Natural Music of Birds

Like everyone else where I live, I have been remaining at home where I exercise daily by lifting weights and by riding a stationary bicycle. When I can get away from the computer and my online classes, I have been walking in a wooded area not far from where I live. This location is much more musical than where I usually walk because of the number of birds. Other walkers pass me in both directions while I tend to linger so that I can hear the birds. The other day I noticed that two or three birds, none of which I could identify, were prominent in the foreground while a mourning dove added its mournful cry in the background. If I were able to write music, I think I would try to capture this natural music, with a bassoon or a double bass replacing the mourning dove in the background and a clarinet, oboe, and alto sax replacing the more prominent birds in the foreground. I suspect that early humans attempted to imitate the birds when they first started to create musical instruments. Jon Hassell, the trumpeter credited with creating fourth world music, while commenting on the advantages created by technology in music, says in a recent interview that “we don’t ever want to lose the joy of hearing” instruments “imitating bird calls.” I probably need to dig out David Rothenberg’s One Dark Night I Left My Silent House, which was released in 2010 and which draws inspiration from birds, with titles like “What Birds Sing,” “Owl Moon,” and “Grosbeak.”