BEHIND THE CHAPEL
By Noah Al-Shemmari
How often do you take a moment away from your busy life to sit back and listen to the everchanging environment around you? This spot on campus is excellent for listening to birds’ calls, songs that could be considered miniature compositions where the birds are both the composers and performers. Musical pieces written by humans have drawn inspiration from birds and their songs for centuries, whether it be transposing their melodies, imitating their calls with instruments, or depicting the bird’s surrounding environment. Music can convey information about birds that cannot be found in nature guidebooks, poems, or paintings. Certain compositions show us how birds present themselves and fit into their habitats in the sense of the sound they create. This SoundSite considers how music imitates natural life and how composers draw attention to how animals interact with their environments sonically in wildlife.
The Lark Ascending
Here is a recording of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, a romance for solo violin and orchestra inspired by George Meredith’s poem (see below). Williams utilizes the violin to portray the lark, a bird known for its extravagant songs, and its calls and flight. The lark has a large repertoire of elaborate melodies that are often long and rambling and involve trills, large note leaps, and mimicry. The composer chose to symbolize the lark with a violin because of the instrument's similar tone, extensive note range, and power to the bird's. The Lark Ascending begins with a gentle introduction within a D major pentatonic key from the woodwind and string sections to create the setting of a pastoral landscape. The violin then introduces itself into the piece with light trills, which is identical to how a lark makes its presence known in its area. A great portrayal of the lark’s flight patterns can be heard in sections involving dotted eighth notes tied to sixteenth notes, followed by brilliant runs of ascending and descending notes in the key (0:44). Listen to how the crescendos of the violin imitate the idea of the bird’s swelling ascents and descents in the air as it explores an open landscape. The orchestra provides a peaceful accompaniment through sustained pitches and irregular rhythms in order to symbolize the stillness and open area of a pastoral farm. This allows the soloist's runs to be distinguished and recognized, much like the distinctiveness of both the lark’s calls and flying in an open-ground habitat. The use of the woodwinds’ timbre, ornaments, and trills can be perceived as other birds in the background of the scenery, especially at 8:22.
He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.
For singing till his heaven fills,
'Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes.
Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.
~George Meredith
The Lark's Presence in Pennsylvania
The horned lark is an avian native to Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, the population of these birds have been declining due to loss of habitat (plains, farmland, and forests) as a result of agricultural pesticides, wind turbines, and deforestation. Andrea Polli, an environmental activist and artist, believes that soundwalking is closely tied to political activism. In this spirit, my SoundSite is also an act of sonic activism with an intention of bringing public awareness to issues like habitat loss. In Pennsylvania, the Brandywine Conservancy is an organization that fights to preserve forests, farmland, historic sites, and water resources. Among the many species of birds protected on their Laurels Preserve is the horned lark. More information on the Brandywine Conservancy’s efforts to preserve natural bird habitats can be found here: https://www.brandywine.org/conservancy/conserve-land/protecting-important-bird-areas
What sounds of nature have you heard in music?
Rain?
Water body (ocean, river, waterfall, etc.)?
Birds?
Wind?
Something else?
Further Discussion
Many composers have imitated animals to convey ideas about nature. For example, in Telemann's Nachtigal, the light violin trills in the beginning are based on the song of a nightingale. The nightingale, who boasts a powerful and beautiful song, has long been associated throughout history with virtue and creativity, even being referred to as little poets and artists. Le Carnaval des animaux (The Carnival of the Animals), a fourteen-movement suite by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, explores the personalities of different animals. The second movement, Poules et coqs, features a staccato theme in the piano and strings that makes fun of a chicken’s impulsive instincts to run around and peck things through sounds of chickens pecking at grain. The movement titled Volière (Aviary) begins with the high strings buzzing to create the ambiance of a jungle, and the flute portrays a bird by playing high trills and arpeggiating scales. Finally, there is a movement where the clarinetist, who is offstage, mimics the call of a cuckoo bird. The piano’s line represents the dangerous jungle with hesitation and uncertainty in the ominous chords. Often cuckoos represent infidelity in literature and art because of their invasive egg-laying practices. However, in Saint-Saëns’s piece, we are encouraged to see the cuckoo as an isolated, stable instance that keeps the listener from getting lost in the dense woods.
Vaughan Williams’s composition The Lark Ascending interprets the lark’s variety of songs and flight patterns through a solo violin. The composer intended to highlight the bird’s sonic dominant position within its calm, pastoral habitat while also depicting how it interacts with the other open-land inhabitants.
Bibliography
Doolittle, Emily. Crickets in the Concert Hall: A History of Animals in Western Music. 2008, www.sibetrans.com/trans/articulo/94/crickets-in-the-concert-hall-a-history-of-animals-in-western-music.
Polli, Andrea. “Soundscape, Sonification, and Sound Activism.” AI & SOCIETY, vol. 27, no. 2, 2011, pp. 257–268., doi:10.1007/s00146-011-0345-3.
Protecting Important Bird Areas. 29 July 2015, www.brandywine.org/conservancy/conserve-land/protecting-important-bird-areas.