generating ideas. The best way to do this in what follows seems to be to
draw attention to the creative crux of the three composers’ composing processes.
I thus hope to remove the generating of ideas from its isolated observation and
integrate it into the unfolding of the composing process. Because of their different
initial circumstances, the three examples will enable me to give an overall idea
of the complexity of the subject matter. I will then elaborate on the fact that
ideas ultimately emerge primarily during processes and are not simply isolated
cognitive acts that precede their own implementation.
The comparison of aesthetic attitudes I outlined in the previous section
reveals that each of the three composers (Wozny, Essl, Ciciliani) sees the
creative crux of his or her composing as being located on a different level.
Joanna Wozny thinks and composes in sounds, or rather sound structures/
textures, in direct correspondence with the sound potential of instruments.
Initially, extra-musical impressions – such as the shoal of fish or flock of
birds – may play an impulse-like role in this; in fact, Wozny already ascribes a
certain musical dimension even to this visual imagination. It is also conceivable
that the sound ideas came first and brought the visual associations subse-
quently. In any case, it is obvious that this extra-musical dimension has no
significant role in the further composing process. Her whole work process is
then dedicated to developing, transforming and combining sound ideas.
Wozny uses sketch paper to develop elements of timing and articulation, and
for the diastematic setting (see Figure 4.2 below). Because of her direct work
with sounds, her method is primarily processual and less about filling in a
previously thought-out and fixed formal framework. However, this does not
allow us to draw direct conclusions about a generalised way of proceeding.
By contrast, Marko Ciciliani tends to see the creative crux, or rather the
springboard, for his creative work in elaborating a conceptual framework. As
a rule, he finds his first ideas for pieces in extra-musical contexts:
I usually find such contexts much more interesting and inspiring than, for
example, having a great timbre. I can enjoy timbres, but for me that in
itself doesn’t generate an idea for a whole piece. […] Musical discourse is
often about concepts of material in some way – how does someone use
his [musical] material, how does somebody else use his, etc. Frankly, I
don’t find that particularly interesting. Because the things that really
interest me are additional meanings or some kind of additional layers of
meaning that a certain choice of material can entail.
For Ciciliani, it is often elements from audiovisual media or pop culture that
form a reservoir of stimuli because of their strong potential for associations.
However, he also acknowledges a certain risk of losing himself in conceptual
ideas – hence the importance of tackling the musical transcription as quickly
as possible. The design of a conceptual framework, which may be as exciting
as it is “a little scary” because of its open nature, may stem from ideas that
are still rather vague. Nevertheless, intentions are taking shape that will guide
his future course of action without determining it in any strict sense. For
example, the extrinsic components of “LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs (Gloomy
Sunday)” – the history of the impact of the song “Gloomy Sunday”, plastic
surgery, the transformation of a car – can all be associated with the topic of
identity, or rather the change or transformation of identity. The fact that a
song discovered by chance on the Internet, and its many cover versions,
became the musical base for the piece, can also be attributed to this targeted
intention.
The creative crux of Karlheinz Essl’s composing depends on the players
and type of composition: it is quite different for purely electronic pieces than
for those with instrumental participation, which would require the inclusion
of additional performers, and different again for purely instrumental ensemble
pieces. Additionally, Essl’s production ranges from compositions with an
explicit work-character to strongly process-orientated compositions:
For me, the most captivating aspect of composing is the reconciliation of

these opposites, though each time in a different way. In addition to the
works that are conceptualized solely as processes (for example the piece
“In the Cage” [performance, 1987]) there are some that have a purely
work nature (such as the string quartet “Helix 1.0” [for string quartet,
1986]); between them are works with a process character (like “Entsagung”
[for flute, bass clarinet, prepared piano, percussion and four channel
interactive live-electronics, 1991–1993]) and processes with a work character
(“Lexikon-Sonate” [infinite and interactive real time composition for a
computer controlled piano, 1992ff.]).
(Essl 1997: 153)
In the case of “Herbecks Versprechen”, it must be remembered that there was

existing musical material, namely the 28 seconds that Herbeck’s voice takes to
recite his poem. In my opinion, the creative crux of the piece is in the devel-
opment of a specific and unique “electronic instrument” that enables Essl to
implement his aesthetic ideas adequately. A decisive factor for the nature of
this instrument was his intention “not to do a piece with a recording, but a
performative piece played live. And bit by bit, I realised it in my MaxMSP
Environment. And I developed all sorts of things to be able to access all these
individual aspects in real time.” (MaxMSP is the programming language; by
“individual aspects”, Essl means the different parameters of the electronic
sounds.) Programming – working on and with the software – must here be
understood as an integral part of the composing process, and not merely as
an accessory or implementing tool.
These brief insights into the three composers’ creative processes indicate at
least to some extent that ideas – apart from their collective dimension –
always encounter their opposite, which gives the ideas a direction and offers
resistance, and can thus also influence the way the composing process unfolds.
For example, Wozny’s sound ideas come up against the possibilities afforded
by instruments. With Essl and Ciciliani, there is, among other things, a tense
relationship between their aesthetic intentions and the potential of the software.
The internal relationships and compositional approaches frame the develop-
ment of particular exploratory strategies for generating various composing
possibilities. Within these possibility spaces, many decisions are made that
drive the composing process. I will consider these constellations in the next
section.
Explorations, playful proving grounds, trials, and decisions

How do composers explore compositional possibility spaces? What strategies
do they call on to enable the composing process to proceed, and how do they
actually implement them? Once again, a mere enumeration of different indivi-
dual methods is not the point. Likewise, frequently made generalisations – such
as positing a clear formal architecture as the polar opposite of the processual
approach – at best offer a basic and rather abstract orientation, since the vast
majority of individual cases occurs in the space between those poles. Oppos-
ing a planned structured approach to an open explorative approach has
similar issues. A great number of theories of creativity have attempted to
elucidate this problem. Given the scope of this chapter, I can only sketch
them here. The starting-point for later representations is often Graham
Wallas’ division of the creative process into four phases, as developed in his
book The Art of Thought (Wallas 1926/2014: 39): “preparation, incubation,
illumination, verification”. The first phase ranges from investigations in all
directions to conscious planning based on the possibilities thus developed,
and is followed by a phase of largely unconscious, associative or combined
playing-around and explorations (incubation). Spontaneous insight – Wallas
talks of “flashes of insight” – confers a certain shape on the results of the
second phase before they are subjected to a final check and poured into their
final moulds (verification). Just like Wallas’ phase model, many later theories
of creativity consider the creative process to be a fairly linear process.
By contrast, more recent studies overwhelmingly reach the conclusion that
non-linear processes often predominate, or at least that the relationship
between prior organisation and elaboration must be assumed to be flexible,
not least because processes potentially have their own momentum. A repre-
sentative approach is the Meaningful Engagement Matrix (MEM) developed
by Andrew R. Brown and Steve Dillon to describe creative processes.
This matrix consists of “five modes of engagement” (attending, evaluating,
directing, exploring, embodying) and “three contexts” (personal, social,
cultural), which become relevant during the composing process in different
combinations (Brown & Dillon 2012: 82). Using this matrix, Brown and
Dillon conducted a twelve-month observation of five experienced composers
involving sketches, videos and interviews (Steve Reich – minimal music,
David Hirschfelder – film music, David Cope – algorithmic music, Brigitte
Robindoré – electro-acoustic music, Paul Lansky – computer music). The
results showed that all participants moved between all sorts of combinations,
but that certain combinations were typical of certain phases (e.g. exploring
engagement and personal context at the start of the composing process).
Their study, with its markedly psychological orientation, remains largely
abstract, and while it may shine a light on composing processes, it is debatable
whether more specific knowledge can be derived from it.
To delve more deeply into the composing process from this abstract posi-
tion, I will be looking at the decisive juncture or hub to which the composer
Isabel Mundry refers:
Entering into a piece resembles a drawing of boundaries, the marking of a

