Removing notes from Mendelssohn's opening shows plight of humpback whales

[embedded content] Hebrides Overture disappearance notes shed light on the plight of humpback whales.

The Hebrides by Felix Mendelssohn was inspired by the composer's 1829 trip to the British Isles. Its opening has now inspired a collaboration between a Cambridge economist and a composer, using sound to draw attention to the loss of biodiversity on Earth. Hebrides Redacted successively drops notes from the opening 10 to 11 minutes in proportion to the decline of humpback whale populations over several decades. A short film about the project (embedded above) was released today as part of the Cambridge Zero Climate Change Festival.

“Over the past century, we have seen almost a million species pushed to the brink of extinction. Nature is quieting down,” said Matthew Agarwala, an economist at the University of Cambridge. “Researchers, including me, have long been sounding the alarm about the consequences of biodiversity loss, but the message is not getting through. The music is visceral and emotional, and grabs people's attention in a way that scientific papers simply cannot."

Mendelssohn traveled to England and Scotland at the invitation of the Philharmonic Society. It was during his visit to Fingal's Cave on the Scottish island of Staffa that inspiration struck, and he soon wrote the opening theme that came to him. The opening notes feature violas, cellos and bassoons to evoke the beauty of the cave, while a secondary theme is intended to convey the rolling waves of the sea.

He finished the play in June 1832 and conducted the first performance in January 1833 in Berlin. It is widely considered to be one of his greatest compositions, sometimes described as a symphonic poem. No less a luminary than Johannes Brahms once said, "I would gladly give anything I wrote for composing something like the overture to Hebrides."

According to Agarwala, there are about 30,000 notes in Mendelssohn's original score, which is roughly the number of humpback whales that roamed the oceans in 1829. But a thriving whaling industry reduced their numbers at the edge of extinction. By the 1960s, there were only around 5,000 humpback whales left, and the International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned commercial hunting of humpback whales as a protective measure.

Enlarge / Score Hebrides Redacted with notes erased to reflect the decline of the humpback whale population. This segment corresponds to 1890, when 60 percent of the whales remained. Ewan Campbell

The species has since rebounded, with a global population of around 135,000 whales in 2018, 13,000 of which live in the North Atlantic. But they still face threats such as becoming entangled in fishing gear, colliding with ships and excessive ocean noise, as well as the destruction of their coastal habitats and the adverse effects of climate change.

>

This is why Agarwala and composer Ewan Campbell chose to build Hebrides Redacted around the fate of these creatures, thinking it highly likely that during his journey Mendelssohn would have seen one or two humpback whales, or hundreds. Campbell divided the score into sections to represent the decades and phased out the notes based on the decline in whale populations over those decades. Still, the article ends optimistically, allowing whale populations to increase by 8% every decade in the future.

"At its lowest, the score is thin and fragmented, with isolated notes reaching...