Abstract
As personal and solitary as it may be, the process of composition always implies more than one individual and has many collective dimensions. This chapter presents an ethnographic account of the collective process involved in creating a work for ‘augmented string quartet’ at IRCAM from 2006 to 2008. It addresses three primary concerns: the composer–performer interaction and the role of musical notation; the relationship between artistic creativity and reflexivity; and the sharing of skills and expertise across disciplines. The project led not only to a new musical work, but also to a technological device for ‘gesture-following’ (including customised motion sensors and innovative software), scientific papers, and new expertise in computer music design for future projects involving motion capture. These patterns of distributed creativity are essential to ‘musical research’ as a collective endeavour, and are present in many other circumstances of contemporary or traditional composition and performance.
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