moment, in which I choose one perspective over another perspective that
could possibly arise in the next moment. And the question of how I qualify
this moment is fundamental for the unfolding of the composition, whose
transcription I would describe as the structuring and interpreting of the ideas.
(Mundry 2004: 153; our translation and italics)
The composing process can also be understood as a chain of a large number of

choices and decisions that give it a direction. I understand the act of deciding as
a kind of hub in a field of practice, at which individual, collective and material
constituents come together. Every decision occurs in a possibility space, which
becomes apparent to the composers in the form of shared knowledge based on
previous practices. It can be assumed that much of this is located in the uncon-
scious realm. Nevertheless, a decision can be seen as an individual act to a cer-
tain degree since artists do not passively drift in a “practice current”, but rather
actively commit and develop agency. Thus, ideas are taken up, elaborated and
worked on while at the same time other variants are being eliminated. Whilst
it is not really possible to swim against the current – or only in well-defined and
limited areas – one can always orientate oneself towards one side: to the right
bank or to the left. But above all: the decision could always also have been
different. To that extent I distance myself both from theoretical conceptions
that regard the carrying out of a practice as sequences of dull routines and
from the idea that actions in composing stem from some kind of necessity.
Decisions are made on the basis of situative knowledge that is always accom-
panied by experiential knowledge and incorporated knowledge. Usually, this is
an incremental proceeding: decisions are taken step-by-step to suit the respec-
tive concrete situation, with many (or even most) possibilities not even pre-
senting themselves until the practice is being carried out. It is also important to
remember that the consequences of decisions are not always foreseeable,
meaning that processes can acquire a certain momentum of their own.
In the following section, I want to deal in more depth with these funda-
mental considerations on the central aspect of decision-making by conducting
a close analysis of the documented works of Wozny, Essl and Ciciliani. Given
the scope of this chapter, I will need to limit myself to briefly sketching my
analytical strategies and the focus of my questioning.
The case studies

Joanna Wozny was asked how the start of “some remains” came about and
what strategies for continuing she used (Figure 4.1). Several components were
important in the early stages of the piece (given the parameters of the Ensemble
Aventure, its instrumentation had already been decided as flutes, bass clarinet,
piano, viola, double bass). To begin with, the composer remembered a concert
with specific double-bass sounds that particularly stayed in her mind. Another
important association was the idea of a flock of birds or shoal of fish, a visual
or extra-musical idea that was in a way already charged with latent sound – not
that this could have been clearly verbalised. For a few days, Wozny’s composing
was shaped by developing multiphonics for the flute and clarinet. How and
when exactly these initial conditions marked her consciousness to the extent
that they became the concrete idea for a musical opening, she cannot say. The
first idea, of representing a process of motion, was also discarded soon after-
wards and replaced by a rather indeterminate quality. This can be seen in the
score in the differently articulated, partly noisy events “in the sound”, which are
complemented by “rubbed” string sounds from inside the piano. An important
decision in the opening phase of the composing process was to work on the
remembered double-bass flageolets, which also seem to have contributed to the
decision to assign multiphonics to the flute and clarinet. This touches on a
crucial aspect of decision-making, namely the role of the instruments as agents.
The relationship that develops when the imagination of the composer meets
the potential sound world of instruments is best outlined in the words of Erika
Fischer-Lichte (2014: 472): “The relationship between humans and the
things they use to act cannot in any way be described as the relationship of an
autonomous subject to a totally available object.” Drawing on Bruno Latour
(2005: 63ff.), instruments can also be labelled as “actants”, which, with their
specific sound potential, create an opposite and a source of friction for the
composing subject in the shape of material conditions. The consequences of
these conditions ultimately cannot be fully comprehended (especially in combi-
nation with other instruments). This turns instruments into agents. Additionally,
it also gives the process a certain momentum of its own, which may (or may not)
lead the composer to diverge from existing intentions. The “material conditions”
of sounds are not definitively present “as such”, but depend on the composers’
historical location and experiential horizon. (Obviously, it is also relevant here
whether, and to what extent, composers work on and with instruments by
themselves or cooperate with instrumentalists.)
Once the shape of the beginning to “some remains” was mostly in place,
Wozny worked on developing possibilities for making progress within the
material conditions set by the sound textures she had already developed. To
name one example of the consequences of material conditions, the structure
Figure 4.1 Example of notes from Joanna Wosny’s “some remains”, first system,
2014 – © Edition Juliane Klein
of the flageolet sounds brought about a dominance of the notes d and e

