And God Created Great Whales

1, is a symphonic poem for orchestra and recorded whale sounds by the American composer Alan Hovhaness.

The music contains elements of melodic pentatonicism and asynchronous aleatoricism, which Hovhaness referred to as "free non-rhythm chaos.

[citation needed] Larry Rohter of The New York Times said the piece "can veer toward kitsch.

"[6] Edward Greenfield of Gramophone similarly gave the work mixed praise, stating:With its fluent use of gimmicks, it would be easy to mock this, starting as it does with an aleatory twitter which leads on to pentatonic doodling of a kind that one improvised as a child on the black keys of the piano.

Then comes the first of the tapes of the songs of the great humpback whale, recorded specially, followed by the first huge climax, very impressive except that the pentatonic melody which roars out on trombones (leading to whale-song imitations) is not distinctive enough, almost banal, punctuated by glockenspiel.