Fretwork

Self-laudatory hymn of Inanna and her omnipotence, for counter-tenor & 5 or 6 viols.

Occasionally, and most pleasurably, a text discovered by chance - like that of the Self laudatory hymn of Inanna and her omnipotence - not only becomes the basis for a vocal work but also opens up an area of intellectual activity previously unknown to me. Thus a newspaper review of Oliver Sacks’s The man who mistook his wife for a hat led first to an opera and then to an interest in neurology and related (popular) scientific fields, such as Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man, the starting point for my opera Vital Statistics. Similarly, a friend’s passing reference to Paul Celan brought about my Six Celan Songs and a continuing, deepening study of his poetry.

The text of the Self-laudatory hymn came to light while I was browsing among the bookshelves of an Armenian acquaintance in Paris in February 1992. Opening, for no apparent reason, a fat anthology entitled Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament I found Samuel Noah Kramer’s translation of this text. I was immediately taken with its tone of rare, unashamed self congratulation (very suitable, I thought, for James Bowman’s voice) and its repetitive structure (very suitable for my music - though in the final section of my work, Inanna’s triumphant listing of the temples under her control is expressed through cadential diversity rather than uniformity). A chance conversation with another friend showed me that Inanna was not an obscure goddess known only to me and a few experts on Sumerian civilisation but a central focus of that civilisation and (now) a figure highly esteemed by feminists. In Kramer’s words: ‘Female deities were worshipped and adored all through Sumerian history… but the goddess who outweighed, overshadowed, and outlasted them all was a deity known to the Sumerians by the name of Inanna, ‘Queen of Heaven’, and to the Semites who lived in Sumer by the name of Ishtar. Inanna played a greater role in myth, epic, and hymn than any other deity male or female.

Commissioned by The Spitalfields Festival and first performed in Christ Church, Spitalfields, 11th June 1992 with James Bowman.

Soon to be published by Chester Music (Music Sales Ltd.)
Recorded by Fretwork with James Bowman on Time Will Pronounce, Argo (Decca) (440282-2.)