August 2006, and I was in south-east Peru with my wife at the end of the Manu Road at Pantiacolla Lodge. On our last full day there, we decided to walk the entire length of the Mirador Trail up to the Shintuya viewpoint, a 5 hour walk through thick forest up to edge of the Andean foothills. And at the top, through a gap in the trees, we saw this
No exaggeration, but that view is quite literally the most amazing thing that exists anywhere in the entire universe and beyond. Fair enough, that last sentence was a massive exaggeration. The view's okay. But looking out from the viewpoint, you are on the very eastern edge of the Andes, and then below you the Amazon sprawls a couple of thousand miles all the way to the Atlantic coast of Brazil.
After eating a boiled egg and a couple of chicken legs, we set off back down the trail to the lodge, and as the sun set and all sorts of invisible and terrifying things starting screaming and grunting around us, near the bottom of trail we heard this
Now, this really is no exaggeration, but that song is quite literally the most amazing thing that exists anywhere in the entire universe and beyond. It's the song of a Musician Wren, and I've never heard a bird singing so impressively. I think what knocked me sideways when I heard the song (we then heard a few more elsewhere), was that they sing clearly audible musical notes, they're notes that we can interpret as being music - if you wanted, you could write a Musician Wren's song out onto manuscript paper. However, the order of notes, the rhythm and the phrase structures are totally alien to how humans compose music.
Uirapuru is the Brazilian name for a Musician Wren, a name that's instantly associated with fabled magical birds of legends and fantasies and myths and stories and all that other stuff that used to occupy people's time before the invention of the television and the internet machine. It's no wonder, having a song that's so unbelievably good, that Uirapurus are in many ways South America's equivalent of a Nightingale. Trust me, Nightingales are great singers, but Musician Wrens are even more greaterer. Sell a lung if necessary, but whatever you do, don't end up aged 92 in a care home watching back-to-back episodes of Murder She Wrote and Only Fools and Horses, without having been to South America to hear a live performance from a Musician Wren.
Brazilian composer Heitor Villa Lobos (1887-1959) was one of the last century's most original composers, and in a century which was full of people who were constantly trying to be "the most original composers of the century", it was a pretty impressive feat to become one of the most original composers of the last century. Does that make any sense? No, I thought not. New paragraph ...
In 1917, Villa Lobos had the first idea of writing a ballet based on a particular legend of the Uirapuru. He thought that by using a plot based on a native folk legend, it might catch the attention of Sergei Diaghilev in Paris, a lover of anything exotic, and the man behind the Ballets Russes who had helped to turn a number of young composers into global superstars, Stravinsky being the most famous.
It wasn't until 1935 that Uirapuru was finally performed, by which time Villa Lobos had dropped the idea of it being a ballet and presented it as a concert piece, but the ballet's plot still defines the structure of the music. The story is set amongst a native Amazonian tribe who wander deep into the forest lured by the song of the Musician Wren (which you'll hear on flute). A tribal girl finally tracks the bird down and watches it transform into a great male warrior, who can't have been all that great a warrior because he's killed and then transforms back into the Musician Wren.
I absolutely love this piece. And I hope you do too. Though if you don't I'll try not to lose too much sleep over it. I've got a couple more pieces of bird music by Villa Lobos to come later this year. So that's something to look forward to, unless you hate his music.
No exaggeration, but that view is quite literally the most amazing thing that exists anywhere in the entire universe and beyond. Fair enough, that last sentence was a massive exaggeration. The view's okay. But looking out from the viewpoint, you are on the very eastern edge of the Andes, and then below you the Amazon sprawls a couple of thousand miles all the way to the Atlantic coast of Brazil.
After eating a boiled egg and a couple of chicken legs, we set off back down the trail to the lodge, and as the sun set and all sorts of invisible and terrifying things starting screaming and grunting around us, near the bottom of trail we heard this
Now, this really is no exaggeration, but that song is quite literally the most amazing thing that exists anywhere in the entire universe and beyond. It's the song of a Musician Wren, and I've never heard a bird singing so impressively. I think what knocked me sideways when I heard the song (we then heard a few more elsewhere), was that they sing clearly audible musical notes, they're notes that we can interpret as being music - if you wanted, you could write a Musician Wren's song out onto manuscript paper. However, the order of notes, the rhythm and the phrase structures are totally alien to how humans compose music.
Uirapuru is the Brazilian name for a Musician Wren, a name that's instantly associated with fabled magical birds of legends and fantasies and myths and stories and all that other stuff that used to occupy people's time before the invention of the television and the internet machine. It's no wonder, having a song that's so unbelievably good, that Uirapurus are in many ways South America's equivalent of a Nightingale. Trust me, Nightingales are great singers, but Musician Wrens are even more greaterer. Sell a lung if necessary, but whatever you do, don't end up aged 92 in a care home watching back-to-back episodes of Murder She Wrote and Only Fools and Horses, without having been to South America to hear a live performance from a Musician Wren.
Brazilian composer Heitor Villa Lobos (1887-1959) was one of the last century's most original composers, and in a century which was full of people who were constantly trying to be "the most original composers of the century", it was a pretty impressive feat to become one of the most original composers of the last century. Does that make any sense? No, I thought not. New paragraph ...
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| Villa Lobos |
In 1917, Villa Lobos had the first idea of writing a ballet based on a particular legend of the Uirapuru. He thought that by using a plot based on a native folk legend, it might catch the attention of Sergei Diaghilev in Paris, a lover of anything exotic, and the man behind the Ballets Russes who had helped to turn a number of young composers into global superstars, Stravinsky being the most famous.
It wasn't until 1935 that Uirapuru was finally performed, by which time Villa Lobos had dropped the idea of it being a ballet and presented it as a concert piece, but the ballet's plot still defines the structure of the music. The story is set amongst a native Amazonian tribe who wander deep into the forest lured by the song of the Musician Wren (which you'll hear on flute). A tribal girl finally tracks the bird down and watches it transform into a great male warrior, who can't have been all that great a warrior because he's killed and then transforms back into the Musician Wren.
I absolutely love this piece. And I hope you do too. Though if you don't I'll try not to lose too much sleep over it. I've got a couple more pieces of bird music by Villa Lobos to come later this year. So that's something to look forward to, unless you hate his music.
Amazing. Blackbirds can whistle pretty close versions of Beethoven's violin concerto. The wren seems to have greater variety.
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