Module 506 Draft- Draft, Outline, and Endnotes
Advisor: Simon Pope
Draft
Between the Song and the Silence
The Story of my Muses: How I started my Journey[1]
When I had begun to think about birdsong a few years ago, specifically that of extinct and threatened birds, I had wondered about how I could communicate their songs. I thought of recreating and recording the different birdsongs myself, and combining that with another track of ambient sounds from where you’d normally find those kinds of birds: fields, forests, shorelines.
I drew sketches and made some recordings of me doing some of the birdsongs, but I found it ultimately unsatisfying. I was working with some people from the Royal Ontario Museum (known as the ROM), and we discussed looking further to see if I could find any extant recordings of some of these birds. When we were looking at dates of last sightings of these birds, it occurred to me that there might still be people alive who were birdwatchers who had actually heard them. Better yet, they might have their own notes about the songs, and might even know how to do the calls.
I tracked down an elderly centenarian who now lived in a residence - let’s call him Jack- and arranged to go and visit him. By mutual arrangement I was to arrive with a bottle of Jura single malt in hand. In exchange, we would look through his notes, talk about his life-long birding adventures, and maybe give some bird calls a whirl while having a wee dram.
I showed up on the appointed day, armed with the Jura, and we sat in Jack’s room and sipped and reminisced. He told me about going birding with his uncle when he was small, and showed me a drawing he did of a passenger pigeon when he was 5 or 6 years old. He said that his uncle would tell him stories about there being so many passenger pigeons that when the flocks would take to the air, it would look like advancing thunderclouds, and sound as loud as thunder overhead. He said that there were so many of them that they all considered it unimaginable that they could vanish from the earth. His uncle maintained that it was indicative of the “end of times” that they were disappearing.
Once we were sufficiently lubricated, Jack began to go through his notes and demonstrate the various calls of different birds, and asked me to “call” them back to him. We’d been doing this back and forth for a while, when suddenly from the doorway someone else answered his call. Another resident, “John”, was standing there. John looked back and forth between us, and then called out another birdcall. Jack responded, and what happened after that mesmerised me. John entered further into the room and sang out another call, and Jack responded yet again. John shuffled over to the chair and sat (although I prefer to think of it as perched), looked closely at Jack, and emphatically called out another birdsong reminiscent of a query. The two of them carried on in this call and response, conversational birdsong really, for a good half hour longer, until one of the staff came looking for John. John looked more animated and far more relaxed than when he’d come in, and when the nurse helped him to his feet, he didn’t yell out and push her away in frustration, which is apparently what he’d usually do – a result of the dementia which severely impaired his ability to converse. Once on his feet, he shakily reached out to Jack, who took his hand and shook it.
I found this exchange profoundly moving, and it confirmed for me that there was something about birds and birdsong that fundamentally touches something deep within us.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Jack and John – they spoke using the extinguished voices of birds I would never hear: the Passenger Pigeon, the Labrador Duck and the Eskimo Curlew. I felt an unexpected sense of loss.
I began to wonder if, as the voices of species are extinguished, are we aware of these absences?
And if we had never heard their voices to begin with, could we truly miss them?
Over time, I asked myself if it would be possible to use an encounter between two elderly birdwatchers as the narrative framework for a performance which could provoke an awareness of such loss?
Time to let these ideas take flight…
Why birdsong is so compelling …
i.It’s in the genes: Vocal learning
What is it about birdsong that has the power to touch us so deeply? Some have said it’s all in the genes. Charles Darwin believed that language acquisition is instinctually driven, and that birds produce sounds that are analogous to human language. Like humans, songbirds would seem to have an innate repertoire of sounds, and their songs and call notes are taught by their parents, or indeed, foster parents. Moreover, he contended that a bird’s first attempts at song are not unlike an infant’s babbling. [2]
Subsequent research by Noam Chomsky and his colleagues would seem to support this idea. Vocal learning posits that we learn language first by babbling, eventually turning these sounds into words and later, sentences. Researchers do however, distinguish between speech and abstract thought, which is largely considered to be a uniquely human trait. In developing his theory of universal grammar, Chomsky argued that grammar is also distinctively human. Interestingly, recent studies have demonstrated that certain songbirds utilize complex syntax and intonation similar to that of humans. As one might expect, this has led to comparisons with primates, who are surprisingly inept at language acquisition and vocal learning, despite familial proximity.
This brings us back to the question of what could drive human affinity for birdsong. Vocal learning has evolved to varying degrees across species. Furthermore, specific genes found to be related to vocal learning have also been identified, although there is a great deal of variability in vocal learning abilities. It seems the same set of genes that enables humans to speak also confers on birds the ability to sing. It was further discovered that the way birds acquire specific birdsong seems to mirror the way humans acquire speech. It is probable that the development of vocal learning ability in humans and birds is a result of convergent evolution.[3] Given the genetic similarity, it is likely that the vocal learning abilities of birds and humans were shaped by shared environment and experience. Carel ten Cate suggests that intergenerational transmission of knowledge facilitated to some degree the coevolution of vocal learning in humans and birds. Dr. Doolittle’s exhortations to “talk to the animals” just might have some basis in fact.
ii.Have we heard this song before? Memory
Turning memory into narrative is common practice in the human experience. Our memories become entwined with the recollections of others, so that each time we recall them they subtly change. This layering of narrative, or collective memory, can serve to reinforce our perceptions of both our past and potential futures.[4]
As Ghassan Hage has said, “Song and music in particular, with their sub-symbolic meaningful qualities are often most appropriate in facilitating the voyage to this imaginary space of feelings”. [5] So too can sounds transport us.[6]
The writer Eva Hoffman declared, “Loss leaves a long trail in its wake. Sometimes, if the loss is large enough, the trail seeps and winds like invisible psychic ink through individual lives, decades, and generations”.[7] It has been has argued that “sharing memory is our default”, and that complex emotions such as grief, love and regret depend upon our personal memories and an awareness of the passing of time. Our imperfect recall is responsible for the endurance of the past within our present relationships.[8]
Perhaps it also speaks to the notion of déjà vu, which refers to the phenomenon of feeling as though something is very familiar when in fact you are experiencing it for the first time. For Steve Goodman and Luciana Parisi,” déjà vu suggests time collapsed onto itself, perhaps some kind of mnemonic haunting or future feedback effect.”.[9] Paramnesia is usually described as a psychopathology in which events are remembered while being experienced for the first time. It is generally thought that this occurrence is far more commonplace than would be expected of a memory disorder. Henri Bergson described paramnesia as a “symptom that explains that there is a recollection of the present, contemporaneous with the present itself”.[10] Thus, the calls of songbirds may literally “speak” to our memories of nascent attempts to communicate, conferring an uncanny familiarity with their songs.
It has been stated that “the importance of physical engagement with the world, through the senses, enables emotional expression to be made in artworks that can be perceived by both artist and audience”.[11] Furthermore, these memories of physical experiences spark creative cognition and stimulate the imagination. Mary Carruthers states:
“In Greek legend, memory, or Mnemosyne, is the mother of the Muses. That story places memory at the beginning, as the matrix of invention for all human arts, of all human making, including the making of ideas; it memorably encapsulates an assumption that memory and invention – what we now call creativity – if not exactly the same, are the closest thing to it. In order to create, in order to think at all, human beings require some mental tool or machine, and that machine lives in the intricate networks of their own memories. The requirement of memory for making new thoughts is at the heart of this traditional story. [12]
Julianne Lutz Warren, a writer and conservation biologist, created a work entitled “Hopes Echo” for the Deutsches Museum in Munich in 2015. Her work concerns the “sound fossil” left by the huia bird of New Zealand, which became extinct in the beginning of the 20th century due primarily to habitat loss coupled with overhunting. There are no extant audio recordings of this bird – it became extinct before the technology was available to make field recordings. The Maori people regarded the huia as sacred, and those who were high status were accorded the honor of wearing its feathers or skins. To lure the birds when hunting, they learned to imitate its song. This was passed down through the generations, a practice that continued for decades after the bird became extinct. In 1954 a man named RAL Bateley made a recording of a Maori man, Henare Hkamma, whistling the huia’s call. Warren presents the audio recording of Hkamma’s bird calls with text drawing our attention to the fact that we have the calls of an extinct bird performed by a now-dead Maori man mediated by a machine.[13]
These mediated memories of bird calls can be further explored within studies of memory and music which posit that “the human’s recovery of the past is simultaneously embodied, enabled and embedded”.[14] Musical memories are often mediated through devices for listening, whether directly, such as by listening to (or playing) a musical instrument, or through the use of recording and playback equipment. It may be argued that musical notation itself is a form of recording and playback technology which can allow for concise repetitions of music.[15] Research has shown that recall is greatly improved if the same music is played during the recollection of an event as was played during the original experience.[16] Remembering music demands participation from the cognitive, emotive, and somatosensory areas of the brain. Repetition helps to keep it cycling through our working memory.