which, in certain phases, even become central. This was not intended in any
original plan, but arose during the composing. The composer speaks of her
subsequent “picking up, reworking and sorting” of the sounds, which cannot
be reproduced here in detail. However, it offers a clear insight into the fact
that these explorations also repeatedly led to unpredictable constellations that
had to be discarded or changed. Often an exploratory phase is concluded with
a rather indeterminate feeling – “now it fits”. Such situative knowledge
cannot be viewed as being independent of the immediate composing process,
and therefore corresponds to what John Dewey calls “knowing”, as opposed
to “knowledge”, which refers to a possession of knowledge independent of
activity (see Dewey & Bentley 1949). Wozny’s first sketch page may give a
vague impression of her “picking up”; a detailed “decoding” would admittedly
require the creator’s help (see Figure 4.2).
Some details are easy to relate to the beginning of the score (for instance
the initial notes of the piccolo flute, b, and the bass clarinet, G sharp);
others much less so. Some of the writings may only have been meaningful
for the composer at a certain moment in the composing process. In any case,
we can guess at the various dimensions of her work with the sound textures
and their parameters: remarks about pitch are written next to rhythmic,
dynamic and articulatory instructions, and always in connection with the
instruments to which the sounds are assigned. This indicates a fundamental
trait of Wozny’s compositional thinking, which she characterised as follows
in an interview: she cannot imagine pitch without duration, and especially
not without timbre. And imagined notes or sounds are always associated
with instruments. It must be remembered, however, that these internal sound
ideas are unlikely to occur in a form that is representable in writing. Tran-
scribing something as musical notation can be seen as a process of translation, in
that sound ideas have to be made to fit into the conditions afforded by written
signs – a process often perceived as a loss. This also, however, alters the level of
thinking. Formal technical compositional knowledge, work on proportions and
development strategies join with the composer’s internal imagination: sounds of
imagined length have to be transformed into sounds with specific written-down
durations.
Wozny informed us at about the halfway point in her composing process
(late March 2014) that she had been listening to pieces by a variety of com-
posers. Her composing seems to have stalled, and she sought inspiration from
other composers who, in her experience, might offer her general pointers or
be catalysts for this particular piece. However, it was exceptional for a com-
poser to specifically let us know that, as the composing process unfolded, she
or he deliberately sought out a historical discourse of composition. Any
experience gained by listening and looking at scores mostly seems to play an
unconscious role, which cannot be grasped or verbalised by the composer, let
alone by academics.
My analysis of Karlheinz Essl’s composing process includes a closer look at
the construction of his “instrument” mentioned above, so as to illuminate the
tension between the original material, his aesthetic ideas and the decisions he
made during his exploring. The starting material was Ernst Herbeck’s recital
of the following poem (Herbeck in Navratil 1977: 39 – our translation):
Figure 4.2 From Joanna Wozny’s sketches for “some remains”, 2014 – © Joanna Wozny
“Das Leben” “Life”
Das Leben ist schön Life is beautiful
schon so schön als das Leben. quite as beautiful as life.
Das Leben ist sehr schön Life is very beautiful
das lernen wir; das Leben; we learn it; life;
Das Leben ist sehr schön. Life is very beautiful.
Wie schön ist das Leben. How beautiful life is.
Es fängt schön an das Leben. Life starts out beautiful.
So (schön) schwer ist das es auch. So (beautifully) hard it is too.
Essl began his composing process (13 December 2013) by experimenting

with the spoken material. The experiments with granular-synthesis soft-
ware – of which Essl already had some experience – were “encouraging”
(basically, filter processes based on spectral analysis). At the same time, Essl
was tackling the issue of the title, which is always central for him and which
he likes to settle at the beginning of a piece if at all possible. Since the
author’s name only contains one vowel, the “e”, Essl wanted the title to
echo this phenomenon. He finally decided on “Herbecks Versprechen”, not
least because of its ambiguity. (The title means “Herbeck’s slip of the
tongue” or “Herbeck’s promise”.) This method suggests that in this case
Essl’s compositional thinking was to some degree programmatic, even if
the programme had no clear shape at this juncture. A further clue is his
intention to structure the piece into three movements whose titles he also
wanted to contain “e” as the only vowel: “ernst – bewegt – schwebend”
(serious – agitated – floating).
Essl conducted further experiments with the spoken material as of 9 January
2014, among other things with the Ircam software TRAX, a software called
Spear, and audio plug-ins developed by his friend, the New Zealand composer
Michael Norris, which are easy to integrate into the programming language
MaxMSP. He created types of sonic texture which convinced him that the
“instrument” was now completed (24 January 2014). Their nature also
suggested to him that his original idea for the form of the piece needed to be
changed:
During further trying-out of my instruments it becomes clear to me that

