The Hebrides Redacted: Nature is going quiet

Economist Matthew Agarwala and composer & conductor Ewan Campbell have redacted Felix Mendelssohn’s ‘Hebrides Overture’ to show the precipitous decline in the North Atlantic Humpback whale population since the piece was written.

Inspired by a voyage to Fingal’s Cave in 1829 just before the introduction of mechanised industrial fishing, Mendelssohn’s music starts as intact as the whale population, but is increasingly deleted as the decades pass, and the notes in the corresponding bars of music are redacted according to the percentage loss of the whale population. In the face of devastating destruction nature is resilient and always beautiful, and so even when two-thirds of the music is absent there remains a modest and delicate beauty, though a pale imitation of its once dramatic glory.

About the organisers:

Ewan Campbell: Ewan’s orchestral piece Frail Skies, premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra in 2018, was described as having “the ability to create atmosphere and colour, but also an understanding of dramatic impetus” (Bachtrack). Often inspired by everyday phenomena, Ewan’s music features quotidian sounds, while his cartographic scores, in collaboration with Ordnance Survey, are written directly onto maps: “songlines wrapped as contours and slopes” (Robert Macfarlane).

Ewan’s music has been awarded several international composition prizes including the New York-based Counterpoint Competition, the Forme uniche Competition in Adelaide and the Italian Mare Nostrum Competition.  He has also worked with notable performers including Britten Sinfonia, Küss Quartet, Fukio Ensemble, Lontano, Ensemble Matisse, Consortium 5, The Hermes Experiment, Magnard Ensemble, Dr K Sextet, Anton Lukoszevieze, Gaby Bultmann, Thomas Gould and Clare Hammond.

Matthew Agarwala is an economist interested in measuring and delivering sustainability, wellbeing, and productivity. His research is motivated by the belief that 21st century progress cannot be described by 20th century statistics. Matthew leads the Bennett Institute’s Wealth Economy project, which seeks to transform economic measurement to better reflect sustainability, inequality, and human wellbeing. He is also a member of The Productivity Institute – the UK’s largest ever economics research grant – which focuses on addressing the ‘productivity puzzle’.

Matthew Agarwala: Matthew regularly consults for governments and scientific organizations on topics of natural capital, ecosystem services, green finance, wellbeing, and sustainability. He enjoys working across sectors and disciplines, and his co-authors include ecologists, economists, conservation scientists and practitioners, social anthropologists, civil servants, members of UK Parliament, and Nobel Laureates in peace, medicine, physics, and chemistry. Beyond Cambridge, Matthew maintains active research networks in Canada, Hong Kong, Germany, USA, Japan, and throughout the UK. He is a regular media contributor (Bloomberg, NYTimes, FT, Guardian, Times, Channel 4 News, BBC Radio).

Ewan is the Director of Music at Churchill and Murray Edwards Colleges in Cambridge, and conducts the Wilderness Orchestra which performs his orchestral adaptations of artists such as Radiohead, David Bowie and Nina Simone.