Adventures in Learning to Play Whale Song on the French Horn
I’m Abigail Sanders, a composer and french horn player from England. My work focuses on the cultural relationship between humans and animals; I am particularly interested in the transcription and performance of humpback whale song. While studying horn at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England, I met the pioneering baroque flautist, Stephen Preston, and was a member of his Ecosonics ensemble, exploring animal communication as a source of improvisation. I then discovered the resemblance be
This was the first whale song that I learned to play on the french horn. The score sources the first publication of recorded whale vocalisation: the 1970 album, "Songs of the Humpback Whale." This LP received wide distribution and contributed significantly to the the ‘Save the Whales’ movement, which resulted in new legislation that stopped global commercial whaling. As a result, the humpback whale population recovered from near extinction and headed toward healthy numbers until 2014, when warming ocean tem