I wrote some program notes on Hovhaness's "And God Created Great Whales" and I am absolutely cracking up at the annotations in NYPhil musician's parts from the archives

"Look out for the whales"

basically poetry

there are lots of whale doodles

including singing whale doodles

the pirate ship "Moby's Sick," but the S appears to have been written over a previously erased letter

lmao these are all just from the first violin section

double bass section was more in it for the sexist humor

they have one really good whale doodle though

did you know whales have eyelashes

unlike the string players who have drawn all over the blank back pages of their parts, the principal clarinet seems to have drawn his whale as an actual reminder that the whale tape would be playing?

this is a popular measure for sarcasm

I love that they only digitize annotated parts, so all these parts are basically preserved in the digital archive *because* of the whale doodles

I wish I could just publish this thread as my program notes, it's more entertaining than what I actually wrote

oh and here's where all the parts are if anyone's interested in digging more https://archives.nyphil.org/index.php/artifact/b8f96370-bd29-4d4c-8c8d-c9fb8cffcbe2-0.1?search-type=singleFilter&search-text=and+god+created+great+whales&doctype=part