Could the encounter between the two senior birdwatchers, presented within a familiar narrative framework of performance, evoke and recall memories of the past?
i.What’s in a song? Birdsong and music
There have been myriad attempts to capture the songs of birds – both long before and after the advent of recording technologies. These attempts have not always been mimetic; some are meant more to suggest the songs of birds, rather than to be actual representations of birdsong. An example of this is Clément Janequin’s Le Chant des oyseaulx from 1529, which is an onomatopoetic chanson. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No.6 in F major from 1808, also known as the Pastoral Symphony, quotes three birds: the cuckoo, the quail, and the nightingale. Interestingly, it is thought that he “borrowed” liberally from Athanasius Kircher’s influential musicology treatise Musurgia Univeralis: Bird songs, published in 1650. There is also the well-known and oft-performed 13th-century English round Sumer Is Icumen In which also imitates the call of the cuckoo – a common motif, likely due to the simplicity of the call - and is one of the earliest examples of notated music.[18] There are countless instances throughout the centuries and across cultures, of composers attempting to incorporate birdsong in some fashion into their works.
In parallel with this musical preoccupation was the quest to develop some form of notation which could be used to record birdsong. Musical notation was one of the earliest conventions used, and Kircher’s Musurgia Univeralis is considered to be one of the first examples of this use. Musical notation is still used in depicting and recording birdsong today, as well as being used by some contemporary ornithologists. As a method to make field recordings it has many disadvantages, notably that not everyone can read and write music – I fall into that category, for example. It has also been argued that any form of transcription simplifies the original sounds.[19]
Aretas A. Saunders maintained that musical notation is unsuitable as birds utilize musical intervals not represented in our musical notation.[20] Using musical instruments to reproduce these sounds is also problematic, as the sounds produced by instruments can only approximate the actual birdsongs.[21] Saunders created a method of notation in his A Guide to Bird Songs, published in 1935. Although considered by some to be one of the best systems for notating birdsong, it never really caught on with the public (or most ornithologists, for that matter). It is a score within three bands. The upper band is the descriptive of the “musical quality, such as “sharp trill” or “harsh rattle”. The line of the song is placed in the lowest band, and is written out phonetically. This is all modulated by the central band, in which symbols represent individual notes: a horizontal element signifying duration, the thickness representing volume, its placement within the band indicating pitch. A line connecting the notes indicate the phrase, and there is an additional notation to the left of the score which indicates pitch at that position.[22]
Sounds complicated? Out on a birding excursion with a group of ornithologists/musicians, I asked if we could give using the notation a whirl. One of the group had seen the system before, and we gamely tried to use it to record the birds we came across that day. By the end of the trip, we’d agreed that part of the problem was that unlike musical notation, where the notation represented constants, this notation would require the development of such metered constants. If you were familiar with the call of a bird, or as a form of notation for a personal birding journal, it might do, but it was, at least in our hands, too subjective. It is the very subjectivity of these types of notational forms which is problematic.
After the advent of recording equipment, composers began to incorporate the actual recordings of birds into their pieces. One of the first instances of a birdsong recording being used and deliberately scored into a work was Ottorino Respighi’s second orchestral work in his Roman Trilogy: The Pines of the Janiculum (I pini del Gianicolo: Lento). First performed in 1924, Respighi directed that a recording of a nightingale be made so that it could be played at the end of the movement, specifically on a Brunswick Panatrope record player. This was considered very avant-garde at the time, and quite sensational. This use of birdsong as objets trouvés is a tradition which carries on to today in contemporary music such as Pink Floyd’s Grantchester Meadows, from the experimental studio 1969 album Ummagumma. On this song, a taped loop of a skylark singing is heard in the background throughout. The selection of birdsong and calls related to place is also a device which has been used, for example, by the composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. He used pre-recorded calls and songs of Arctic birds in his work Cantus arcticus to provide the structure of his work. R. Murray Schafer has compositions in which nature itself provides the motives and structure. He has orchestrated outdoor performances in which the birds themselves provide the structure and timing of the piece. The use of birdsong and birdcalls in contemporary music can be found across all genres – from classical and jazz to death metal.[23]
In contemporary discussions of music and bird or animal sounds, I feel that we must begin to acknowledge the more-than-human, and not just look to the ways in which their sounds are appropriated and integrated into our music and soundscapes. We can look to the more-than-human as having agency in the creation of works in which their music and sounds are not only implicated in the stylistic form, but are also the basis of the structure of the work.[24] The burgeoning field of zoömusicology takes this as an area of both scientific and musical interest.
ii.What’s that sound? Mnemonics
As regards our feathered friends, there is a long history of mnemonics used as onomatopoeic devices to recall bird sounds, and they are widely cross-cultural. These mnemonics endeavor to mimic the rhythms and sounds of the songs using words and phrases from human language, regardless of the lack of concurrence of equivalent sounds.[25]
Athanasius Kircher’s influential musicology discourse Musurgia Univeralis: Bird songs, published in 1650 is an early and important example of this. The page has illustrations of five birds: a cock, a hen and her chicks, a parrot, a quail, and a cuckoo. Beside each bird is not only the musical notation of its call, but the mnemonic description. No doubt a nod to the mimetic abilities of parrots, there is no musical notation for the parrot – he is depicted as saying “Hello” in Greek.
John Bevis notes that this detachment can go further still: “rather than supply the rhythm of the song, the phrase for the chaffinch describes an event whose own rhythm suggests the song” in this case, “cricketer running to wicket, bowling”.
It should come as no surprise that poets have been using onomatopoeics to describe the sounds of nature since at least the sixteenth century. Aside from it’s use alongside musical notation, mnemonics have been used as a birdwatching tool for as long as there have been birdwatching books and memoirs.
These types of mnemonics tend too be geographically, culturally or linguistically specific.
Take one of my personal favorites, the white-throated sparrow. In the US, the bird is said to sing “poor Sam Pea'body, Pea'body, Pea'body”. In Canada, except for Québec, the bird sings “O sweet Canada, Canada, Canada”. Naturally, in Québec, they sing “ou est tu Frédéric Frédéric”.
As can be seen from the previous example, mnemonics may differ greatly from one area to another. While it is true that birds, like humans, have song dialects that differ geographically[26], this system of notation is the one most often used by birdwatchers in the field.
Novice birdwatchers are likely to try to identify birds by sight, while those who are more experienced will rely more on auditory cues.[27] Many become quite astute at identifying birds by ear alone, and a good many can elicit a response from a targeted bird when they mimic their call.
iii.What does that sound look like? Sonograms
The development of sound spectrographs, or sonographs, in the 1940’s demonstrated to ornithologists the great complexity of birdsong. “For the first time, the extraordinary virtuosity of the avian voice was revealed in all its glorious detail” wrote Peter Marler in his history of birdsong, Nature’s Music.[28] While sonograms graphically represent sound, they are not easily interpreted. Although there have been attempts to include sonograms in field guides, they have never come into popular usage.[29] As graphic representations of sound, modification of these visual notations may be possible, rendering them into effective directional tools.
Capturing the magic of birdsong
In writing a type of libretto and staging a performance recreating my experience with my Muses, my intent would be to have human performers voice the call and response. I will not incorporate recordings into the performance, although I will make available any recordings to the performers as references. Additionally, for some species, there exists no extant recordings. In cases where they do exist, they may only represent a small portion of the bird’s call repertoire. Accordingly, a combination of methods of notation might serve to facilitate a score for the performers best.
This has led me to conclude that I want to have birdwatchers as my performers, as they will already be attuned to the nuances inherent in bird vocalizations. Additionally, through numerous field guides they would be familiar with the various methods of notation (A. Baker, personal communication, September 12, 2014). Expert birdwatchers are able to identify species even if the birdcalls are different from a standard. In other words, they can parse the various dialects of a given species’ vocabulary. This ability would be key in reproducing calls that they may not have direct experience with, as would possibly be the case with species that are extinct or threatened within a given geographic area (A. Baker, personal communication, September 17, 2014).
I had intended using a combination of mnemonics and sonograms to create the score for the libretto. However, after experimenting with using the sonograms as notational devices, I concluded that they are ineffective for my purposes.[30]
As I intend to present the work first in Berlin, I will use a select list of German extinct or threatened birds (Carruthers, 2016) chosen in conjunction with ornithologists (T. Reinsch, personal communication, May 5, 2015; W. Hoffman, personal communication, July 15, 2015), their efficacy would be evaluated in consultation with birdwatchers - turning memory into narrative.
Could a recital comprised of calls of extinct or threatened birds, presented within a familiar framework of performance, evoke and recall birdcalls of the past; using the encounter between the two senior birdwatchers as the narrative framework?
To create such a performance, it will be necessary to provide the performers with the means of following a “score” so that they would be able to voice the calls at pre-determined times within the piece. This requires using or developing a notation for the birdcalls that would facilitate the performer in replicating the call.
Using the adage that simpler is better, I have drastically paired down the type of notation I would use to a minimum. As I have performers who are both birdwatchers and musicians, and who are adept at improvisational musical performance, I have outlined the narrative and blocking. The mnemonics of the bird calls will be included as aide-mémoires.