I’ll have to drop my original plan of composing three separate move-
ments. It seems much more interesting to me to create a larger and more
extensive sound process, in which the different compositional aspects
are put in relation to each other in all sorts of ways rather than to create
separate small pieces.
Eventually, Essl had a processual idea for the form, which can be seen both as
a permanent process of transitions between the sound textures and also pro-
grammatically, since Herbeck’s voice is supposed to be gradually “distilled
out of” rather abstract sounds. He described the formal sections with their fluid
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
Figure 4.3 Operator interface for Karlheinz Essl’s work “Herbecks Versprechen”, 2014 – © Karlheinz Essl
Figure 4.4 Section 1 of Karlheinz Essl’s work “Herbecks Versprechen” (breathing –
sputtering), 2014 – © Karlheinz Essl
Figure 4.5 Section 9 of Karlheinz Essl’s work “Herbecks Versprechen” (singing – like
an organ [Orgeln]), 2014 – © Karlheinz Essl
from the composing activity (the performance score gives noticeably fewer exact
instructions than a conventionally notated score). Body conditions, however,
can potentially play a role in all compositional phases, as a passage in compo-
ser Isabel Mundry’s essay (Mundry 2014: 76 – our translation) reveals:
My body is present while I feel out the shape of my music. It creates ten-
sions or reflexes, shivers or breathes with the sounds, and participates while
the musical ideas are being formed – to the extent that I can get sore
muscles while composing. And yet the tangible presence of the body hardly
shows on the outside. It does not dance, run or shout while I am producing
comparable structures in the music. There is a rift in composing between
the body’s internal presence and external stillness. That can range from
being exhausting to painful, but it can just as well be exhilarating too. We
often make a mystery of the bodily aspect of music; often it is also trivia-
lised. If the former, it is deemed to be a quantity that is beyond question; if
the latter, an expression of naive inhibition that hardly does justice to the
requirements of New Music. When I was younger, I was embarrassed by
my linking of sound ideas and body perception, but I don’t know that I
ever had the choice. Today, the question no longer seems relevant to me.
Instead I concentrate on the perspective the bodily aspect of my music
should take. The question of whether may be beholden to the individual’s
disposition; but the question of how is deliberate. It is a question of
aesthetic thought and artistic decision.
With Marko Ciciliani, I focus on the phase of his composing process during
which he tackled the transformation of his initial conceptions into musical
structures. The decisive impetus was his finding of the song “Gloomy
Sunday”, along with its many cover versions, on the Internet (29 September
2013). This may have been chance, but it can ultimately also be seen as a
result of his existing interest in the topic of identity. Ciciliani developed the
idea of weaving a background texture out of the layered cover versions, which
could serve as a foundation for the whole piece (27 October 2013). How did
he get this idea? The fact that he had already used similar layering techniques
in two earlier works of the same cycle (namely “Screaming my Simian Line”
and especially “All of Yesterday’s Parties”, where he layered cover versions of
a Beatles song) seems to have been pivotal. This also clamps the cycle’s indi-
vidual pieces together formally. Given that Ciciliani referenced Luciano
Berio’s “Sinfonia”, I also think it possible that he was stimulated by this
work. In the interviews, Ciciliani mentioned Berio’s piece – which had
impressed him already as a young composer – by remarking that he did not
intend to round off his five-part cycle with a final movement, unlike the
“Sinfonia”, which also has five parts. He found Berio’s attitude of giving a
summarising coda to a heterogenous combination of parts “really extremely
academic and somehow cowardly”. Given the special role played by the
“Sinfonia”, I wondered whether the arrangement in layers conceived for
“LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs” might not have been inspired by Berio’s third
movement, in particular since there are parallels in the way it was realised. In
the “Sinfonia”, the scherzo from Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No. 2” forms
an underground or background current that flows through the whole movement,
at times closer to the surface, at times more in the depths. Ciciliani’s layered
cover versions fulfil a similar function. Ciciliani, however, rejects this con-
nection: “No, I wasn’t conscious of it. I don’t think that Berio’s piece influ-
enced me subconsciously either, although I obviously can’t be certain about
that.” Here, he gets to the heart of the great difficulty of trying to fathom
decision-making processes. Finally, his decision to use a layering technique
does not have to have stemmed from a specific stimulus at all. After all, the
technique plays an important formal role in various segments of New Music
in general (see Holzer 2011: 493ff.).
Ciciliani finally made up the layers by overlapping more than two dozen
cover versions, which had been transformed and ordered into a circle of fifths
(see Figure 4.6). The actual overlap (for instance, the A minor area takes up
more space than the preceding D minor area) was not the result of structural
or proportional organisation, but of a trying-out of sequences. Ciciliani then
worked on the sound carpet in a similar way – first using reverb variations,
which he found unsatisfactory, then spectral freezes (the “freezing” of certain
frequencies and amplitudes), which ultimately gave him the desired sonic
effects. This shows that many actions carried out during composing are pre-
cisely not determined by a succession of planning-and-implementation or
decision-and-implementation. Rather, decisions are always made during the
carrying-out of actions. By operating the reverb effects and spectral freezes,
the composer created proving grounds which acted as successful laboratories.
They could also lead to unforeseen constellations, thus giving the composing
process a different direction.
Even at this advanced stage of the work’s genesis, however, it was still not a
case of merely transforming the conceptual level into a musical one. Rather,
the composer had the feeling that “it was still somehow not enough” – hence
the idea of including the realm of plastic surgery. And only this can really be
regarded as the beginning of the composition: a beginning shaped by a ver-
sion of the song “Gloomy Sunday” transposed into a major scale, the whole
backed by an advertisement text for plastic surgery (the choice of A flat major
as the work’s key was taken entirely pragmatically because it was a pitch the
violinist found easy to sing) (see Figure 4.7).
Given this, it would be inappropriate to employ the usual means of musi-
cological analysis in an attempt to investigate the musical structures in more
detail. For the composer, it is clearly about more than the communicative
potential that can emerge from the combination of the song transformation
and text. How this potential is used depends on the associative capacity of its
listeners. Do they know the song, and possibly even the history of how it was
received? Obviously, this does not mean that the structural or formal musical
Figure 4.6 Graphical representation of the sound files (F minor to E minor) from Marko Ciciliani’s work “LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs (Gloomy
Sunday)”, 2014 – © Marko Ciciliani
Figure 4.7 The beginning of Marko Ciciliani’s work “LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs (Gloomy Sunday)”, 2014 – © Marko Ciciliani
level is inconsequential overall. Rather, there is a tension between the con-
ceptual dimension and the intra-musical dimension, in which the momentum
of autonomous musical developments may well become the focus of attention
in some segments. This is particularly true for segments of the second half of
the piece, where the instrumental parts move again and again into truly virtuoso
passages, whose structure cannot be understood simply as the transcription of
conceptual guidelines.
Overall, enlarging the empirical resources for work genesis as compared to
conventional musicological analyses (which are primarily based on the score and,
at most, existing sketches) should open up perspectives that gain more profound
insights into the composing processes. This should be particularly true of the
often meandering paths of decision-making and the forms of knowledge that
underpin them, as well as the complexity of the components under consideration
(such as the relevance of contemporaneous discourses). Admittedly, some areas
of the composing process are simply inaccessible to observation and here even a
widening of the perspective does not facilitate further discoveries. However,
this should not discourage academics from searching for the most suitable
perspectives and questions – even though composing practice cannot be fully
comprehended and even if, in keeping with actor-network theory, analysis must
be more about describing than explaining operational sequences.
Notes
1 The example of Mozart research, in particular, displays the Romantic notion of the
masterpiece as something that had been already completed in the imagination of
the genius before it was written down. Therefore every single note could only be
thus and not otherwise. In this view, which persisted long into the 20th century,
sketches could only be a sign of a deficit that might mark the underlying concept of
genius, partly because such a deficit upset the impression of effortless achievement.
Sketch studies have thus contributed quite significantly to demystifying the emphatic
Romantic concept of artistic creation.
2 In the post-war period, Darmstadt quickly became an important centre for theories
of composing, which were shaped by Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi
Nono and Theodor W. Adorno, among others. These discourses were conditioned
by a rational understanding of composing that was determined to exclude anything
loaded with meaning and focused instead on structure.
3 Until the 1970 and 1980s, musicological research systematically ignored the work of
female composers. This sexist bias in musicology corresponded with a strong
asymmetrical gender representation in the concert world.
4 The works can be heard on our project website at http://www.mdw.ac.at/ims/komp
ositionsprozesse
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Index
Note: page numbers in italics indicate figures.
abductive 86, 106n3 authority 27, 92

