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, reflecting, noting and correcting, which represents a small selection of the multifaceted 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.

Introduction 1. The Topography Of Composing Work 1.1. Parameters and Resources 1.2. Peers and Non-Peers 1.3. Material Objects: Musical Instruments, Computers and Writing Materials 1.4. Immaterial Objects: Discourses, Notation Systems, Algorithms and Software 2. The Processuality Of Composing 2.1. Exploring - Understanding - Valuing - Making 2.2. The Cohesion of Activities Inherent in Processes 2.3. The Artistic Creative Processes as a Dynamic Interlinking of Actions 3. Orchestrating Different Forms of Knowledge 3.1. The Various Manifestations of Artistic Practical Knowing 3.2. The Centrality of Learning 3.3. Forms of Knowledge in Composing Processes: An Interpretative Order 3.4. The Synergy Between the Various Forms of Knowledge 4. Composing-As-Process: Musicological Perspectives, Andreas Holzer 4.1. Perspectives on Composing-As-Process: A Historical Outline 4.2. The Components of Composing Practices and their Interrelations: Present-Day Observations