There is something very hypnotic about the birds, and very primal
Of course they inspired a lot of early human music
Birds of New York: A Soundscape
Menagerie: Just between us species.
When I was studying music composition at Columbia University in the 1980s and began work on a series of chamber ensemble pieces with bird-inspired titles, I was doing something that many musicians before me had done. Birds were undoubtedly an inspiration at the dawn of human music making: Bird-bone flutes date back some 42,000 years. In later times, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Stravinsky, Respighi and Messiaen all embraced bird song in their music. And of course the natural, soaring musicality of the avian species was not lost on players like Charlie Parker or bands like the Byrds, the Yardbirds and Wings.
The metaphor available in bird flight is equally important, as sounds soar through the air no less than a flying bird does. Flight and music both represent freedom from earthbound restraint. But music is even more intangible; music is made of the air, the medium of flight, the ether between us. Music is made of the sky.
I gave these early pieces titles like “Kestrels,” “Raptors,” “Of Being Is a Bird” and “With the Wind.” Rather than imitating bird song, that music tried to evoke a sense of play in the freedom, dynamism and ecstasy available in skyborne hovering, diving and soaring.
In the mid-1990s I struggled with traditional European instruments as a means of modern cultural expression. The standard orchestral instruments are wonderful culminations of generations of inspiration and craft. Still, they’re from other, older cultures with deep histories. They seemed to me perfect, but ancient; beautiful, but nostalgic; wondrous, but the voices of an increasingly distant past.
I soon realized the musical instruments of Mozart’s time were not necessary to my own path as an artist simply because I had worked with them previously.
Over time I moved from traditional compositions to sound installations: creating composed sonic environments in particular places. Last year, after a nasty, long winter, using resonant signals from pulsar stars, I created “Rhythms of Stars,” an installation for the chapel at Columbia. I noticed that when the doors of the chapel were open, the birds singing outside made a tremendous impact on the interior space and the installation sound. It was compelling, and I knew immediately that I would make an installation with the sounds of the birds themselves.
From that came “When Soaring Sings,” an installation that features the sounds of 102 species of birds — songs, calls, choruses and drumming — kindly made available by the Macaulay Library of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which holds the largest collection of wildlife sounds in the world. The piece is, in a way, a portrait of New York State — the calls of the birds in the piece are made only by species that return to nest in the state in spring. This multichannel sound field emulates the experience of hearing birds in three-dimensional space, just as we hear birds in a forest on all sides of us, singing, flitting and moving. But more than a sound field is intended in this composition.
Birds of New York
An excerpt from the author’s sound installation, “When Soaring Sings,” with an original animation by Lilli Carré.
June 12, 2015.
When listening to a flute we identify the instrument and also perceive the specific music being played. But as bird song is recognized as a bird’s sound rather than as extended musical thought, the installation presents a challenge. In composing with bird song, I noticed that the sounds seemed to flip continually — as charming bird sounds, or instead as part of the larger textures and forms of the music that I was composing. So the reaction of a visitor who said that it was a great idea to put nature recordings in a church was understandable, but it didn’t fully capture the compositional nature of the work.
The birdcalls function as melodic fragments, counterpoint, textures, rhythm, color effects and other music elements of the work. By slightly time-stretching birdcall samples, or extending passages with extra tweets, peeps and other song elements, I made them “fit” with one another musically to create phrases, harmonies and orchestrations. By extreme time dilation I could create drones, arching glissandos, mighty fanfarelike brassy sounds and other dramatic space-filling effects.
As I worked on the sound it struck me that I was composing a kind of spatial chamber music as performed by virtuosos and sung by some of the world’s greatest sopranos. I also realized that I already knew these sounds — they are around us constantly in the city and are a major, astounding part of our soundscape.
Jeff Talman is a sound artist based in New York. His installations have been presented at sites in several countries.
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