Did they fly the coop? Our relationship with birds in the Anthropocene
i.Defining the Anthropocene
We are firmly entrenched in a soon-to-be christened epoch, dubbed the “Anthropocene” by atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and diatom biologist Eugene Stoermer. It is defined as a new geologic age in which the activities of humans have significantly impacted our global climate, environment and ecology to such an extent as to permanently mark the lithosphere.[32] This age is also commonly referred to as the “sixth extinction”, marked by rapid declines in biodiversity as more and more species become vulnerable to changes in their ecologies.[33] There has been some debate as to the start of this epoch, with two dates seeming to meet the formal requirements: 1610 and 1964.
There is no debate, however, regarding the culprits of this epoch: humans.
Amongst the oldest known cave paintings are those found in Australia’s Arnhem Land in Australia. Although difficult to date, researchers have been able to do some radiocarbon-dating that could place them around 28,000 BP, although the cave has been estimated to have been in use at least since 45,000 BP (it seems that most lean towards the earlier date). The red ochre paintings are thought to depict two Greyornis newtoni, which were large carnivorous ratites. In terms of appearance, they would be similar to today’s Emu. These ratites are believed to have gone extinct around 45, 000 BP, which would have coincided with the first human colonies – leading to speculation in the popular media that they could even possibly represent the first anthropocentric extinction.[34]
Reflecting upon what narrative I wanted to create, I realized how truly little we are aware of these losses in our surrounding environments. As the voices of species are extinguished, are we aware of these absences? Looking around our urban environments, we are confronted with false abundance – we may see a profusion of birds, but a paucity of species (Strohbach, Haase & Kabisch, 2009).[35] Have our environments become so cluttered with the sonic detritus of contemporary urban life that we are oblivious? Perhaps we confuse what we now hear with memories of what we once heard, or confabulate?
• an historical perspective of the Anthropocene and an examination of the importance of the more-than-human within the context of increasing lack of biodiversity in contemporary urban life and its implications for humans. The role of solastalgia in creating awareness and hope will also be part of that critical framework.
ii.Urban biodiversity
• In urban environments, we are confronted with false abundance – for example, we may see a profusion of birds, but a paucity of species. Have our environments become so cluttered with the sonic detritus of contemporary urban life that we are oblivious? Perhaps we confuse what we now hear with memories of what we once heard, or confabulate?
iii.Solastalgia and the more-than-human
Glenn Albrecht coined the word solastalgia to describe a condition as distressing as homesickness, but rather than the source of the distress originating from leaving a beloved place, it comes instead from staying in a place where you cannot leave, and watching changes to it that you feel helpless against.[36] I think that Robert Macfarlane says it best: “Where the pain of nostalgia arises from moving away, the pain of solastalgia arises from staying put. Where the pain of nostalgia can be mitigated by return, the pain of solastalgia tends to be irreversible.[37] Albrecht says that the “diagnosis of solastalgia is based on the recognition of the distress within an individual or a community about the loss of an endemic sense of place”.[38] The scale of this loss is variable: oft-cited examples are New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and instances of urban trees giving way to industrial developments [9-13].[39] Nevertheless, the degree of anguish experienced by people in such situations may feel equivalent. Also of equal consideration is the impact of solastalgia upon the more-than-human.
Albrecht does allow for a ray of brightness in a rather gloomy outlook, however. He suggests that in acknowledging the environmental root of the anguish, and engaging in actions directed towards supporting and remediating both the people affected and the environment, it is possible to achieve a positive and empowering outcome [9].
With regard to the species of extinct and threatened birds that I designated for use as sources of the sonic vocabulary for the list, I had initially researched birds which were already on the generally accepted lists of extinct and threatened birds of Germany. In conversation with several ornithologists and birdwatchers, I started to consider that fact that it takes a considerable amount of time to have birds published to the list.
Given that, it is the birdwatchers and field workers who are most closely attuned to the current status of a very many species in the field. They keep extensive logbooks and notes, review them often, and are very attuned to the species in the geographic areas they survey.
I decided to send out emails to the birders and ornithologists I will be working with here, and ask them for their Top 15 list. For obvious reasons, I would expect the extinction list to remain constant, but I have already noted variations in the few lists I have received back so far. Of importance is that fact that the lists I am receiving are very similar in their differences to the original lists. I would plan to use a revised list of “calls” with the performers based on the responses I receive.
The research with which I am engaged had its genesis in reminiscences at our family cottage in the Laurentian mountains of Québec about things no longer seen nor heard.
We recalled what it used to sound like up there, and the complexity of the combined sounds of birds and wildlife. How the bass cacophony of bullfrogs in the evening could keep you from falling asleep, while the howling of the wolves nearby would make you shiver deliciously under the covers. The banshee laughing and wailing of loons would fade away to be replaced by the dignified hooting of owls.
It doesn’t sound like that anymore. To hear one bullfrog is cause to “shush” everyone and tell them to listen, while the rare occasion that the wolves sing at night is remarked upon by all the neighbours, and is something you’d tell people about in town.
Visitors often remark now about the quality of the silence there, about how “beautiful and quiet” it is.
Is It?
I thought about what the Laurentian forests and lakes would have sounded like in my grandparents’ time, and about the different species that they heard that I will never hear.
How could you describe the call of a bird you’d never heard? If you’d never heard it, could you truly miss it?
What remains between the song and the silence?
Albrecht, G. (2006a) 'Solastalgia: environmental damage has made it possible to be homesick without leaving home'. Alternatives Journal, 32 (4 5), pp. 34.
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Rohrmeier, M., Zuidema, W., Wiggins, G. A. & Scharff, C. (2015) 'Principles of structure building in music, language and animal song'. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 370 (1664), pp. 107-121.
Rothenberg, D. (2006) Why birds sing : one man's quest to solve an everyday mystery. London: London : Penguin.
Saunders, A. A. (1936) A Guide to Bird Songs. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
Soha, J. A. & Peters, S. (2015) 'Vocal Learning in Songbirds and Humans: A Retrospective in Honor of Peter Marler'.[in 121, 933-945. (Accessed:Soha, J. A. & Peters, S.
Steffen, W., Grinevald, J., Crutzen, P. & McNeill, J. (2011) 'The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives'. Philosophical Transactions. Series A, 369 (1938), pp. 842-867.
Stimpson, C. R. (1985) 'The Somagrams of Gertrude Stein'. Poetics Today, 6 (1/2), pp. 67-80.
Strohbach, M., Haase, D. & Kabisch, N. (2009) 'Birds and the City: Urban Biodiversity, Land Use, and Socioeconomics'. Ecology And Society, 14 (2),
Sutton, J., Harris, C. B. & Barnier, A. J. (2010) 'Memory and Cognition', in Radstone, S. and Schwarz, B. (eds.) Memory : histories, theories, debates. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. pp 209-226.
Tekula, S. (2015) 'The Poetry Lab: “Hopes Echo” by Author Julianne Warren'. The Merwin Conservancy. 2015-11-03. [Online]. Available at: http://www.merwinconservancy.org/2015/11/the-poetry-lab-hopes-echo-by-author-julianne-warren-center-for-humans-and-nature/.
Treadaway, C. (2009) 'Translating experience'. Interacting with Computers, 21 (1), pp. 88-94.
[1] The phrase “the feathered cloaks of poets” is from Celtic folklore. The poets who would have wore the cloaks were thought of as singers, who, like songbirds, had the power to lull their audiences into a dream-like state. Their cloaks were known as tugan, and were usually made from the feathers of birds.
[2] Darwin & Charles (1871) The Descent of Man in Relation to Sex. vol. 1. London: Murray.
, Richards, R. J. (1987) Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior. Science and its conceptual foundations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[3] Convergent evolution occurs when two or more distinct species, exposed to similar environments, evolve similar adaptations. An example would be wings and flight in birds and insects: although the wings of both evolved to enable flight, they did so independently, and the structures from which the wings developed were very different.
[4] Miller, G. (2007) 'A surprising connection between memory imagination.(NEUROBIOLOGY)'. Science, 315 (5810), pp. 312.; Freeman, M. (2010) 'Telling Stories: Memory and Narrative', in Radstone, S. and Schwarz, B. (eds.) Memory : histories, theories, debates. First edn. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. pp 263-277.
[5] Hage, G. (2010) 'Migration, Food, Memory, and Home-Building', in Radstone, S. and Schwarz, B. (eds.) Memory : histories, theories, debates. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. 416-427.
[6] Rohrmeier, M., Zuidema, W., Wiggins, G. A. & Scharff, C. (2015) 'Principles of structure building in music, language and animal song'. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 370 (1664), pp. 107-121.; Soha, J. A. & Peters, S. (2015) 'Vocal Learning in Songbirds and Humans: A Retrospective in Honor of Peter Marler'.[in 121, 933-945. (Accessed:Soha, J. A. & Peters, S.
, Stimpson, C. R. (1985) 'The Somagrams of Gertrude Stein'. Poetics Today, 6 (1/2), pp. 67-80.
