Birds in Music and Birdsong

Birds in Music

• Birdsong is a beautiful natural sound that is especially appreciated in springtime.
• Birds inspire many composers to transfer sounds of nature into music.
• These compositions evoke feelings experienced while watching or listening to birds returning in spring or departing in autumn.
• Composers imitate birdsong using instruments or voices, while others incorporate recordings of birdsong.

Birdsong

• Mstly birdsong involves the complex song of a male, or rarely a female.
• Sorusong is crucial for survival during the breeding season.
• Males use their songs which attract females and ward off rival males.
• Short, simple calls are used which are used by both sexes in all seasons.
• Calls facilitate communication during feeding, partner exchange during incubation, and maintaining contact within flocks.
• Birdsong serves for communication, similar to human speech, rather than expressing emotions.

Origin of Human Speech

• Charles Darwin pondered how humans developed speech, suggesting it originated from singing, leading to words expressing complex emotions.
• Darwin's idea suggests that human language comes from complex bird songs.
• Human language arose from animal kingdom communication forms such as complex bird songs.
• Short information messages like those used by monkeys where people combined expression forming unique language.
• Humans can convey information like monkeys but have a melodic ability to compose varied phrases.
• Research suggests humans sang first, then, after that, incorporated lexical elements into their songs.

Bird Inspiration for Composers

• Birds, with their beauty and songs, have inspired composers and songs over time

• Birds appear frequently in Western classical music since the 14th century.

• Composers began to imitate or incorporate birds and their songs into compositions

• Jean Vaillant's "Par maintes foys" from the 14th century features vocal and instrumental bird sounds.

• Clément Janequin's "Le Chant Des Oiseaux" uses vocals to narrate the awakening of the human heart by birds after winter.

• The music uses three birds known in the music which are known in music as the blackbird, nightingale, and cuckoo.

• Iacob Handl Gallus, a Renaissance composer of Slovenian origin, composed "Anseris est giga" capturing the sound of the cuckoo, crow, and goose.

• The Baroque era showcased varied bird imitations, an example is François Couperin's "Le rossignol en amour."

• Other baroque music with bird sounds includes Vivaldi's "Il Gardellino" and Louis-Claude Daquin's "Le coucou."

• Later composers continued to include birdsong in their compositions.

• The opening of Ludwig van Beethoven's 5th Symphony is very similar to the song of the yellowhammer, and in nature

Bird Depictions in Compositions

• The cuckoo, with its simple song, and the nightingale, are the two birds most frequently highlighted by composers with music.

Cuckoo

• The cuckoo is a widespread forest dweller in Europe known for the inclusion of the call into music, which is likely due to birdsong

• Male cuckoos sing a loud, two-syllable song to call females.

• The distinctive "kuku" sound is echoed in numerous songs, including the Slovenian folk song "Slišala sem ptičko pet, zapela je kuku."

• Cuckoo calls are common in orchestral works such as Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1.

• Mahler uses the cuckoo song to symbolize awakening nature, and takes the first part of 1st symphony

• Mahler's cuckoo differs slightly, which is a falling fourth.

• Antonio Vivaldi, Ludwig van Beethoven, Camille Säint-Saens, Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov, Frederick Delius and Ottorino Respighi represented the cuckoo in their music.

Nightingale

• The nightingale is often heard than seen, as some sing both day and night.

• The nightingale's song is known for being difficult to imitate has not stopped composers from writing music.

• George Händel and Beethoven were inspired nightingales pet and song in their music

• Ottorino Respighi included a recording of a nightingale's song.

• In comparison to many other forms of composer Ottorino Respighi translated this song into note form

• Respighi's suite which shows birds such as pigeons, and the other acts such as wing flapping of chickens ctc

• Georg Friedrich Händel's "Cuckoo and Nightingale" musically intertwines those two birds.

• A dialogue between the cuckoo which is the flute section and the nightingale.

Bird Imitation

• Humans can imitate bird species, and birds can use it to compete with other birds

• Most birds cannot be imitated, experts can only provide an estimate of how it sound by birdsongs.

• Nowadays bird songs can be heard on many devices that are available for experts and musicians

• It would be ideal to know when the music came out and know what music comes from parts of birds which is know where to find it in music

• The separation of how the black headed has changed from what it means to be birding is also key to know in music

• Olivier Messiaen used ornithology as a way to not compose as other composers did, although he did not compose as a person

• He then put into his music called the Ptič style to show birds by having its music

• All this creation into music came when he released a book called The Katalog ptic showing this world.

Other Birds

• Besides cuckoos and nightingales, composers include blackbirds, ducks, tits, magpies, cranes and many other things

• Composers have expressed the emotion the birds have showed them from it.

• The collection from being connected to songs such as showing the birds is a way for the birds to get around

• Some birds promises happiness and other tell of diseases and death for the music

• Some have been taken the love of Jazz which includes Charlie Paker in which has lead to the creation of Ornito, in which

• The music is used to show the fun in birds which is a way which to move around

• Some musical artists have not mixed the music aspect and just recorded it the way it is

• Einojuhani Rautavaara used his music to show all the types of birds through how he found his work

• The birds have gotten so used that both the classic music as well as fun music show them.

• One of best musical albums and compositions from Pink Floyd uses real sounds for its album in 1969 with all the recordings

• What can you say about what happens in the birding world is due to the harm what we do to nature as said by Petra Vrh Vrezec