The Black River

This piece is one of a series of works that take texts or imagery from the work of Jules Verne. Here the text is taken from 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, a section in which Professor Aronnax describes the scene outside the Nautilus where countless varieties of sea-creatures escort the submarine along the current of the mysterious underwater Black River. Coincidentally the first work that I wrote using Verne as a source, the cantata Effarene (1984), sets an earlier portion of the same chapter for its closing movement and I find the objectivity and invention of Verne's language a constant stimulus. As Raymond Queneau said of Verne: "What a style! Nothing but nouns." The piece was written for a concert given by the organist Christopher Bowers-Broadbent at Leicester Cathedral in January 1991 and later recorded by him with soprano Sarah Leonard for ECM New Series in 1993. Gavin Bryars.