[7] Hoffman, E. (2010) 'The Long Afterlife of Loss', in Radstone, S. and Schwarz, B. (eds.) Memory : histories, theories, debates. 1st ed. edn. Ashland, Ohio: Fordham University Press, pp. pp 406-415.;
[8] Sutton, J., Harris, C. B. & Barnier, A. J. Ibid.'Memory and Cognition'. New York, pp. pp 209-226.; Campbell, S. (2008) 'The second voice'. Memory Studies, 1 (1), pp. 41-48.
[9] Goodman, S. & Parisi, L. (2010) 'Machines of Memory', in Radstone, S. and Schwarz, B. (eds.) Memory : histories, theories, debates. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. pp 343-359.
[10] Bergson, H. (1941) Matière et mémoire; essai sur la relation du corps à l'esprit. Bibliothèque de philosophie contemporaine. 36. éd. edn. Paris,: Presses universitaires de France.
[11] Treadaway, C. (2009) 'Translating experience'. Interacting with Computers, 21 (1), pp. 88-94.
[12] Carruthers, M. (2010) 'How to Make a Composition', in Radstone, S.e. and Schwarz, B.e. (eds.) Memory : histories, theories, debates. First edition edn. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. pp 15-29.
[13] Tekula, S. (2015) 'The Poetry Lab: “Hopes Echo” by Author Julianne Warren'. The Merwin Conservancy. 2015-11-03. [Online]. Available at: http://www.merwinconservancy.org/2015/11/the-poetry-lab-hopes-echo-by-author-julianne-warren-center-for-humans-and-nature/.
[14] Dijck, J. v. (2007) Mediated memories in the digital age. Cultural memory in the present. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. 232.
[15] Meyer, L. B. (1956) Emotion and meaning in music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ; Gould, E. (2011) Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation. England: Faber Music Ltd. , pp 676; Edgerton, M. E. (2004) The 21st Century Voice. The New Instrumentation Series (Book 9). Scarecrow Press.
[16] Dijck, J. v. (2007) Mediated memories in the digital age. Cultural memory in the present. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. , pp 232.
[17] “A confusion” of birders is a collective noun referring to a group of birdwatchers
[18] Gould, E. (2011) Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation. England: Faber Music Ltd. , pp. 676
[19] Bevis, J. (2010) Aaaaw to zzzzzd : the words of birds : North America, Britain, and northern Europe. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
, Gould, E. (2011) Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation. England: Faber Music Ltd.
, Phillips, T. (2016) 'Tom Phillips - Music scores'. [Online]. Available at: http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/works/music-scores.; Mathews, F. S. (1904) Field book of wild birds and their music; a description of the character and music of birds, intended to assist in the identification of species common in the eastern U.S. New York etc.: G.P. Putnam's sons.
[20] Saunders, A. A. (1936) A Guide to Bird Songs. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
[21] Bevis, J. (2010) Aaaaw to zzzzzd : the words of birds : North America, Britain, and northern Europe. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
, Mathews, F. S. (1904) Field book of wild birds and their music; a description of the character and music of birds, intended to assist in the identification of species common in the eastern U.S. New York etc.: G.P. Putnam's sons.
, Rohrmeier, M., Zuidema, W., Wiggins, G. A. & Scharff, C. (2015) 'Principles of structure building in music, language and animal song'. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 370 (1664), pp. 107-121.
[22]Saunders, A. A. (1936) A Guide to Bird Songs. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
[23] There was, for example, a studio death metal band named Hatebeak, whose lead singer was an African Grey parrot named Waldo - 'Hatebeak - Wikipedia'. (2017). [Online]. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatebeak.
[24] Doolittle, E. (2007) Other Species' Counterpoint: An Investigation of the Relationship between Human Music and Animal Songs. Princeton University.
, Doolittle, E. & Gingras, B. (2015) 'Zoomusicology'. Current Biology, 25 (19), pp. R819-R820.
[25] Bevis, J. (2010) Aaaaw to zzzzzd : the words of birds : North America, Britain, and northern Europe. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
, Carruthers, M. (2010) 'How to Make a Composition', in Radstone, S.e. and Schwarz, B.e. (eds.) Memory : histories, theories, debates. First edition edn. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. pp 15-29.
, Dudai, Y. & Carruthers, M. (2005) 'The Janus face of Mnemosyne'. Nature, 434 (7033), pp. 567.
, Marler, P. & Slabbekoorn, H. W. (2004) Nature's music : the science of birdsong. Amsterdam ; Boston: Elsevier Academic.
[26] Price, T. D., Hooper, D. M., Buchanan, C. D., Johansson, U. S., Tietze, D. T., Alström, P., Olsson, U., Ghosh-Harihar, M., Ishtiaq, F., Gupta, S. K., Martens, J., Harr, B., Singh, P. & Mohan, D. (2014) 'Niche filling slows the diversification of Himalayan songbirds'. Nature, 509 (7499), pp. 222.
, Rothenberg, D. (2006) Why birds sing : one man's quest to solve an everyday mystery. London: London : Penguin.
[27] Kroodsma, D. (May 10, 2009) 'Understanding birds through their songs'. [Online]. Available at: https://www.newscientist.com/gallery/mg20227071600-birdsong-by-the-seasons/ (Accessed: April 6).
, Marler, P. & Slabbekoorn, H. W. (2004) Nature's music : the science of birdsong. Amsterdam ; Boston: Elsevier Academic.
[28] Marler, P. & Slabbekoorn, H. W. (2004) Nature's music : the science of birdsong. Amsterdam ; Boston: Elsevier Academic.
[29] Soha, J. A. & Peters, S. (2015) 'Vocal Learning in Songbirds and Humans: A Retrospective in Honor of Peter Marler'.[in 121, 933-945. (Accessed:Soha, J. A. & Peters, S.
[30] When I presented sonograms to people to work with in addition to the mnemonics, I began to suspect that no one used the sonograms, although several people expressed a prior familiarity with working with them in the field. I tested my theory by repeatedly switching out the sonograms for a set unrelated to the birds we were working with – and no one noticed.
[31] Die-hard birdwatchers who will go to great lengths to get a bird on their list, even hopping a plane to another country, are known as “twitchers”.
[32] Crutzen, P. & Stoermer, E. (2000) 'The Anthropocene'. IGBP Newsletter, 4 (17), pp. 17-18.
, Johnson, E., Morehouse, H., Dalby, S., Lehman, J., Nelson, S., Rowan, R., Wakefield, S. & Yusoff, K. (2014) 'After the Anthropocene: Politics and geographic inquiry for a new epoch'. Progress in Human Geography, 38 (3), pp. 439-456.
, Steffen, W., Grinevald, J., Crutzen, P. & McNeill, J. (2011) 'The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives'. Philosophical Transactions. Series A, 369 (1938), pp. 842-867.
[33] Kolbert, E. (2014) The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. First edn. New York: Henry Holt and company.
[34] Callahan, D. (2014) History of Birdwatching in 100 Objects. [Place of publication not identified]: Christopher Helm.
, Corporation, A. B. (2014) 'Aboriginal rock art - how old is it actually?'. 2014-10-09T09:44:00+11:00.
[35] Strohbach, M., Haase, D. & Kabisch, N. (2009) 'Birds and the City: Urban Biodiversity, Land Use, and Socioeconomics'. Ecology And Society, 14 (2),
[36] Albrecht, G. (2006b) 'Solastalgia'. Alternatives Journal, 32 (4/5), pp. 34-36.
[37] Macfarlane, R. (2016) 'Generation Anthropocene: How Humans have altered the planet'. The Guardian .com. [Online]. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/01/generation-anthropocene-altered-planet-for-ever (Accessed: April 1, 2016).
[38] Albrecht, G. (2006a) 'Solastalgia: environmental damage has made it possible to be homesick without leaving home'. Alternatives Journal, 32 (4 5), pp. 34.
[39] Freeman, M. (2010) 'Telling Stories: Memory and Narrative', in Radstone, S. and Schwarz, B. (eds.) Memory : histories, theories, debates. First edn. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. pp 263-277;Hoffman, E. (2010) 'The Long Afterlife of Loss', in Radstone, S. and Schwarz, B. (eds.) Memory : histories, theories, debates. 1st ededn. Ashland, Ohio: Fordham University Press, pp. pp 406-415.Kolbert, E. (2014) The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. First edn. New York: Henry Holt and company.
Outline
I. The Feathered Cloaks of Poets
The story of my Muses: how I started my journey [1]
A. Why birdsong is so compelling
1. It’s in the genes: Vocal Learning
2. Have we heard this song before? Memory [11-14]
II. A Confusion of Birders
1. What's in a song? Birdsong and music
2. What's that sound? Mnemonics
3. What does that sound look like? Sonograms
Capturing the magic of birdsong
III. Twitchers
A. Did they fly the coop? Our relationship with birds in the Anthropocene
1. Defining the Anthropocene [33-38]
2. Urban biodiversity [39-43]
3. Solastalgia and the more-than-human [20, 44-47]
4. Exploration of the ontological and semiotic relationships between the human and more-than-human
Additional Supporting Information
1. Carruthers, D. Between the Song and the Silence: My Muses. 2016;
Available from: http://www.deborahcarruthers.com/my-muses.html.
