Music Theatre since 1990 - Schott Music

Synopsis
The deep sea makes up 80% of our planet whilst land only equates to 0/5% and yet the deep
sea is the least known part of the world. More people have travelled into space than into the
depths of the sea. The Paper Nautilus is the result of a collaboration between Gavin Bryars and
the visionary theatre director Cathie Boyd and her Theatre Cryptic. The work is based on an
earlier cantata, Effarine (1984), which grew out of a collaboration with another visionary of the
theatre, Robert Wilson, and which draws on material related either to the sea, or to the sense
of scientific wonder. The television series Blue Planet was an inspiration to further research,
and in order to take the work beyond the three extant sections of the cantata Theatre Cryptic
commissioned new poems from Jackie Kay, taking ideas from these resources. The composer
also added short Biblical texts in Latin and English.
The instrumentation of the work comes from that of the original cantata, which was itself
conditioned by the fact that it was to be a companion piece for Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique, but
with two instead of four pianos. The two voices sing alternate sections, though often coming
together to form duets or with one accompanying the other. At the end they sing quietly in
unison as the instrumental ensemble moves through the coda, ending with the very literal use
of the water gong in the last bars. (based on the composer’s note for the world première)
The Paper Nautilus
02.11.2006 The Tramway Theatre
“…it must rate as some kind of triumph if you emerge from a lengthy specimen feeling emptyheaded
but rested, as though from an hour-long bath. And that aqueous feeling isn’t accidental:
Gavin Bryars’s dramatic cantata The Paper Nautilus is entirely concerned with the sea’s depths, its
mysteries and science, the bioluminescent life forms, the cold and gloom… Water equally filled the
music – washed in the gentle plops and shivers of bells, vibraphones, gongs, the tuned percussion
world that Bryars has always relished. Moods and speeds also followed the Bryars template: slow,
undulating, sometimes beautiful, often soporific.” (Geoff Brown, The Times, 6 November 2006)
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