I think of composition as being a process, an exchange of concepts, and an exchange of ideas - you can see we are already talking about improvisation.
Improvisation is really composition.
The notion of composing as action or process is embodied in Keith's frequent claim that all of his compositions were frozen improvisations. Yet, Keith undoubtedly deferred to certain creators of the canon of Western art music, and even contributed works that might become part of this canon. Moreover, his passion for the sonic world and discipline of serialism remained with him for the last fifty years of his creativity, only reaching its greatest intensity as his life moved towards its final gesture. This notion of the intuitive composer who liked to apply broad brush-strokes of musical meaning while, at another level, championed a compositional approach of extraordinarily disciplined syntax, seems to present a paradox. This is not so.