2. Richards, R.J., Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior. Science and its conceptual foundations. 1987, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. xvii, 700 p.
3. Hauser, M.D., N. Chomsky, and W.T. Fitch, The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science (New York, N.Y.), 2002. 298(5598): p. 1569.
4. Pinker, S., The language instinct : the new science of language and mind. 1994: Penguin.
5. Scharff, C. and I. Adam, Neurogenetics of birdsong. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 2013. 23(1): p. 29-36.
6. Olias, P., et al., Reference Genes for Quantitative Gene Expression Studies in Multiple Avian Species. Plos One, 2014. 9(6): p. 12.
7. Scharff, C. and S.A. White, Genetic Components of Vocal Learning. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2004. 1016(1): p. 325-347.
8. Bolhuis, J.J., K. Okanoya, and C. Scharff, Twitter evolution: converging mechanisms in birdsong and human speech. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2010. 11(11): p. 747-759.
9. Scharff, C. and J. Petri, Evo-devo, deep homology and FoxP2: implications for the evolution of speech and language. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 2011. 366(1574): p. 2124-2140.
10. White, S.A., et al., Singing mice, songbirds, and more: Models for FOXP2 function and dysfunction in human speech and language. Journal of Neuroscience, 2006. 26(41): p. 10376-10379.
11. Miller, G., A surprising connection between memory imagination.(NEUROBIOLOGY). Science, 2007. 315(5810): p. 312.
12. Freeman, M., Telling Stories: Memory and Narrative, in Memory : histories, theories, debates, S. Radstone and B. Schwarz, Editors. 2010, Fordham University Press: New York. p. pp 263-277.
13. Hage, G., Migration, Food, Memory, and Home-Building, in Memory : histories, theories, debates, S. Radstone and B. Schwarz, Editors. 2010, Fordham University Press: New York. p. 416-427.
14. Sutton, J., C.B. Harris, and A.J. Barnier, Memory and Cognition, in Memory : histories, theories, debates, S. Radstone and B. Schwarz, Editors. 2010, Fordham University Press: New York. p. pp 209-226.
15. Goodman, S. and L. Parisi, Machines of Memory, in Memory : histories, theories, debates, S. Radstone and B. Schwarz, Editors. 2010, Fordham University Press: New York. p. pp 343-359.
16. Bergson, H., Matière et mémoire; essai sur la relation du corps à l'esprit. 36. éd. ed. Bibliothèque de philosophie contemporaine. 1941, Paris,: Presses universitaires de France. 2 p. l., 280, 2 p.
17. Bergson, H., Matter and memory. 1988, New York: Zone Books. 284 p.
18. Treadaway, C., Translating experience. Interacting with Computers, 2009. 21(1): p. 88-94.
19. Dudai, Y. and M. Carruthers, The Janus face of Mnemosyne. Nature, 2005. 434(7033): p. 567.
20. Tekula, S. The Poetry Lab: “Hopes Echo” by Author Julianne Warren. 2015 2015-11-03; Available from: http://www.merwinconservancy.org/2015/11/the-poetry-lab-hopes-echo-by-author-julianne-warren-center-for-humans-and- nature/.
21. Macfarlane, R. Generation Anthropocene: How Humans have altered the planet. 2016 [cited 2016 April 1, 2016]; Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/01/generation-anthropocene-altered-planet-for-ever.
22. Dijck, J.v., Mediated memories in the digital age. Cultural memory in the present. 2007, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. xviii, 232 p.
23. Rohrmeier, M., et al., Principles of structure building in music, language and animal song. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 2015. 370(1664): p. 107-121.
24. Stimpson, C.R., The Somagrams of Gertrude Stein. Poetics Today, 1985. 6(1/2): p. 67-80.
25. Gould, E., Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation. 2011, England: Faber Music Ltd. 676.
26. Bevis, J., Aaaaw to zzzzzd : the words of birds : North America, Britain, and northern Europe. 2010, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 143 p.
27. Phillips, T. Graphic music scores - in pictures. 2013 2013-10-04; Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/music/gallery/2013/oct/04/graphic-music-scores-in-pictures.
28. Mathews, F.S., Field book of wild birds and their music; a description of the character and music of birds, intended to assist in the identification of species common in the eastern U.S. 1904, New York etc.: G.P. Putnam's sons. xxxv, 262 p.
29. Carruthers, M., How to Make a Composition, in Memory : histories, theories, debates, S.e. Radstone and B.e. Schwarz, Editors. 2010, Fordham University Press: New York. p. pp 15-29.
30. Marler, P. and H.W. Slabbekoorn, Nature's music : the science of birdsong. 2004, Amsterdam ; Boston: Elsevier Academic. xviii, 513 p., 12 p. of plates.
31. Kroodsma, D. Understanding birds through their songs. May 10, 2009 [cited 2016 April 6]; Available from: https://www.newscientist.com/gallery/mg20227071600-birdsong-by-the-seasons/.
32. Soha, J.A. and S. Peters, Vocal Learning in Songbirds and Humans: A Retrospective in Honor of Peter Marler. 2015. p. 933-945.
33. Kolbert, E., The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. First ed. 2014, New York: Henry Holt and company. 336.
34. Monastersky, R., Anthropocene: The human age. Nature, 2015. 519(7542): p. 144.
35. Carruthers, D. Between the Song and the Silence: Select German Extinct or Threatened Bird Species. 2016 May 1, 2016; Available from: http://www.deborahcarruthers.com/8203select-german-extinct-or-threatened-bird-species.html.
36. Wesling, D., Michel Serres, Bruno Latour, and the edges of historical periods.(A Special Issue on Periodization). CLIO, 1997. 26(2): p. 189.
37. Lewis, S.L. and M.A. Maslin, Defining the Anthropocene. Nature, 2015. 519(7542): p. 171-180.
38. Lewis, S.L. and M.A. Maslin, Defining the Anthropocene. Nature, 2015. 519: p. 171-180.
39. Strohbach, M., D. Haase, and N. Kabisch, Birds and the City: Urban Biodiversity, Land Use, and Socioeconomics. Ecology And Society, 2009. 14(2).
40. BohningGaese, K. and H.G. Bauer, Changes in species abundance, distribution, and diversity in a central European bird community. Conservation Biology, 1996. 10(1): p. 175-187.
41. Langgemach, T. and H. Watzke, Nature Conservation in Agricultural Landscapes - the Example of the Great Bustard Conservation Program. Tagungsband: Fachgesprach Agrarvogel - Okologische Bewertungsgrundlage Fur Biodiversitatsziele in Ackerbaugebieten, 2013. 442: p. 112-125.
42. Armistead, H.T., Strycker, Noah. The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human.. 2014. p. 132.
43. Karnicky, J., Scarlet experiment : birds and humans in America. 2016, USA: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 221.
44. Hoffman, E., The Long Afterlife of Loss, in Memory : histories, theories, debates, S. Radstone and B. Schwarz, Editors. 2010, Fordham University Press: Ashland, Ohio. p. pp 406-415.
45. Albrecht, G., Solastalgia: environmental damage has made it possible to be homesick without leaving home. Alternatives Journal, 2006. 32(4 5): p. 34.
46. Higginbotham, N., et al., Environmental injustice and air pollution in coal affected communities, Hunter Valley, Australia. Health and Place, 2010. 16(2): p. 259-266.
47. Tucker, I., Sense and the limits of knowledge: bodily connections in the work of Serres.( philosopher Michel Serres; The Five Senses ( Critical essay). Theory, Culture & Society, 2011. 28(1): p. 149-160.
Draft
Between the Song and the Silence
The Story of my Muses: How I started my Journey[1]
When I had begun to think about birdsong a few years ago, specifically that of extinct and threatened birds, I had wondered about how I could communicate their songs. I thought of recreating and recording the different birdsongs myself, and combining that with another track of ambient sounds from where you’d normally find those kinds of birds: fields, forests, shorelines.
I drew sketches and made some recordings of me doing some of the birdsongs, but I found it ultimately unsatisfying. I was working with some people from the Royal Ontario Museum (known as the ROM), and we discussed looking further to see if I could find any extant recordings of some of these birds. When we were looking at dates of last sightings of these birds, it occurred to me that there might still be people alive who were birdwatchers who had actually heard them. Better yet, they might have their own notes about the songs, and might even know how to do the calls.
I tracked down an elderly centenarian who now lived in a residence - let’s call him Jack- and arranged to go and visit him. By mutual arrangement I was to arrive with a bottle of Jura single malt in hand. In exchange, we would look through his notes, talk about his life-long birding adventures, and maybe give some bird calls a whirl while having a wee dram.
I showed up on the appointed day, armed with the Jura, and we sat in Jack’s room and sipped and reminisced. He told me about going birding with his uncle when he was small, and showed me a drawing he did of a passenger pigeon when he was 5 or 6 years old. He said that his uncle would tell him stories about there being so many passenger pigeons that when the flocks would take to the air, it would look like advancing thunderclouds, and sound as loud as thunder overhead. He said that there were so many of them that they all considered it unimaginable that they could vanish from the earth. His uncle maintained that it was indicative of the “end of times” that they were disappearing.
