This is fantastic. Love it so much. 👏👏

Seems to be kind of a heavy-weight ballet...

I love this one, as I listen I can feel the depth and vastness of the ocean. Just the other day, I watched a youtube video of a lady on a boat off the coast of Maui IIRC, playing violin for the whales, and they surfaced near the boat to listen.

Such stunning "oceanic" soundscapes and effects! Absolutely incredible composition and orchestration, Bruce!

Oceanic Musique – Call of the Whales
March 2023
Duration: 3:30
Listen to the Oceanic Musique Playlist https://soundcloud.com/bruce-klepper-1/sets/oceanic-musique
Special thanks to John-Marc Ventimiglia @john-marc-ventimiglia for his highly valued musical input and for creating the humpback whale sound library used to compose this piece.

Back from Maui, with two incredible whale tours and ten wonderful days by the ocean.  It is estimated that as many as 10,000 humpback whales travel from Alaska to visit the Hawaiian Islands to breed and give birth, starting in November and lasting through about May. 

Humpback whales, numbered around 100,000 in the early 1900's. Like other large whales, the humpback whale was a target for the whaling industry. Humans once hunted the species to the brink of extinction for soap, oil and pet food, its population fell to around 5,000 by the 1960s.  Due to the wonderful organizations dedicated to saving the whales, the numbers of whales have partially recovered worldwide, while entanglement in fishing gear, collisions with ships, and pollution continue to affect the species.

In a study published in 2023 scientists found that humpback songs easily spread from one population to another across the Pacific Ocean. It can take just a couple of years for a song to move several thousand miles.

When scientists listen to humpback whales, they sort the vocalizations they hear into two different categories: song and non-song calls.  While all humpback whales can vocalize, scientists believe only males sing, and their songs are most often heard in their breeding grounds. The second category, calls, includes all the non-song vocalizations that humpbacks make. Some call types have been associated with feeding or social behaviors. Unlike songs, calls are relatively short, and don’t have a repetitive structure.

The question of whether whales sometimes sing purely for aesthetic enjoyment, personal satisfaction, or 'for art's sake', is considered by some to be an open question.  With our tendency to anthropomorphize the world around us, whale songs sound haunting and sad awakening a world of human feelings. 

For clarinet, bass clarinet, heckelphone, bamboo flute, harp, tuba, humpback whale and shrimp recordings, virtual instruments and percussion.

Oceanic Musique - Call of the Whales

Mysterious, Magical, Music is Wonderful!  Thanks for visiting!  Please feel free to share my music.  Enjoy!

Bruce Klepper is a Colorado based composer. Klepper writes music in a number of different styles, including contemporary classical music, jazz, soundscapes using field recordings, ambient music, and ballet music.  Klepper has been composing music for Danse Etoile Ballet (www.danseetoile.org) since 2016. Klepper has been collaborating with Parlando School of Musical Arts (www.parlando.org) faculty Britta De Groot and Sergei Govorov, composing and arranging new music for the dynamic piano and saxophone duo to premier around the United States. Klepper's music premiered in Carnegie Hall, September 2022.  Klepper's music can be heard on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and SoundCloud. 

Klepper studied music composition in the 1970's and received a degree in music composition and theory.  After writing music for many years and starting a tech company based in Colorado, Klepper retired in 2014 from business so he could devote myself to his true passion, composing music. 

NOTE: there is no compression added to the tracks in order to preserve the full range of dynamics. You may want to listen with headphones or increase the volume on some tracks for the best listening experience.

Comments

Anastasiya Ihnatovich

David Marconi

conover

1nCoGn17o

Georg Boehme

DOLLY DEMELI

Liz Dicker

James Whiteman

No killie fish

ApproachToSilence [²]