COMPOSITION

the composer's activity and the traces left by it. The composer's activity is motivated by a wish of bringing about that which without him and human intent would not happen. In particular, the composer's activity consists in constructing contexts, systems, stipulated universes, where in objects and statements, selected by the composer, not only manifest more than their mere existence, but have a function or value of sense or meaning which without his construction they would not have. Occasionally the composer's activity brings about that which without him and without human intent could not have happened, leaving traces which nothing else could have left. The wish which motivates the composer's activity is motivated by an exclusively human property which thus exhaustively and sufficiently defines the term "human": a "need" which is generated by a want. Among all biological systems only the human system contains that self-observing dimension when comes, beyond the system's "need," the system's want to survive. Thence the want, beyond the "need," of survival, and thus the exclusively human concept of an intent that would or will retard decay; in particular the decay of information, the ordering of a system, any system stipulated, discovered, or dreamed of. (H. Brun)

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