Antarctica Ambient Music

Antarctica

Beside Herself

Multi-layered, dark drone that even depresses myself …

Image: Dave Pape (Public Domain)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antarctica_6400px_from_Blue_Marble.jpg

The Australian Voices
Conductor | Gordon Hamilton

View the score: https://bit.ly/32Cd8AX

I wrote Antarctica during and after a trip to Casey Station, Antarctica onboard the icebreaker Aurora Australis – an Australian icon, nearing the end of her service. I was the lucky guest of the Australian Antarctic Division on an Aurora Legacy Fellowship.

The opening movement is an aria set against the backdrop of a recording I made of the ship cutting through sea-ice (standing in the bow while my stinging hands clenched the microphone! – I soon learned to glove-up!). A solo voice sings, hand-in-hand with mighty bricks of harmony: a blazing seascape coated in white. Aeliatoric music follows, depicting a hill near Casey Station where the scene can be divided into three colossal horizontal strips of sky, sea and ice. ‘Whalesong’ is a harmonisation of a finback whale call: the Aurora Australis recovered a hydrophone which had been recording the crooning of sea mammals. Over a year’s worth of sound was logged; I picked the bit in D-minor. Infinite Monochrome is a pock-marked canon inspired by – in the words of Voyage Leader James Maloney – “...the vision of a brilliant bright expanse where ice, snow and cloud coalesced, holding the ship suspended in white nothingness.” Every direction is a hiss of white (painful to the naked eye!) and the frozen sea bristles, splintered by town-sized icebergs. In the last movement ‘Reeve Hill’ short chorale-like utterances are sown among long thoughtful stillnesses, played over my recording of ice gently melting on Reeve Hill, far-off Adélie penguins and snow-petrels nattering to each other.

The work is for voices (their type unspecified), with various moments of solo singing.

Antarctica (for choir)

A dreamy sonic exploration of the eternal ice realm. Played live. 
Equipment used: Lyra-8, Monologue, Pigments 2.

Instructions of use: Listen while in a meditative state, in a low volume environment. Enjoy.

Antarctica

Michele Mercure