The whale fall event is a process where whales descend to the ocean floor after their death. For millennia, this has been a critical part of the life cycle of oceans. Ecosystems form around the whale fall, feeding and thriving off its flesh and remains. Creatures that are part of the ecosystem include bacteria mats, vesicomyid clams, galatheid crabs, polynoids, and a variety of other invertebrates. In recent times, pollution has had devastating effects on whales, who are said to be the most polluted animals on the planet. How do these creatures survive in such polluted conditions? The fall of this polluted whale symbolises the fall, or failure, of our society to act on pollution and the human-caused effects of climate change.

The music is interwoven with sounds of the bowhead whale in the foreground with frequency modulation and the minke whale in the background that sounds like a low ambient rumble. The third section contains a low frequency falling tone of the blue whale. The whale song has lowered in pitch due to climate change, so this has also influenced my use of a falling tone in the music. The archival whale recordings have also been detuned. I used a frequency shifter which changes the partials of the recording and gives it a disharmonic sound. This is what I mean when I say decomposing sounds. They are sounds or compositional processes that reflect the decaying or decomposition of our environment. The recordings are also low in quality, so the sound is naturally muffled and distorted. The sound of water in the recording obscures it further. There is also instrumental acoustic distortion from the heavy bowing and scratch tones from the violin and the cello.

The blue whale has a much larger auditory nerve, which means they are able to do more complex auditory processing. The thicker and firmer the basilar membrane is, the more attuned it is to higher frequency hearing. Baleen whales, on the other hand, have exceptionally broad, thin and elastic basilar membranes. These characteristics contribute to the low frequency hearing range.

The score uses iconography that relates to the difficulties whales face due to climate change. The basis of the work is to derail our ideas of biopolitics, anthropocentric power dynamics, and our domination, ownership and control over animal life. The use of icons allows for this symbolism to play out in the performer’s imagination, as well as being a practical way for them to categorise and identify repeated musical fragments. By linking the icons to a sequence of actions, the musicians were able to group chunks of ideas faster within a sequence. They can also respond to the icons by sensing the ideas, by being in touch with their personal response to the icon and its meaning in the world to influence their musical shape and flow, shading of texture, or flexibility of time.