ability 3, 4, 8, 9, 24, 33–37, 44, 61, 63, awareness; attention 1, 15, 18, 21, 26, 29,
66, 76, 80–81, 84, 86, 88, 92–97, 96, 31, 36, 49, 59–60, 68, 71–72, 83,
105, 116; see also capacity; 87–89, 92, 98–100, 103, 106n4
competence; dispositions; skills
acoustics 16–17; see also space of Bahle, Julius 117–120
performance Balch, Katherine ix, 90
actants 136 Baxandall, Michael 53n4
Adorno, Theodor W. 46, 65, 106n5, Becker, Howard S. 13–14, 20–21, 30, 43,
111–112, 114–115, 148n2 52–53n1, 58, 125
aesthetics 43–47, 49–52, 111–112, Beethoven’s sketches 112–115
128–130 Benjamin, Walter 114
affordance 33–35, 47, 84 Berio, Luciano 69, 126, 144–145
agency 1–3, 14, 37, 62, 80–82, 84, 95, Blaukopf, Kurt 22
97, 101 Blumer, Herbert 13
Albritton, Rogers 81, 82, 90 body 9n1, 9n1, 17, 36, 61, 72–74, 87–90,
algorithm 14, 35, 41–43, 49–52, 64, 65, 92, 99–101, 103, 116, 141, 144; see
84–85, 93 also corporeality; embodiment,
anticipation 17, 18, 20, 23, 30, 62, 66, 68, somaesthetics
72, 98, 101, 106n5, 124 body-mind dualism 61, 76
apparatuses 14, 35–37, 49, 84 Böhle, Fritz ix, 23, 24, 30, 37, 59, 81,
appreciation; recognition 2, 7, 96, 97, 87, 99
105; see also reputation Bohlman, Philip V. 57
artefacts see objects Boreham, Nicholas 87
artistic models 53n4 Bourdieu, Pierre 16, 52–53n1, 130, 131
art music 3, 5, 7, 15–17, 27, 35, 45, 58, Broudy, Harry S. 105
59, 89, 95, 105 Brown, Andrew R. 134
art worlds 2, 13–14, 21, 43, 102, 112,
125; see also sector, cultural capacity 2, 3, 52, 80–81, 145; see also
atmosphere 19, 62 ability
attention see awareness Cassirer, Ernst 47
attitude 16, 18–19, 22, 24, 28, 84, certainty 62, 86–91
112, 120, 128, 132; see also Ciciliani, Marko ix, 6, 20, 44–45, 59,
commitment 68–74, 76, 83, 86, 87, 95, 96, 126–127,
audience; listeners 4, 13, 14, 17, 21–22, 129–130, 132, 134, 144–145, 146, 147
26, 27, 44, 46, 51, 66, 68, 101, cognition 9n1, 30, 47, 52, 57, 80–81,
115, 145 88, 132
Index 153
collaboration 22, 24–32, 130; see also Dewey, John 3–4, 18, 61, 62, 77n5,
cooperation 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 94, 97, 98, 100,
collaboration versus cooperation 24 103, 138
Collins, David 6, 123 Dienz, Christof ix, 18, 25, 28, 38, 44, 83,
Collins, Harry 88, 105n1 85, 87, 90, 106n2
commission 14, 15–17, 122, 129 digitization 36–37
commitment 28–29, 32, 63, 97, 103; Dillon, Steve 134
see also attitude directionality 2, 3, 16, 36, 39, 45, 49, 67
community of practice; practice discipline 18, 20, 62, 84, 89
community 15, 32, 44, 49, 51, 52, 61, discourse, artistic; discourse musical-
75, 82, 93–95, 102 aesthetic 43–47, 52, 101, 130, 132;
competence 9, 14, 21, 22–23, 30, 31, 32, see also aesthetics
35, 49, 62, 65, 80, 82, 96–98, 102, 105, disposition 3, 81, 93, 116, 144; see also
129; see also ability; mastery ability; capacity
competence, regimes of 80, 82, 102 Donin, Nicolas ix, 6, 7, 59, 123, 124–125
competition 24, 93 Dreyfus, Hubert 9, 35, 60, 61, 83, 89, 92,
composition process see process, creative 96, 104
computer 14, 19, 20, 22, 35–39, 41, Dreyfus, Stuart 35, 60, 83, 92, 96, 104
49–52, 60, 86, 93, 100, 119, 122, 133; Dreyfus’ model of skill acquisition
see also instrument, software; 92–93, 106
programming Duguid, Paul 99, 101, 103
computer music see electro-acoustic duration of composition process 16,
music 58, 59
concentration 19, 36, 84, 89; see also
awareness ear 65, 94; see also hearing
consciousness, conscious 3, 8, 36, 41, 45, education 20, 43, 44, 47, 94, 95, 120; see
47, 50, 59, 61, 87, 92, 99, 104, 106n4, also training
117, 125, 134, 136, 145; see also Eimert, Herbert 66, 127, 141
awareness electro-acoustic music; computer music
contingency, contingent 4, 50, 57, 75, 76, 35, 37, 51, 84, 121, 130, 133, 135
96, 99, 106n6 embodiment 9n1, 35, 80, 87, 88, 89, 134;
cooperation 20, 22–32, 95, 136; see also see also body; knowledge, physical
collaboration emotion 2, 4, 7, 19, 21, 28, 52, 59, 62, 63,
corporeality 52, 80, 101; see also body 75, 92, 120; see also feeling; mood
Coulter, Jeff 3, 61, 104 ensemble 15, 16, 24–32, 129, 130
creative crux 132, 133 “Epitaph für Aikichi Kuboyama” (by
creativity 1, 3, 9, 16, 26, 97, 111, 116, Herbert Eimert) 66, 127, 141
123, 134 equipment see apparatuses
criterion 4, 32, 34, 38, 49, 61, 63, 65, 70, Essl, Karlheinz ix, 6, 17, 19, 26, 27,
82, 90–93, 96, 112, 130 34–36, 48, 49, 51, 59, 63–69, 71, 74,
critique génétique 114–115 76, 77n4, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 94, 122,
123, 125, 127, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135,
Dahlhaus, Carl 49, 113 138, 140–141, 142, 143
Danuser, Hermann 113, 122 experience, aesthetic; musical 4, 17, 80,
Davies, Stephen 26 106n5, 112
decision, in composition process 26, 50, experience, past; previous 20, 23, 49, 81,
51, 52, 59, 66, 67, 74, 83, 89, 90, 92, 83, 85, 98, 99, 100
93, 121, 124, 134–136, 138, 144, experience, practice-bounded 2, 27, 31,
145, 148 47, 51, 59, 84, 92
decision, pre-compositional 15, 70, 91, experience, professional 5, 17, 23, 34, 35,
138, 141 59, 82, 83, 92
demystification of the creative process 97, experience, sensory; auditory 36, 52, 65,
111, 113, 117, 119, 148n1 80, 85–86, 95, 99, 138
154 Index
experience, situative; in situ 17, 77n5, 81, gesture 31, 38, 48
85, 86, 99 Gibson, James J. 33; see also affordance
experiment, musical 34–35, 50, 58, 60, Giddens, Anthony 2, 43, 44
64, 66, 72, 76, 86, 99, 104, 127, 140, goal-directedness 58, 62, 75
141; see also exploring; trying out goal-orientedness 5, 32, 75
expertise 25, 30, 51, 64, 83, 92; see also goal 2, 3, 19, 24, 32, 44, 73, 77n7, 80, 84,
competence 96, 125
explanation 3, 15, 30, 57, 82, 93, 112; Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 90
see also justification Graf, Max 117
exploring, exploration 9, 34, 59, 60–69, “Gramigna” (by Stefano Gervasoni) 124
71–73, 75, 76, 80, 86, 87, 97, 106n3, Greeno, James G. 33; see also affordance
134–136; see also experiment; playing
around; research habit; habitual 20, 38, 39, 44, 58, 60, 75,
83, 84, 95, 99, 119; see also routine
Falb, Viola ix, 16 habitus 131
familiarity, familiar 25, 29, 30, 34, 36, 38, hand 35, 36, 37, 38, 47, 73, 88, 89, 126;
63, 83, 96, 98 see also body; fingers
feedback 23–24, 26, 36, 121 Harnik, Elisabeth 50, 92–93
feel, feeling 23, 28, 36, 46, 59, 62, 68, 74, Hausegger, Friedrich von 115–120, 131
80, 83, 85, 86, 89, 90, 92, 100, 116, Hawthorne, John 103
144; see also emotion hearing; listening 17, 20, 21, 35, 36, 65,
feeling, intuitive 3, 86, 87, 138, 145 67, 68, 71, 76, 85, 86, 87, 88, 94, 95,
feeling, situative 24, 76, 86 100, 105, 106n4; see also ear;
fine-tuning 17, 28, 37, 73, 74, 97, 99 experience, auditory
fingers 86, 88, 89, 101; see also hand Heidegger, Martin 4, 61, 106n5
Fischer-Lichte, Erika 136 “Herbecks Versprechen” (by Karlheinz