Once we were sufficiently lubricated, Jack began to go through his notes and demonstrate the various calls of different birds, and asked me to “call” them back to him. We’d been doing this back and forth for a while, when suddenly from the doorway someone else answered his call. Another resident, “John”, was standing there. John looked back and forth between us, and then called out another birdcall. Jack responded, and what happened after that mesmerised me. John entered further into the room and sang out another call, and Jack responded yet again. John shuffled over to the chair and sat (although I prefer to think of it as perched), looked closely at Jack, and emphatically called out another birdsong reminiscent of a query. The two of them carried on in this call and response, conversational birdsong really, for a good half hour longer, until one of the staff came looking for John. John looked more animated and far more relaxed than when he’d come in, and when the nurse helped him to his feet, he didn’t yell out and push her away in frustration, which is apparently what he’d usually do – a result of the dementia which severely impaired his ability to converse. Once on his feet, he shakily reached out to Jack, who took his hand and shook it.
I found this exchange profoundly moving, and it confirmed for me that there was something about birds and birdsong that fundamentally touches something deep within us.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Jack and John – they spoke using the extinguished voices of birds I would never hear: the Passenger Pigeon, the Labrador Duck and the Eskimo Curlew. I felt an unexpected sense of loss.
I began to wonder if, as the voices of species are extinguished, are we aware of these absences?
And if we had never heard their voices to begin with, could we truly miss them?
Over time, I asked myself if it would be possible to use an encounter between two elderly birdwatchers as the narrative framework for a performance which could provoke an awareness of such loss?
Time to let these ideas take flight…
Why birdsong is so compelling …
i.It’s in the genes: Vocal learning
What is it about birdsong that has the power to touch us so deeply? Some have said it’s all in the genes. Charles Darwin believed that language acquisition is instinctually driven, and that birds produce sounds that are analogous to human language. Like humans, songbirds would seem to have an innate repertoire of sounds, and their songs and call notes are taught by their parents, or indeed, foster parents. Moreover, he contended that a bird’s first attempts at song are not unlike an infant’s babbling. [2]
Subsequent research by Noam Chomsky and his colleagues would seem to support this idea. Vocal learning posits that we learn language first by babbling, eventually turning these sounds into words and later, sentences. Researchers do however, distinguish between speech and abstract thought, which is largely considered to be a uniquely human trait. In developing his theory of universal grammar, Chomsky argued that grammar is also distinctively human. Interestingly, recent studies have demonstrated that certain songbirds utilize complex syntax and intonation similar to that of humans. As one might expect, this has led to comparisons with primates, who are surprisingly inept at language acquisition and vocal learning, despite familial proximity.
This brings us back to the question of what could drive human affinity for birdsong. Vocal learning has evolved to varying degrees across species. Furthermore, specific genes found to be related to vocal learning have also been identified, although there is a great deal of variability in vocal learning abilities. It seems the same set of genes that enables humans to speak also confers on birds the ability to sing. It was further discovered that the way birds acquire specific birdsong seems to mirror the way humans acquire speech. It is probable that the development of vocal learning ability in humans and birds is a result of convergent evolution.[3] Given the genetic similarity, it is likely that the vocal learning abilities of birds and humans were shaped by shared environment and experience. Carel ten Cate suggests that intergenerational transmission of knowledge facilitated to some degree the coevolution of vocal learning in humans and birds. Dr. Doolittle’s exhortations to “talk to the animals” just might have some basis in fact.
ii.Have we heard this song before? Memory
Turning memory into narrative is common practice in the human experience. Our memories become entwined with the recollections of others, so that each time we recall them they subtly change. This layering of narrative, or collective memory, can serve to reinforce our perceptions of both our past and potential futures.[4]
As Ghassan Hage has said, “Song and music in particular, with their sub-symbolic meaningful qualities are often most appropriate in facilitating the voyage to this imaginary space of feelings”. [5] So too can sounds transport us.[6]
The writer Eva Hoffman declared, “Loss leaves a long trail in its wake. Sometimes, if the loss is large enough, the trail seeps and winds like invisible psychic ink through individual lives, decades, and generations”.[7] It has been has argued that “sharing memory is our default”, and that complex emotions such as grief, love and regret depend upon our personal memories and an awareness of the passing of time. Our imperfect recall is responsible for the endurance of the past within our present relationships.[8]
Perhaps it also speaks to the notion of déjà vu, which refers to the phenomenon of feeling as though something is very familiar when in fact you are experiencing it for the first time. For Steve Goodman and Luciana Parisi,” déjà vu suggests time collapsed onto itself, perhaps some kind of mnemonic haunting or future feedback effect.”.[9] Paramnesia is usually described as a psychopathology in which events are remembered while being experienced for the first time. It is generally thought that this occurrence is far more commonplace than would be expected of a memory disorder. Henri Bergson described paramnesia as a “symptom that explains that there is a recollection of the present, contemporaneous with the present itself”.[10] Thus, the calls of songbirds may literally “speak” to our memories of nascent attempts to communicate, conferring an uncanny familiarity with their songs.
It has been stated that “the importance of physical engagement with the world, through the senses, enables emotional expression to be made in artworks that can be perceived by both artist and audience”.[11] Furthermore, these memories of physical experiences spark creative cognition and stimulate the imagination. Mary Carruthers states:
“In Greek legend, memory, or Mnemosyne, is the mother of the Muses. That story places memory at the beginning, as the matrix of invention for all human arts, of all human making, including the making of ideas; it memorably encapsulates an assumption that memory and invention – what we now call creativity – if not exactly the same, are the closest thing to it. In order to create, in order to think at all, human beings require some mental tool or machine, and that machine lives in the intricate networks of their own memories. The requirement of memory for making new thoughts is at the heart of this traditional story. [12]
Julianne Lutz Warren, a writer and conservation biologist, created a work entitled “Hopes Echo” for the Deutsches Museum in Munich in 2015. Her work concerns the “sound fossil” left by the huia bird of New Zealand, which became extinct in the beginning of the 20th century due primarily to habitat loss coupled with overhunting. There are no extant audio recordings of this bird – it became extinct before the technology was available to make field recordings. The Maori people regarded the huia as sacred, and those who were high status were accorded the honor of wearing its feathers or skins. To lure the birds when hunting, they learned to imitate its song. This was passed down through the generations, a practice that continued for decades after the bird became extinct. In 1954 a man named RAL Bateley made a recording of a Maori man, Henare Hkamma, whistling the huia’s call. Warren presents the audio recording of Hkamma’s bird calls with text drawing our attention to the fact that we have the calls of an extinct bird performed by a now-dead Maori man mediated by a machine.[13]
These mediated memories of bird calls can be further explored within studies of memory and music which posit that “the human’s recovery of the past is simultaneously embodied, enabled and embedded”.[14] Musical memories are often mediated through devices for listening, whether directly, such as by listening to (or playing) a musical instrument, or through the use of recording and playback equipment. It may be argued that musical notation itself is a form of recording and playback technology which can allow for concise repetitions of music.[15] Research has shown that recall is greatly improved if the same music is played during the recollection of an event as was played during the original experience.[16] Remembering music demands participation from the cognitive, emotive, and somatosensory areas of the brain. Repetition helps to keep it cycling through our working memory.
Could the encounter between the two senior birdwatchers, presented within a familiar narrative framework of performance, evoke and recall memories of the past?
i.What’s in a song? Birdsong and music
There have been myriad attempts to capture the songs of birds – both long before and after the advent of recording technologies. These attempts have not always been mimetic; some are meant more to suggest the songs of birds, rather than to be actual representations of birdsong. An example of this is Clément Janequin’s Le Chant des oyseaulx from 1529, which is an onomatopoetic chanson. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No.6 in F major from 1808, also known as the Pastoral Symphony, quotes three birds: the cuckoo, the quail, and the nightingale. Interestingly, it is thought that he “borrowed” liberally from Athanasius Kircher’s influential musicology treatise Musurgia Univeralis: Bird songs, published in 1650. There is also the well-known and oft-performed 13th-century English round Sumer Is Icumen In which also imitates the call of the cuckoo – a common motif, likely due to the simplicity of the call - and is one of the earliest examples of notated music.[18] There are countless instances throughout the centuries and across cultures, of composers attempting to incorporate birdsong in some fashion into their works.
