By Alan Powers
Can non-humans be said to be artists? Anyone who hears an American Wood Thrush or a European Blackbird may be stunned to realize — upon close listening — the variety and indeed artistry of their vocalizations. The French composer and ornithologist Mache came up with the term “zoomusicology” for studying music and sound across species and along the nature-culture continuum.
One thing is very clear. Musicians and composers intrigued by birdsong — or as I prefer, birdtalk — cannot sleep late. The famous French composer Messiaen made serious studies of bird sounds for decades, rising before dawn to witness individual birds and the dawn chorus, which he uses in works like Catalogue d’oiseau. I, too rose before four AM while I was writing most chapters in my book, Birdtalk: Conversations with Birds.
One of Messiaen’s birds is the Blackbird, the same species Paul McCartney has “singing in the dead of night.” Messiaen captures the melodic beauty and the drummer instinct of the Blackbird. Even the greatest American bird melodist, the pentatonic Wood Thrush, often ends with a rattle and a rim-shot. I theorize that birds are all so young, they want to be drummers.
I lectured in Italian on the Blackbirds of Venice and Milan, the site of the talk, and punned in my title, “Un Merlo buon Veneziano,” or “a good Venetian Merlo(t),” though the word “merlo” for bird is accented on its first syllable, while the wine on its last. (There’s a link to my Italian talk on my website, www.habitableworlds.com, along with several of my bird-versions from radio interviews in New York and Milan.)
Birdtalk contributes to the field by asking beyond biology, “What are they saying — and can we learn from them and respond?” I conclude, with Len Howard’s Birds as Individuals, that impressing a mate counts about as much for birds as for human vocalization. In fact, Howard observed the best bird singing well after mating occurred. I am most confident concerning what birds are not discussing: sports, money, fashion, religion, politics.
As for what they do discuss, I know their differing vocalizations depend on chronobiology–time of day, time of month, time of year. And they differ with weather — cold weather gives them no extra energy for speech, though certain birds like Chickadees are famous cold-talkers (see Emerson’s poem, “Titmouse”), discussing winds and food, and warning of predators. And birds keen for losses, sometimes a high-pitched scream for a Grackle mate snatched by a hawk.
Hollis Taylor, an Australian violinist/composer and Ph.D. in the Pied Butcherbird, created the site zoomusicology.com while at Paris, in the Laboratoire d’Eco-anthropologie e Ethnobiologie at the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle. On it are several French, Finnish, Australian and Canadian musicians and composers (as well as yours truly). On the site, you can scroll down to my own pdf file, including a couple of jazz heads I’ve written based on specific birds, and past mine to Hollis Taylor’s. Hers includes a marvelous Pied Butcherbird MP3. It answers the question of whether birds are artists, this bird from Alice Springs, Australia. I can whistle the notes it does, but I cannot perform nearly as well. Conversely, a neighbor has a cockatoo (also an Australian bird) who has mimicked my laughter exactly over many years.
We are the Loud and Proud Species, and our pride deafens us to what we can learn from other species. From birds I have learned about predation (warnings) and weather, about elation and plangent mood, about virtuosity, about quartertones and glissandos, about non-diatonic scales and modes like the pentatonic-blues scale and the Lydian mode — and others that I have no name for.
From bird song, mostly I have learned about the fragility of bird life, and the place of beauty in a fragile life. I have re-learned the need for beauty to cushion mortality–a need which American education often ignores, though menacing gang graffitti often celebrates via beautiful script.
When I give my Birdtalk talks, I often conclude by playing trombone, “O Sole Mio,” which I note is like dawn birdsong in that it celebrates the sun. Or I end with piano jazz, my “Upthrush” based on the Wood Thrush. That jazz piece was the only part of my Milan lecture that the audience wanted repeated. So, can non-humans be artists? You decide.