flow of action 8, 38, 61, 93, 104 Essl) 6, 17, 35–36, 48, 63–67, 77n4, 89,
formalisation 50, 120 127, 130, 133, 139–141, 142, 143
fragility of the creative process 8, 82, 97 Hill, Juniper 104
Fricke, Stefan 111 Hindemith, Paul 118, 120
function, constitutive of material objects
37, 39 ideas 16, 23–26, 33–34, 37–39, 44–45,
function, creative-epistemic of material 52, 58–60, 70–72, 120–123, 129,
objects 41 131–134, 144
function, generative of material identity; self-representation; self-image
objects 39 43–44, 75, 96, 102, 133, 144
function, generative of immaterial ideology 43, 93
objects 52 imagination, musical 23, 25, 31, 49, 52,
function, regulative of material objects 63, 88, 114, 118, 131–132, 136,
34, 37, 39 138, 148n1
function, transformative of immaterial improvisation; improvising 34–35, 67,
objects 52 77n6, 83, 114, 127, 129, 141
incorporation see embodiment
Gadenstätter, Clemens ix, 6, 23, 25, 38, incremental 58–59, 73–76, 135
39, 40, 43, 45, 49, 84, 92 individualistic explanation 3, 75, 97, 122
Gander, Bernhard ix, 18, 21, 24, 25, 26, influence 53n4, 96; see also artistic
29, 30, 31, 38, 90, 96 models
Geertz, Clifford 7, 77n7 inspiration 19, 25, 32, 37, 117–120, 122,
genesis of an artwork 111–114, 119, 123, 125, 131
131, 145, 148 Institut de Recherche et Coordination
genius, the concept of 2, 93, 112, 113, Acoustique/Musique (Ircam) ix, 6, 16,
114, 115, 118, 148n1 64, 113, 124, 140
Gervasoni, Stefano 113, 124 institutional conditions; institutional
gestalt 8, 33–34, 39, 58, 63, 75, 89, 92, 103 structures 2, 4, 13, 95
Index 155
institutions 9, 16, 106n1, 129 knowing, tacit; knowledge, tacit 1, 5, 82,
instruction 3, 14, 27, 28, 31, 37, 48, 77n5, 85, 88, 99, 103, 105n1
84, 102, 130, 138, 144 knowing-as-doing 82
instrument, musical 13, 14, 16, 17, 22, knowing-in-action 85–87
24, 25, 27, 30, 33–35, 51, 58, 66–68, knowing that; knowledge, explicit;
85, 87, 90, 94, 100, 102, 106n2, 120, knowledge, propositional 8, 35, 81, 82,
123, 132, 134, 136, 138 90, 97, 98, 101–105, 116; see also
instrument, software; instrument, knowledge, theoretical
electronic 35–37, 48, 51, 58, 64–68, 72, knowledge, auditory 65, 68, 85–87; see
133, 136, 140, 141 also ear; hearing
intelligible, intelligibility 15, 51, 82, 89, knowledge, concept of; theory of 4, 8,
99, 100, 106n5; see also meaning 81–82, 88, 97, 103
intention; intentionality 9n2, 30, 33, 49, knowledge, contextual, local 16, 21, 29,
70, 77n7, 85, 93, 94, 103, 112, 113, 50, 81, 87, 97, 98, 102, 105
115, 119, 133, 134, 136, 140 knowledge, cultural 14, 101
interaction 2, 23–24, 32, 33, 35, 36, 41, knowledge, experiential 81, 82–90, 99,
48, 51, 52, 52n1, 66, 76, 97, 102 105, 130, 135
interlinking of actions; interplay, of knowledge, explicit see knowing that
actions 8, 13, 73, 75–76, 95 knowledge, forms of 2, 8, 76, 80–105, 98,
International Summer Courses for New 112, 116, 148
Music (Darmstadt) 46, 118, 148n2 knowledge, implicit 8, 15, 36, 49, 73, 81,
interpretation, musical 23, 28–29, 32, 49, 92, 116
58, 141 knowledge, personal 19, 20, 25, 83, 102
introspection 3 knowledge, physical, somatic, embodied,
intuitive, intuition 4, 35, 36, 37, 44, 50, corporeal 25, 35, 59, 85, 87–90, 98,
59, 63, 66, 86, 87, 88, 91, 92, 93, 104, 101, 105, 105n1, 135; see also fingers;
106n5, 120, 121 hand
intuition, anticipatory 4; see also knowledge, propositional see knowing
anticipation that
knowledge, sensory 17, 34, 36, 37, 59, 65,
Janik, Allan 24, 103–104 68, 81, 85–87, 99, 100; see also
Joas, Hans 80, 81 hearing; knowledge, auditory;
John-Steiner, Vera 41, 45 perception
“Jonny spielt auf” (by Ernst Krenek) 120 knowledge, shared 3, 7, 13, 23, 30, 43,
judgement, aesthetic 35, 51, 61, 91, 92; 51, 61, 90, 95, 129, 135
see also valuing, valuation knowledge, situational, situative 17, 81, 84,
judgement, intuitive 89, 92 85, 86, 92, 97, 98, 99, 105, 135, 138
justification 3, 38, 46, 47, 86, 117, 130; knowledge, tacit see knowing, tacit
see also explanation knowledge, technical 23, 35, 37, 66,
84–85, 96, 97, 98, 102, 105, 118, 138
Kahr, Michael ix, 34, 89 knowledge, theoretical; knowledge,
Karastoyanova-Hermentin, Alexandra scholarly 40, 43, 44, 96, 97, 98,
ix, 20, 27 101–102; see also knowing that
Karkoschka, Erhard 28, 47 knowledge of the work process 82–83,
Katzenberger, Günter 113, 120, 122 97, 98, 98–99, 105
kinaesthetic 17, 35, 85, 90 knowledge versus knowing 8, 103
Klement, Katharina ix, 6, 16, 18, 20, 25, Krenek, Ernst 118, 120
27, 28, 33, 36, 38, 41, 42, 43, 46, 59, Kretz, Johannes ix, 23, 37
75, 87, 91, 92
Knorr-Cetina, Karin 33, 58 Lachenmann, Helmut 49, 119, 129
know-how, knowing-how 35, 62, 84, 94, Latour, Bruno 136
101, 103–105; see also skills learning 2, 3, 18, 20, 28, 31, 36, 38, 41,
knowing, artistic practical 1–2, 9, 50, 51, 61, 77n5, 82, 88, 90, 93–97, 99,
82–93, 96–97, 98, 98–102, 104–105 103, 104
156 Index
learning by doing 81, 94, 96; see also Noisternig, Markus ix, 22
training non-peers 13, 14, 20–23, 25, 32
Leroux, Philippe 124 Nordenstam, Tore 105
“Les Cris des Lumières” (by Clemens notation, graphic; diagrams 45, 49
Gadenstätter) 6, 39, 40 notation, musical 23, 28, 32, 41, 42, 43,
“Lexikon-Sonate” (by Karlheinz Essl) 133 47–49, 52, 68; see also score, musical;
“LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs (Gloomy sketches (Notaten)
Sunday)” (by Marko Ciciliani) 6, 68, notation, precise, exact, appropriate 27,
126–127, 133, 145, 146, 147 28, 48
listeners see audience notation, systems of 7, 13, 14, 27–28,
listening see hearing 29–30, 41–43, 47–49, 52, 62
Liszt, Franz 33 Nottebohm, Gustav 112–113
Lockwood, Lewis 113
“Lost Highway” (by Olga Neuwirth) 22 objective see goal
loudspeakers 17, 20, 26, 36; see also objects, immaterial 2, 5, 7, 13, 14, 41–52
apparatuses objects, material 2, 5, 7, 13, 14, 33–41,
Luhmann, Niklas 112 95, 100, 115; see also tool
Lynch, Michael 80 Ong, Walter 47
orchestra see ensemble
Mahler, Gustav 145
making 3, 20, 28, 30, 35, 60–63, 63, 65, paper, kinds of 39, 41
66, 67, 68, 71, 73, 75, 76, 85, 95, 105, participants 5, 13, 14, 20–32, 46; see also
111, 122 non-peers; peers; objects; material
Malt, Mikhail ix, 51 participation 2–4, 7, 21–22, 44, 94, 95,
mastery 2, 3, 4, 17, 27, 60, 66, 81, 82, 83, 102, 133
84, 96, 97, 99, 104; see also particularity 60, 63, 64, 75, 113; see also
competence; expertise uniqueness
materiality 9, 33; see also objects; tool Party, Javier ix, 25, 90
McAdams, Stephen 123–124 Paul Sacher Foundation 113, 114
meaning 2, 9, 23, 28, 37, 38, 43, 49, 51, peers 13, 14, 20–21, 23–32, 81
61, 63, 73, 80, 85, 94, 97, 101, 132; perception 8, 23–24, 33, 63, 81, 85, 87,
see also understanding 89, 92–93, 100, 103, 144; see also
mediamorphosis 22 experience, sensory; hearing
Meizoz, Jérôme 29 performance, context of 15, 16, 21–22,