In parallel with this musical preoccupation was the quest to develop some form of notation which could be used to record birdsong. Musical notation was one of the earliest conventions used, and Kircher’s Musurgia Univeralis is considered to be one of the first examples of this use. Musical notation is still used in depicting and recording birdsong today, as well as being used by some contemporary ornithologists. As a method to make field recordings it has many disadvantages, notably that not everyone can read and write music – I fall into that category, for example. It has also been argued that any form of transcription simplifies the original sounds.[19]
Aretas A. Saunders maintained that musical notation is unsuitable as birds utilize musical intervals not represented in our musical notation.[20] Using musical instruments to reproduce these sounds is also problematic, as the sounds produced by instruments can only approximate the actual birdsongs.[21] Saunders created a method of notation in his A Guide to Bird Songs, published in 1935. Although considered by some to be one of the best systems for notating birdsong, it never really caught on with the public (or most ornithologists, for that matter). It is a score within three bands. The upper band is the descriptive of the “musical quality, such as “sharp trill” or “harsh rattle”. The line of the song is placed in the lowest band, and is written out phonetically. This is all modulated by the central band, in which symbols represent individual notes: a horizontal element signifying duration, the thickness representing volume, its placement within the band indicating pitch. A line connecting the notes indicate the phrase, and there is an additional notation to the left of the score which indicates pitch at that position.[22]
Sounds complicated? Out on a birding excursion with a group of ornithologists/musicians, I asked if we could give using the notation a whirl. One of the group had seen the system before, and we gamely tried to use it to record the birds we came across that day. By the end of the trip, we’d agreed that part of the problem was that unlike musical notation, where the notation represented constants, this notation would require the development of such metered constants. If you were familiar with the call of a bird, or as a form of notation for a personal birding journal, it might do, but it was, at least in our hands, too subjective. It is the very subjectivity of these types of notational forms which is problematic.
After the advent of recording equipment, composers began to incorporate the actual recordings of birds into their pieces. One of the first instances of a birdsong recording being used and deliberately scored into a work was Ottorino Respighi’s second orchestral work in his Roman Trilogy: The Pines of the Janiculum (I pini del Gianicolo: Lento). First performed in 1924, Respighi directed that a recording of a nightingale be made so that it could be played at the end of the movement, specifically on a Brunswick Panatrope record player. This was considered very avant-garde at the time, and quite sensational. This use of birdsong as objets trouvés is a tradition which carries on to today in contemporary music such as Pink Floyd’s Grantchester Meadows, from the experimental studio 1969 album Ummagumma. On this song, a taped loop of a skylark singing is heard in the background throughout. The selection of birdsong and calls related to place is also a device which has been used, for example, by the composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. He used pre-recorded calls and songs of Arctic birds in his work Cantus arcticus to provide the structure of his work. R. Murray Schafer has compositions in which nature itself provides the motives and structure. He has orchestrated outdoor performances in which the birds themselves provide the structure and timing of the piece. The use of birdsong and birdcalls in contemporary music can be found across all genres – from classical and jazz to death metal.[23]
In contemporary discussions of music and bird or animal sounds, I feel that we must begin to acknowledge the more-than-human, and not just look to the ways in which their sounds are appropriated and integrated into our music and soundscapes. We can look to the more-than-human as having agency in the creation of works in which their music and sounds are not only implicated in the stylistic form, but are also the basis of the structure of the work.[24] The burgeoning field of zoömusicology takes this as an area of both scientific and musical interest.
ii.What’s that sound? Mnemonics
As regards our feathered friends, there is a long history of mnemonics used as onomatopoeic devices to recall bird sounds, and they are widely cross-cultural. These mnemonics endeavor to mimic the rhythms and sounds of the songs using words and phrases from human language, regardless of the lack of concurrence of equivalent sounds.[25]
Athanasius Kircher’s influential musicology discourse Musurgia Univeralis: Bird songs, published in 1650 is an early and important example of this. The page has illustrations of five birds: a cock, a hen and her chicks, a parrot, a quail, and a cuckoo. Beside each bird is not only the musical notation of its call, but the mnemonic description. No doubt a nod to the mimetic abilities of parrots, there is no musical notation for the parrot – he is depicted as saying “Hello” in Greek.
John Bevis notes that this detachment can go further still: “rather than supply the rhythm of the song, the phrase for the chaffinch describes an event whose own rhythm suggests the song” in this case, “cricketer running to wicket, bowling”.
It should come as no surprise that poets have been using onomatopoeics to describe the sounds of nature since at least the sixteenth century. Aside from it’s use alongside musical notation, mnemonics have been used as a birdwatching tool for as long as there have been birdwatching books and memoirs.
These types of mnemonics tend too be geographically, culturally or linguistically specific.
Take one of my personal favorites, the white-throated sparrow. In the US, the bird is said to sing “poor Sam Pea'body, Pea'body, Pea'body”. In Canada, except for Québec, the bird sings “O sweet Canada, Canada, Canada”. Naturally, in Québec, they sing “ou est tu Frédéric Frédéric”.
As can be seen from the previous example, mnemonics may differ greatly from one area to another. While it is true that birds, like humans, have song dialects that differ geographically[26], this system of notation is the one most often used by birdwatchers in the field.
Novice birdwatchers are likely to try to identify birds by sight, while those who are more experienced will rely more on auditory cues.[27] Many become quite astute at identifying birds by ear alone, and a good many can elicit a response from a targeted bird when they mimic their call.
iii.What does that sound look like? Sonograms
The development of sound spectrographs, or sonographs, in the 1940’s demonstrated to ornithologists the great complexity of birdsong. “For the first time, the extraordinary virtuosity of the avian voice was revealed in all its glorious detail” wrote Peter Marler in his history of birdsong, Nature’s Music.[28] While sonograms graphically represent sound, they are not easily interpreted. Although there have been attempts to include sonograms in field guides, they have never come into popular usage.[29] As graphic representations of sound, modification of these visual notations may be possible, rendering them into effective directional tools.
Capturing the magic of birdsong
In writing a type of libretto and staging a performance recreating my experience with my Muses, my intent would be to have human performers voice the call and response. I will not incorporate recordings into the performance, although I will make available any recordings to the performers as references. Additionally, for some species, there exists no extant recordings. In cases where they do exist, they may only represent a small portion of the bird’s call repertoire. Accordingly, a combination of methods of notation might serve to facilitate a score for the performers best.
This has led me to conclude that I want to have birdwatchers as my performers, as they will already be attuned to the nuances inherent in bird vocalizations. Additionally, through numerous field guides they would be familiar with the various methods of notation (A. Baker, personal communication, September 12, 2014). Expert birdwatchers are able to identify species even if the birdcalls are different from a standard. In other words, they can parse the various dialects of a given species’ vocabulary. This ability would be key in reproducing calls that they may not have direct experience with, as would possibly be the case with species that are extinct or threatened within a given geographic area (A. Baker, personal communication, September 17, 2014).
I had intended using a combination of mnemonics and sonograms to create the score for the libretto. However, after experimenting with using the sonograms as notational devices, I concluded that they are ineffective for my purposes.[30]
As I intend to present the work first in Berlin, I will use a select list of German extinct or threatened birds (Carruthers, 2016) chosen in conjunction with ornithologists (T. Reinsch, personal communication, May 5, 2015; W. Hoffman, personal communication, July 15, 2015), their efficacy would be evaluated in consultation with birdwatchers - turning memory into narrative.
Could a recital comprised of calls of extinct or threatened birds, presented within a familiar framework of performance, evoke and recall birdcalls of the past; using the encounter between the two senior birdwatchers as the narrative framework?
To create such a performance, it will be necessary to provide the performers with the means of following a “score” so that they would be able to voice the calls at pre-determined times within the piece. This requires using or developing a notation for the birdcalls that would facilitate the performer in replicating the call.
Using the adage that simpler is better, I have drastically paired down the type of notation I would use to a minimum. As I have performers who are both birdwatchers and musicians, and who are adept at improvisational musical performance, I have outlined the narrative and blocking. The mnemonics of the bird calls will be included as aide-mémoires.
Did they fly the coop? Our relationship with birds in the Anthropocene
i.Defining the Anthropocene
We are firmly entrenched in a soon-to-be christened epoch, dubbed the “Anthropocene” by atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and diatom biologist Eugene Stoermer. It is defined as a new geologic age in which the activities of humans have significantly impacted our global climate, environment and ecology to such an extent as to permanently mark the lithosphere.[32] This age is also commonly referred to as the “sixth extinction”, marked by rapid declines in biodiversity as more and more species become vulnerable to changes in their ecologies.[33] There has been some debate as to the start of this epoch, with two dates seeming to meet the formal requirements: 1610 and 1964.
There is no debate, however, regarding the culprits of this epoch: humans.
Amongst the oldest known cave paintings are those found in Australia’s Arnhem Land in Australia. Although difficult to date, researchers have been able to do some radiocarbon-dating that could place them around 28,000 BP, although the cave has been estimated to have been in use at least since 45,000 BP (it seems that most lean towards the earlier date). The red ochre paintings are thought to depict two Greyornis newtoni, which were large carnivorous ratites. In terms of appearance, they would be similar to today’s Emu. These ratites are believed to have gone extinct around 45, 000 BP, which would have coincided with the first human colonies – leading to speculation in the popular media that they could even possibly represent the first anthropocentric extinction.[34]
Reflecting upon what narrative I wanted to create, I realized how truly little we are aware of these losses in our surrounding environments. As the voices of species are extinguished, are we aware of these absences? Looking around our urban environments, we are confronted with false abundance – we may see a profusion of birds, but a paucity of species (Strohbach, Haase & Kabisch, 2009).[35] Have our environments become so cluttered with the sonic detritus of contemporary urban life that we are oblivious? Perhaps we confuse what we now hear with memories of what we once heard, or confabulate?
