Gary Carpenter, Theatre Fountain

Theatre Fountain (Theaterbrunnen 1974) is a kinetic fountain by Jean Tinguely. It stands outside the Opera House in Basel, Switzerland. I remember seeing it twice, once in the spring when it was in full flow and once in winter when icicles had contributed their own sculptural grandeur to the work but had also slowed down or stopped most of the moving parts. I was taken with idea of a mechanical work of art first moving and then gradually frozen in time and space. As in much of his work, Tinguely uses familiar objects in unfamiliar contexts. I referenced this by building on wholly triadic and tonal material undermined by wayward juxtaposition and in the same way that the fountain consists of 'mobiles', my piece rotates myriad patterns, some of considerable duration and some very short and fleeting. Despite a sense of acceleration towards the end of the piece, the metronome marks actually get fractionally slower as the piece progresses - as if the compositional mechanisms are themselves freezing. A wandering tenor saxophone surveys the static (frozen) middle section. The percussion, most of which comprises 'found objects', is a nod to those non-aquatic Tinguely sculptures that make a lot of noise, move a lot, but go nowhere! - Gary Carpenter