for clarinet, cello and piano (2025)
score available soon from
Wise Music
program note
i. Lagoon
ii. The Ritz
iii. The Jungle
iv. Planetarium Submerged
v. Heading South
“Soon it would be too hot.” This is the opening sentence of J.G. Ballard’s prescient 1962 novel, The Drowned World. It paints a picture of global warming, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and a post-apocalyptic abandonment of cities rendered as lagoons and jungles with a growing ascendancy of amphibian and reptile forms. Dwindling human populations flee to polar extremities. Ballard sets his work in the largely submerged city of London circa 2030. Introspective biologist, Dr Robert Kerans is on a military scientific posting and taken up residency in the abandoned Ritz hotel. He’s romantically connected to the equally insular Beatrice Dahl who lives in an apartment block jutting out of the adjacent lagoon. The military give them 3 days to evacuate but Kerans and Dahl are transfixed and prevaricate. A marauding group of pirates led by the menacing Strangman breeze into town to drain and loot one of the lagoons. But all are on borrowed time. Common sense indicates to head north to the more temperate, stable Greenland – but Kerans’ compass is pointing south. This work was commissioned by Ensemble Liaison, who gave the premiere performance.
By noon, the water would seem to burn. Steam clouds hanging over the creek dispersed; sluggish alligators, giant bats, mosquitoes the size of dragon flies…In the early morning light a strange mournful beauty hung over the lagoon;
The Ritz now stood in splendid isolation on the west shore, the first six stories below water level. Huge, high-ceilinged state-rooms, the ivory-cool air of the penthouse with its black marble basins and gold taps, lavish brocaded furniture, the cocktail bar stocked with an ample supply of what were now vintage whiskies and brandies…
Canopies over two hundred feet high. The ring of massive plants around them seemed to dance in the heat like a voodoo jungle…
Far below, the great dome of the planetarium hove out of the yellow light, reminding of some cosmic space vehicle marooned on Earth for millions of years and only now revealed by the sea…
‘South’, with all its dormant magic and mesmeric power, the brass compass gleaming in the darkness. Relentless and magnetic, it called him southward, to the great heat and submerged lagoons of the Equator.
review
“Well-loved Melbourne composer Stuart Greenbaum was cheered warmly when asked to present his premiere performance of The Drowned World (2025). The 1962 science fiction novel of the same name by J.G. Ballard, described as a “Potent and Atmospheric Apocalypse Set in a Flooded Tropical London,” (of 2145) inspired Greenbaum’s long-held interest and fascination with our place on Earth in the solar system, writing with an unmistakable contemporary musical language as he responded to the issues and characters in the novel. Themes of solar radiation, solar storms, global warming and climate change were felt in the five parts: Lagoon, The Ritz, The Jungle, Planetarium Submerged and Heading South. Greenbaum’s musical language captured the watery wonders of a lagoon with gentle silvery piano tones and deep sonorities, hypnotising repeated elements and smoothly flowing weaving patterns where bar-lines and fixed meters have dissolved in an open and fluid framework. A contemporary rhythmic flow underpinned the city activity of The Ritz with a special raw and earthy tone required from the cello and a lyricism in music both simple and sophisticated at times, as performers extracted the best colours from their instruments. A pulsating cello led the trio into the troubled disturbed world of The Jungle where living organisms rose from the depths, scurrying to airy heights, seeking a natural harmony and space. Most captivating were the eerie sounds achieved by continual glissandi on cello strings, triple pianissimo, fragile and mysterious. The piano led the final part with a gentle improvisation-like flowing line building into a chordal off-beat jazz-rock flow as the trio slowly blended their exchange of short rising patterns, building intensity in power and strength to its close. The superb detailed musicianship and the new composition brought much celebratory applause.”
Julie McErlain, Classic Melbourne, April 2026