The Wellspring

In The Wellspring acclaimed novelist and dramatist Barney Norris conducts a conversation with his father, the pianist and composer David Owen Norris – ‘quite possibly the most interesting pianist in the world’ (Toronto Globe and Mail) and ‘a famous thinker/philosopher of the keyboard’ (Seattle Times) – about the nature of creativity, of Englishness, and of the changing world.

Divided into three parts – ‘Listening’, ‘Playing’ and ‘Writing’ –The Wellspring is the first book to explore David Owen Norris’s fifty-year career and discover how his background (non-metropolitan, C of E, literary) influenced his choices and his music. The book becomes a study of the relationship between his Englishness and his work, of his inheritance and how it is projected forward into new compositions and new performance. In the process the reader encounters a fascinating world of concerts, prizes, collaborations, and inspirations, in which Norris, always open to the different, has lived. This variety includes Norris’s devotion to Parry and Elgar, his musical discoveries made playing the square piano of the nineteenth century, and the opportunities resulting from the pressurized world of competitions.

In addition to exploring the career of this renowned musician, the father-son conversation also reveals Barney Norris’s experience of working in English theatre over the last ten years and of his practice as a novelist with a growing reputation. Their combined experience, in two fields, in two different generations, provides a thought-provoking discussion of how a place and a culture inform artistic work, and how England and Englishness have evolved during the past half century.