White On White (excerpt) by Cheryl E. Leonard

"White on White" (2012) by Cheryl E. Leonard. This is an excerpt from the middle (1:43-4:59) of the complete composition, which is 7:39. The piece is scored for three musicians playing amplified Adélie penguin sternum bone, with recordings of bowed penguin bones, rubbed rocks, and sea salt falling on a penguin skull.

In the austral summer of 2008-2009 I traveled to the Antarctic Peninsula and lived and worked at Palmer Research Station on a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. During my month at Palmer I explored the local area, searching out and recording natural soundscapes, and collecting natural objects to use as musical instruments. After returning home to America I began work on a set of compositions, Antarctica: Music from the Ice, that combine these elements, and are inspired by aspects of the Antarctic Peninsula’s environments and ecosystems.

"White on White" is the only piece in the set that does not incorporate field recordings. Instead, all sounds are produced by playing bones and rocks from Antarctica. The title invokes snow falling on penguin bones and references the catastrophic decline of Adélie penguin colonies near Palmer Station.

Over the last 30 or so years the Western Antarctic Peninsula has warmed dramatically, it's once polar ecosystem morphing into a more sub-antarctic one. Rising temperatures are causing changes that, in less than 10 years, will almost certainly result in the extinction of Adélie penguins in the northern portions of the peninsula. First, the amount of sea ice that develops each winter has decreased by over 20 percent. This reduces the availability of the Adélies' favorite foods, silverfish and krill, and deprives them of important feeding and resting platforms near their winter feeding grounds. Secondly, as the previously cold and dry climate has become warmer and wetter, snowfall has increased. Because Adélies build their nests out of stones, more snow shortens the window of time available to raise their young, and ill-timed storms can bury or drown eggs and chicks.

I envision White on White as being set several years in the future, after all the Adélie penguin rookeries on the islands around Palmer Station have expired. Instead of the raucous kazooing that once filled the air, among the piles of polished stones that comprise abandoned colony sites we hear only wind, snow, and the ghosts of Adélie vocalizations.