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FROM ONE VESSEL TO ANOTHER: REFLECTIONS ON THE MUSIC OF NAOMI PINNOCK

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2020

Christopher Fox
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Abstract

This article explores aspects of the work of the composer Naomi Pinnock, focusing on six works written between 2012 and 2019: String Quartet No. 2 (2012), The Writings of Jakob Br. (2013), Lines and spaces (2015), Music for Europe (2016), The field is woven (2018) and I am, I am (2019). Each work is analysed and the analyses contextualised within a discussion of the works by other artists that form a creative hinterland to Pinnock's music: respectively art from the Sammlung Prinzhorn, paintings by Paul Klee and Agnes Martin, and the poetry of Rachael Boast.

Type
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Information
Tempo , Volume 74 , Issue 294 , October 2020 , pp. 49 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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References

1 ‘Profile: Naomi Pinnock’, TEMPO, 72, No.283 (2018), pp. 112–14.

2 ‘Profile: Naomi Pinnock’, p. 114.

3 A recording of the premiere can be heard here: https://soundcloud.com/naomipinnock/sets/string-quartet-no-2.

4 Prinzhorn, Hans, ed., Bildnerei der Geisteskranken: ein Beitrag zur Psycholgie und Psychopathologie der Gestaltung (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1922)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 I mention this wearisome statistic because it confirms something that Pinnock said in her TEMPO profile: ‘It infuriates me that there is still such a gender imbalance in the classical music world.’ In the profile she goes on to say that ‘over the six years of my tertiary education I was taught by a total of three women (only one, briefly, in composition), two of whom were teaching as part of their postgraduate course. People should go and count how many female-identifying composers there are teaching in the UK’.

6 Naomi Pinnock, The Writing of Jakob Br., programme text.

7 Heilmann, Hans, ed., Chinesische Lyrik vom 12. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Piper, 1905)Google Scholar. In Heilmann's transliteration the poet's name is given as Wang Seng Yu.

8 For a more extensive discussion of the influence of east Asian cultures on Klee's work see Yubii Noda, ‘Paul Klee und Ostasien – kritische Analyse der Entstehungsgeschichte der “Schriftbilder” von 1916’, Zwitscher-Maschine.org: Zeitschrift für internationale Klee-Studien, No. 8(2020), www.zwitscher-maschine.org/paul-klee-und-ostasien.

9 ‘Profile: Naomi Pinnock’, p. 113.

10 René Crevel, in Paul Klee, ed. Will Grohmann (Paris: Éditions ‘Cahiers d'Art’, 1930), p. 9.

11 Naomi Pinnock, Lines and Spaces, programme note.

12 Judd, Donald, ‘In the Galleries’, Arts Magazine, 37/5 (1963), p. 48Google Scholar.

13 Naomi Pinnock, The Field is Woven, programme note, www.naomipinnock.co.uk/ensemble-orchestra.html (accessed 21 April 2020).

14 Boast, Rachael, Sidereal (London: Picador, 2011), p. 25Google Scholar.

15 In the spirit of this thought the title of the present article, ‘from one vessel to another’ is taken from Rachael Boast's poem ‘The Hum’ (Sidereal, p. 7). In an email to me on 22 April 2020 Naomi Pinnock recalled first reading Boast's poetry in ‘2015 or thereabouts’ and perhaps it was Boast's metaphor of form as a ‘vessel’ that still resonated with her when she used it in her 2018 TEMPO profile.