Rorqual
2024 (55:00)
Song cycle for mezzo-soprano voice, flute, clarinet, cello, piano, percussion
Music by Wally Gunn
Text by various authors
Commissioned by Rubiks Collective
‘Rorqual’ is a 60 minute song cycle for vocalist and chamber ensemble by Wally Gunn with text from various authors, including contemporary poet Katie Berta. The work was commissioned by Rubiks Collective, and the premiere season features the ensemble joined by vocalist Gian Slater.
In the northeast Pacific in the late 1980s, oceanographers detected a uniquely high-pitched whale song that had never been documented before. It seemed to be coming from a single individual. Scientists dubbed it the ‘52-Hertz Whale,’ and continued to record it whenever its song was detected.
To this day, the whale continues to sing, but has never been sighted, nor been identified by species. Its migration patterns resemble those of the rorqual whale family—blue and fin whales specifically—but its voice is much higher. The recordings suggest the whale has never found a mate or a pod; whether this is because other whales can’t hear it, or do not recognise it as one of their species, is not known. It has been called by some “the world’s loneliest whale.”
‘Rorqual’ takes the story of story of the 52-Hertz Whale as the inspiration for an intimate and affecting work that journeys through withdrawal, solitude, resilience, and connection.
Using found and repurposed texts drawn from the deep past to the present, composer Wally Gunn’s song cycle fuses classical and indie-rock music, and features the ethereal vocals of jazz singer Gian Slater, the searingly precise musicians of Rubiks Collective, immersive interludes from sound artist Tilman Robinson, and dark dreamscape projections from film artist Chris Bennett.
The show takes the audience from the ocean’s shimmering surface to its mysterious depths, and back.
Synopsis
The sea feels like your home. A vast entity that contains all beginnings and all endings, and in which all things are possible. You imagine what might be possible. Drawn away from the teeming shore, you let the currents of curiosity pull you towards the expanses of the open ocean, leaving behind all you have known. You are drifting away. The impulse to start a descent makes you move away from the light, and move towards the darkness. Arriving in the deep, all on your own, you feel the first shock of it—the cold, the pressure, the gloom. It is loneliness. You sing to keep yourself company, and discover that this simple act connects you to your surroundings. It binds you to the living and non-living things which sing, each in their own way, in pulses, waves, and booms, reverberating through the water, and the chorus forms a oneness of which you are part. Your song is your own. It is unique and strange. It may ward off the more cautious souls, yet you are not deterred. Now, you are transformed into a creature of solitude. You prefer it. Later, there will be moments when you imagine unquiet voices asking uneasy questions. You will understand that you are expected to stay tethered to the world above. So, you will keep hold of all that was learned on your journey to the depths, and you will surface on your own terms, navigating your own course, eschewing expectation. An autonomous particle, at one with every other particle in the cosmos. Has anyone else experienced this? Are there others like you? Are you the first, or the last of your kind?
Text sources
Berta, Katie (b. 1986): [Valuing sincerity most of all] (originally published in The Yale Review, 2022) from collective (2023)
Berta, Katie (b. 1986): [Like a tunnel] from collective (2023)
Berta, Katie (b. 1986): [We will be as numerous as the stars in the heavens] from collective (2023)
Carman, Bliss (1861 – 1929): XLVII from Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics (1907)
Darwin, Charles (1809 – 1882): On The Origin of Species (1859)
Dickinson, Emily (1830 – 1886): The Loneliness One dare not sound— (1861)
Eres, Dr Robert; Lim, Dr Michelle; Peck, Ms Claire: The Young Australian Loneliness Survey (2019)
Long, Lily A. (1862 – 1927): The Singing Place (1922)
Verne, Jules (1828 – 1905): Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870)
Rorqual . Catalogue 142 . Copyright © Wally Gunn . September 2021