• an historical perspective of the Anthropocene and an examination of the importance of the more-than-human within the context of increasing lack of biodiversity in contemporary urban life and its implications for humans. The role of solastalgia in creating awareness and hope will also be part of that critical framework.
ii.Urban biodiversity
• In urban environments, we are confronted with false abundance – for example, we may see a profusion of birds, but a paucity of species. Have our environments become so cluttered with the sonic detritus of contemporary urban life that we are oblivious? Perhaps we confuse what we now hear with memories of what we once heard, or confabulate?
iii.Solastalgia and the more-than-human
Glenn Albrecht coined the word solastalgia to describe a condition as distressing as homesickness, but rather than the source of the distress originating from leaving a beloved place, it comes instead from staying in a place where you cannot leave, and watching changes to it that you feel helpless against.[36] I think that Robert Macfarlane says it best: “Where the pain of nostalgia arises from moving away, the pain of solastalgia arises from staying put. Where the pain of nostalgia can be mitigated by return, the pain of solastalgia tends to be irreversible.[37] Albrecht says that the “diagnosis of solastalgia is based on the recognition of the distress within an individual or a community about the loss of an endemic sense of place”.[38] The scale of this loss is variable: oft-cited examples are New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and instances of urban trees giving way to industrial developments [9-13].[39] Nevertheless, the degree of anguish experienced by people in such situations may feel equivalent. Also of equal consideration is the impact of solastalgia upon the more-than-human.
Albrecht does allow for a ray of brightness in a rather gloomy outlook, however. He suggests that in acknowledging the environmental root of the anguish, and engaging in actions directed towards supporting and remediating both the people affected and the environment, it is possible to achieve a positive and empowering outcome [9].
With regard to the species of extinct and threatened birds that I designated for use as sources of the sonic vocabulary for the list, I had initially researched birds which were already on the generally accepted lists of extinct and threatened birds of Germany. In conversation with several ornithologists and birdwatchers, I started to consider that fact that it takes a considerable amount of time to have birds published to the list.
Given that, it is the birdwatchers and field workers who are most closely attuned to the current status of a very many species in the field. They keep extensive logbooks and notes, review them often, and are very attuned to the species in the geographic areas they survey.
I decided to send out emails to the birders and ornithologists I will be working with here, and ask them for their Top 15 list. For obvious reasons, I would expect the extinction list to remain constant, but I have already noted variations in the few lists I have received back so far. Of importance is that fact that the lists I am receiving are very similar in their differences to the original lists. I would plan to use a revised list of “calls” with the performers based on the responses I receive.
The research with which I am engaged had its genesis in reminiscences at our family cottage in the Laurentian mountains of Québec about things no longer seen nor heard.
We recalled what it used to sound like up there, and the complexity of the combined sounds of birds and wildlife. How the bass cacophony of bullfrogs in the evening could keep you from falling asleep, while the howling of the wolves nearby would make you shiver deliciously under the covers. The banshee laughing and wailing of loons would fade away to be replaced by the dignified hooting of owls.
It doesn’t sound like that anymore. To hear one bullfrog is cause to “shush” everyone and tell them to listen, while the rare occasion that the wolves sing at night is remarked upon by all the neighbours, and is something you’d tell people about in town.
Visitors often remark now about the quality of the silence there, about how “beautiful and quiet” it is.
Is It?
I thought about what the Laurentian forests and lakes would have sounded like in my grandparents’ time, and about the different species that they heard that I will never hear.
How could you describe the call of a bird you’d never heard? If you’d never heard it, could you truly miss it?
What remains between the song and the silence?
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[1] The phrase “the feathered cloaks of poets” is from Celtic folklore. The poets who would have wore the cloaks were thought of as singers, who, like songbirds, had the power to lull their audiences into a dream-like state. Their cloaks were known as tugan, and were usually made from the feathers of birds.
[2] Darwin & Charles (1871) The Descent of Man in Relation to Sex. vol. 1. London: Murray.
, Richards, R. J. (1987) Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior. Science and its conceptual foundations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[3] Convergent evolution occurs when two or more distinct species, exposed to similar environments, evolve similar adaptations. An example would be wings and flight in birds and insects: although the wings of both evolved to enable flight, they did so independently, and the structures from which the wings developed were very different.
[4] Miller, G. (2007) 'A surprising connection between memory imagination.(NEUROBIOLOGY)'. Science, 315 (5810), pp. 312.; Freeman, M. (2010) 'Telling Stories: Memory and Narrative', in Radstone, S. and Schwarz, B. (eds.) Memory : histories, theories, debates. First edn. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. pp 263-277.
[5] Hage, G. (2010) 'Migration, Food, Memory, and Home-Building', in Radstone, S. and Schwarz, B. (eds.) Memory : histories, theories, debates. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. 416-427.
[6] Rohrmeier, M., Zuidema, W., Wiggins, G. A. & Scharff, C. (2015) 'Principles of structure building in music, language and animal song'. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 370 (1664), pp. 107-121.; Soha, J. A. & Peters, S. (2015) 'Vocal Learning in Songbirds and Humans: A Retrospective in Honor of Peter Marler'.[in 121, 933-945. (Accessed:Soha, J. A. & Peters, S.
, Stimpson, C. R. (1985) 'The Somagrams of Gertrude Stein'. Poetics Today, 6 (1/2), pp. 67-80.
[7] Hoffman, E. (2010) 'The Long Afterlife of Loss', in Radstone, S. and Schwarz, B. (eds.) Memory : histories, theories, debates. 1st ed. edn. Ashland, Ohio: Fordham University Press, pp. pp 406-415.;
[8] Sutton, J., Harris, C. B. & Barnier, A. J. Ibid.'Memory and Cognition'. New York, pp. pp 209-226.; Campbell, S. (2008) 'The second voice'. Memory Studies, 1 (1), pp. 41-48.
[9] Goodman, S. & Parisi, L. (2010) 'Machines of Memory', in Radstone, S. and Schwarz, B. (eds.) Memory : histories, theories, debates. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. pp 343-359.
[10] Bergson, H. (1941) Matière et mémoire; essai sur la relation du corps à l'esprit. Bibliothèque de philosophie contemporaine. 36. éd. edn. Paris,: Presses universitaires de France.
[11] Treadaway, C. (2009) 'Translating experience'. Interacting with Computers, 21 (1), pp. 88-94.
[12] Carruthers, M. (2010) 'How to Make a Composition', in Radstone, S.e. and Schwarz, B.e. (eds.) Memory : histories, theories, debates. First edition edn. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. pp 15-29.
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[17] “A confusion” of birders is a collective noun referring to a group of birdwatchers
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Outline
I. The Feathered Cloaks of Poets
The story of my Muses: how I started my journey [1]
- Using an encounter between two elderly birdwatchers as the narrative framework, is it possible to create a performance which would evoke an awareness of losses in our surrounding environment? As the voices of species are extinguished, are we aware of these absences?
- If we had never heard their voices to begin with, could we truly miss them?
A. Why birdsong is so compelling
1. It’s in the genes: Vocal Learning
- A discussion of language acquisition theory as it relates to the genetics of vocal learning in humans and birds [2-10]
- A survey of research leading to the implications of shared genetics with birds regarding human affinities for birdsong [5-10]
2. Have we heard this song before? Memory [11-14]
- How notions of déjà vu and paramnesia figure in human relationships to birds [15-19]
- Mediated memory and music [20-24]
II. A Confusion of Birders
1. What's in a song? Birdsong and music
- Historical survey of notation of birdsong in music [23, 25-28]
2. What's that sound? Mnemonics
- The use of mnemonics in music and birdwatching [26, 29-31]
3. What does that sound look like? Sonograms
- How sonograms have been used to decipher birdsong and their dialects [26, 30-32]
Capturing the magic of birdsong
III. Twitchers
A. Did they fly the coop? Our relationship with birds in the Anthropocene
1. Defining the Anthropocene [33-38]
- an historical perspective of the Anthropocene and an examination of the importance of the more-than-human within the context of increasing lack of biodiversity in contemporary urban life and its implications for humans. The role of solastalgia in creating awareness and hope will also be part of that critical framework.
2. Urban biodiversity [39-43]
- In urban environments, we are confronted with false abundance – for example, we may see a profusion of birds, but a paucity of species. Have our environments become so cluttered with the sonic detritus of contemporary urban life that we are oblivious? Perhaps we confuse what we now hear with memories of what we once heard, or confabulate?
3. Solastalgia and the more-than-human [20, 44-47]
- Glenn Albrecht coined the word solastalgia to describe a condition as distressing as homesickness, but rather than the source of the distress originating from leaving a beloved place, it comes instead from staying in a place where you cannot leave, and watching changes to it that you feel helpless against
- Although conceived of as a human condition, solastalgia applies to the plight of the more-than-human in an anthropocentric time.
- What role do Albrecht’s concepts of solastalgia play in urban environments, both for the Human and more-than-human?
4. Exploration of the ontological and semiotic relationships between the human and more-than-human
Additional Supporting Information
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