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 80, 89, 43, 105, 130
100–101, 103 performance, musical 14, 14, 16–17, 21,
Meyer, Felix 113, 115 22–24, 26, 27–31, 35, 36, 65–69, 72,
mood 19, 62, 88, 117; see also emotion 89, 105, 121, 126, 133, 141
Mundry, Isabel 135, 144 performers see musicians
musical material 8, 45, 50, 60, 65, 73, 93, “peripheries” (by Katharina Klement) 6
112, 120, 128, 129, 132, 133 perspective of composer 1, 13, 51, 63, 65,
musicians; performers; players; instru- 68, 93, 95
mentalists 14, 16, 17, 22, 25, 26, 30, perspective of musicians or performers
31, 34, 43, 46, 49, 51, 63, 65, 67, 68, 23, 30, 51, 63, 65, 68, 101
86, 90, 94, 99, 101, 104, 113, 122, 130, perspective of the audience 21, 68
133, 136 Pickering, Andrew 14, 58, 62, 77n7
Mütter, Bertl ix, 19, 28, 30, 32, 48, 88 plan 3, 18, 59, 62, 68, 70, 75, 77n7, 80,
115, 124, 127, 134, 137, 140, 141
network (social) 3, 20, 53n2, 102; see also planning, compositional 18, 59, 62, 115,
collaboration; cooperation 127, 134, 137, 141, 145
Neuwirth, Olga 22 Platz, Robert HP 111, 121
Newman, Timothy U. 121–122 players see musicians
Nicolini, Davide 33, 86, 95, 96, 100 playing around 86, 134–135; see also
Nierhaus, Gerhard 50, 51, 92 exploring; trying out
Index 157
Poincaré, Henri 57 Romantic view; conception 34, 117,
Polanyi, Michael 3, 4, 10n6, 17, 19, 36, 122, 148n1
60, 81, 83, 86, 93, 97, 99, 103, 105n1, routine 3, 5, 9, 18–19, 58, 59, 81, 83, 84,
106n5 93, 95, 99, 135; see also habit
position, social 26, 44, 46, 122, 129, 134 rule 2–3, 9, 38, 43, 50–51, 60–61, 64,
possibility space 4, 66, 134, 135 82,90–93, 99, 104
practical logic or sense 3, 16, 33, 39, 105 Ryle, Gilbert 4, 97, 103
practice (in a general sense) 2, 13, 15, 16,
19, 30, 31, 36, 44, 52n1, 60, 61, 80, 81, Schatzki, Theodore 2, 52n1, 60, 63, 86, 105
83, 84, 85, 88, 89, 90, 93, 95, 97, 101, 103 Schenker, Heinrich 113–114
practice, conceptual or reflective 2, 47, Schmidt, Robert 14, 60
60, 62, 83, 96, 104; see also thinking, Schön, Donald 61, 85, 87, 96, 105
conceptual Schönberg, Arnold 114, 118
practice community see community of Schumann, Robert 111
practice score, musical 15–16, 22–24, 27–31, 38,
practice-oriented or praxeological 39, 41, 44, 48–49, 62, 67–68, 80, 100,
perspective 3, 33, 47, 63, 85 115, 124, 136, 141
practices, artistic 1–3, 34, 60–61, 76, sector, cultural; sector, musical 14, 16,
93–95, 97, 105, 125, 128–129 46, 95, 130; see also art worlds
practices, composing 21, 32, 33–34, 47, seeing 61, 76, 95, 104
49–50, 58, 60, 62, 74, 81–82, 89–90, self-description 1, 8
101, 103, 124–130, 145 self-reflection 1, 21, 84, 118,
pragmatic, aspects or considerations 15, 119–123, 130
28, 29, 38–39, 66, 69–70 self-representation, self-image see identity
preferences 4, 19, 24, 38, 52, 63, 76, 88, 96 “Sinfonia” (by Luciano Berio) 69, 126,
process, creative; composition process 144, 145
1–2, 4, 5–7, 14, 21–26, 28, 32, 34, 35, situation, compositional 16, 17, 25, 26,
37, 39, 49–50, 52, 57–59, 60, 62, 60, 81, 85, 97, 129
63–76, , 83, 84, 86, 97–102, 111–148; sketches (Notaten) 15, 37, 40, 41, 42, 44,
see also work process 59, 92, 96, 139
professionalism 21, 22, 32 sketch studies 111, 112–115, 148n1
programming 35, 41, 50, 51, 121, 127, skilfulness 9n2, 83, 88, 96, 105
133, 140, 141; see also computer skills 2–3, 33, 35, 75, 80–82, 88, 92, 96,
public see audience 102–105, 141; see also know-how
Sloboda, John 111
Rammert, Werner 14, 37 Smudits, Alfred ix, 22
reading 30, 41, 45, 47, 49, 59, 102 somaesthetics 24, 87–90, 100, 105;
recordings; sound files 25, 26, 59, 63, 64, see also body
67–68, 89, 122, 123, 127, 141 “some remains” (by Joanna Wozny) 6,
reflection 3, 43–47, 60, 62, 65, 66, 76, 83, 128, 129, 136–138, 139
84, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91 92, 122; see also sound files see recordings
self-reflection; practice, reflective space of performance 14, 16–17, 22;
reflection, anticipatory see anticipation see also acoustics
reflexivity 1, 7, 43, 83 Stanley, Jason 103
rehearsal 6, 24, 26–32, 48, 87, 88, 89, 127 Stockhausen, Karlheinz 118, 119, 148n2
reputation 15, 16, 21 see also Strauss, Richard 116, 118, 119, 120
appreciation Stroppa, Marco 113, 123
research 1–7, 25, 31, 60–61, 69, 71, 91, studio see workplace
112–117, 123–124, 126, 148n1; see also subjectivisation; subjectifying 23, 30, 37,
exploring; ideas 91, 99, 100
resources of time; temporal resources subjectivity 23, 90, 91, 98, 101, 112
4, 17–19 success, artistic; success, musical 4, 24,
Reynolds, Roger 121, 123 26, 27, 49, 62, 82, 93, 97 see also
Roels, Hans 6, 62, 76 appreciation
158 Index
“Suicidal Self Portraits” (by Marko Valéry, Paul 114
Ciciliani) 69, 70, 72, 126 value 2, 65, 97, 114, 117; see also
“Symphony No.2” (by Gustav Mahler) 145 valuing
Szivós, Mihalyi ix, 3, 22, 85, 105–106n1 valuing, valuation 2, 4, 9, 61, 63, 65–76,
80, 86, 90, 95, 100, 105
Tadday, Ulrich 112 Varga, Judit ix, 16, 18, 20, 21, 34, 37,
talent 93, 97 39, 83
Taylor, Charles 4, 60, 80, 82, 88, 100, 104 “Voi(Rex)” (by Philippe Leroux) 124
teleo-affectivity 4, 62–63 Vygotzky, Lev 41, 43, 81
teleology, teleological 4
textualist paradigm 57, 60 Wallas, Graham 57, 134
thinking, compositional 15, 39, 47, Weber, Max 84
48, 51, 65, 72, 92, 95, 121, 124, Wertsch, James 41, 81
136–148 Williamson, Timothy 103
thinking, conceptual 45, 47, 91, 105, 121, Wittgenstein, Ludwig 4, 19, 32, 37, 38,
126 see also reflection; knowing that 43, 47, 60, 61, 95, 100, 104, 106n5
time pressure 18, 28, 92, 128; see also work of art; musical composition 1, 9,
resources of time 15, 21, 43, 44, 60, 80, 111–112
tool 3, 33–41, 47, 50, 52, 53n5, 60, 66, work phases; work stages 5, 8, 39, 57, 66,
82, 83, 106n1, 111, 133, 141; see also 120–123, 134
objects workplace; workspace; studio 19–20,
tradition 2, 3, 8, 9, 26, 27, 33, 34, 43, 33, 36
53n4, 58, 60–61, 81, 90, 93, 95, 100, work process 14, 17–19, 23, 28–29, 36,
104, 121, 124, 129 38–39, 50, 51, 57–60, 62, 63–76,
training 3, 4, 6, 30, 35, 43, 44, 65, 85, 88, 82–85, 90–92, 97–99, 100, 104, 114,
94, 96; see also education; learning by 115, 123, 126–128, 130; see also
doing process, creative
trying out 34, 35, 51, 58, 62, 64, 66, 67, Wozny, Joanna ix, 6, 30, 59, 87, 125, 128,
85–86, 89–90, 99, 101, 123, 140, 145 129, 132, 134, 135, 136–138, 139
see also experiment, musical; writing (as activity) 25, 37, 43–49, 62, 76,
exploring 90; see also making
Tsoukas, Haridimos 80, 96 writing by hand; handwriting 37–38
writing materials 14, 33, 37–39, 41
understanding (as an activity in writings (Notizen) 15, 27
composing) 60–61, 63, 65–76, 81 writing software see programming
understanding, intransitive 38
uniqueness 75; see also particularity Xenakis, Iannis 91, 120–122
Unterpertinger, Judith ix, 15, 18, 20, 24,
27, 44, 45, 83 Yanow, Dvora 80

