The other day, I wrote about using Google’s Learn About AI platform, with a focus on how bird songs influenced music composers. I took my notes from that Learn About platform and moved some of it into Google’s NotebookLM to do some further inquiry (and to save my notes, as Learn About refreshes each time you exit). The result was a sort of ancillary notebook of ideas, as NotebookLM both gathered my research and then expanded on it a bit more. I am still intent to dive even further and look into how to compose music, with bird song as the backdrop.
I like that in NotebookLM I could create an outline of the main elements of the resources and look at a timeline of discoveries and creation of music. For example, I am now curious to further investigate how David Rothenberg (I don’t know of him) created a jazz piece with a thrush.
Here is the timeline:
This timeline focuses on the use of birdsong in Western music, as the provided sources are limited in their scope regarding other musical traditions.
13th Century:
- c. 1250: “Sumer is icumen in,” an English song, becomes likely the earliest instance of notated birdsong, featuring the cuckoo’s call.
14th Century:
- Composers like Jean Vaillant begin quoting birdsong in their compositions, marking a growing interest in incorporating natural sounds into music.
17th Century:
- 1650: Athanasius Kircher publishes Musurgia Universalis, an encyclopedia that includes musical notation of several bird calls, demonstrating an early attempt at systematic transcription of birdsong.
- c. 1669: Heinrich Biber composes Sonata Representiva, featuring sections named after birds and animals. He uses string techniques to imitate bird sounds, including the nightingale, cuckoo, and chicken.
18th Century:
- c. 1715: John Walsh publishes Bird Fancyer’s Delight, a collection of short musical phrases labeled with bird names intended for teaching caged birds to sing.
19th Century:
- Composers like Beethoven, Delius, Handel, and Vivaldi prominently feature birdsong, particularly the cuckoo and nightingale, in their works.
20th Century:
- 1924: Cellist Beatrice Harrison performs a live BBC radio broadcast with nightingales, marking the first outside broadcast for the BBC and highlighting the potential for musical interplay between humans and birds.
- 1923-1924: Ottorino Respighi composes Pines of Rome, possibly the first piece to incorporate pre-recorded birdsong.
- Late 1920s: Respighi composes Gli Uccelli (“The Birds”), based on Baroque pieces imitating various birds.
- Mid-20th Century: Olivier Messiaen extensively utilizes birdsong in his compositions, including Catalogue d’oiseaux and Réveil des oiseaux, pioneering a detailed approach to integrating birdsong into music.
- 1960s-1970s: Popular music bands like Pink Floyd and singers like Kate Bush begin incorporating birdsong sound effects into their albums.
21st Century:
- 2000: Jazz musician David Rothenberg improvises a duet with a laughing thrush, exploring the musical connection between humans and birds and challenging the traditional definition of music.
- 2003: Jonathan Harvey’s Bird Concerto with Piano Song premieres, utilizing slowed-down recordings of American West Coast bird songs to reveal their intricate musicality.
- 2017: Hollis Taylor publishes a book arguing that the vocalizations of the pied butcherbird are music, using musical transcriptions and field recordings to support her claim.
Of course, I had to try the AI Podcast creator, but since I have so many sources and notes, the audio is pretty long (about 15 minutes).
My next step is a bit of remix of those voices. That will be coming soon.
Peace (in explorations),
Kevin