Simon Wills

Tinguely's Fountain

I mean the one outside the theatre in Basel, the one where small gang of enigmatic machines twitter and thrash, all at different speeds, throwing water everywhere. It is the perfect metaphor for this piece, which is not so much for an ensemble as for a crowd. The proper question for a composer faced with so many trombones is not “how do I make a nice tidy decorous sound” but “how do I make this mob do something worth seeing?” So each clump of trombones does its individual twittering or thrashing thing, then we put them all together and see what happens. What happens, as you will see, is quite a racket! The music is organised on quite a complex mathematical pattern in order to make it coherent, but if you really want to spend time analysing it then you should consider dancing in a fountain until you feel better and see the error of your ways. Some of the twittering and thrashing gets mixed up between the groups, but then Tinguely's masterpiece is a messy fountain. Ideally, there should be people throwing water too, if the weather and venue permit. Perhaps you could play it on a beach. Simon Wills