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Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

This monograph carries out an in-depth investigation into compositional

Tasos Zembylas is a Professor of Cultural Institution Studies at the Department

Martin Niederauer (Dr. phil.) studied sociology in Trier and Frankfurt am

213 Social Class and Transnational Human Capital

214 Transnational Social Policy

215 Meta-Regulation in Practice

216 The Sociology of Postmarxism

217 The Precarious Generation

218 Human Rights, Islam and the Failure of Cosmopolitanism

219 New Generation Political Activism in Ukraine

220 Turkish National Identity and Its Outsiders

221 Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

Tasos Zembylas and Martin Niederauer

ISBN: 978-1-138-21549-8 (hbk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

List of ﬁgures vii

1 The topography of composing work 13

2 The processuality of composing 57

3 Orchestrating diﬀerent forms of knowledge 80

1.1 The topography of composing work 14

First published in German: Praktiken des Komponierens: Soziologische,

Many contemporary composers describe, analyse and reﬂect on their creative

Starting-point and research interest

Contingency: composing processes unfold with the direct or indirect partici-

Empirical bases and research design

 Marko Ciciliani: “LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs (Gloomy Sunday)”; premiered

In parallel with the case studies, we conducted 23 one-oﬀ interviews with

The term “topography” usually refers to the representation of a terrain’s

Material objects Parameters and resources

The creative process of composing

Immaterial objects Peers and non-peers

Figure 1.1 The topography of composing work

1.1 Parameters and resources

1.1.1 Predetermined parameters

1.1.2 Resources of time

1.2 Peers and non-peers

1.2.1 The audience

1.2.2 Cooperating with sound engineers and software developers

1.2.3 Interacting with other composers

1.2.4 Interacting and working with musicians

During the process of creation

A special kind of collaborative relationship arises when composers jointly

It is also important for composers to be familiar with the working pro-

To come up against the limits of symbolic representation and explication does

Verbal language, physical gestures, and singing or playing notes complement

1.3.1 Musical instruments

1.3.2 Computers and technical apparatuses

1.3.3 Writing materials

1.4 Immaterial objects: discourses, notation systems, algorithms

In his view, a hallmark of human consciousness is that it is associated with

1.4.1 Written-down reﬂections and music-aesthetic discourses

Ultimately, concepts are important to me because they radiate such

Consequently, writing becomes a generative and creative activity integrated

[i]t is misleading then to talk of thinking as of a “mental activity”. We

1.4.3 Algorithms and software

We have so far taken for granted that composing can be characterised as a

2.1 Exploring – Understanding – Valuing – Making

Figure 2.1 The interrelatedness of various partial activities

projects, aims, tasks, beliefs, desires, commitments and emotions in the

2.2 The cohesion of activities inherent in processes

The predominant activity at the start of the composition process is one of

This entry documents an evaluative reﬂection on the process to date, with a

Marko Ciciliani: “LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs (Gloomy Sunday)”; premiered

Cooper (1990), Kinderman (1991), Lockwood (1992) and others have

Which external conditions have an inﬂuence on your willingness and