Five seconds on Google can tell you that the very first recording made of a singing bird was a White-rumped (aka Indian) Shama recorded in 1889 in an aviary in Germany, by an eight-year-old boy called Ludwig Koch on an Edison phonograph. That eight-year-old grew up to become the adult version of Ludwig Koch, emigrated to Britain and became the BBC's first natural history media star. There's a great article about him HERE, and also a documentary broadcast on BBC Radio 4 a few years ago - which features that recording of the Shama - has been archived HERE.
Koch continued recording birds throughout his life and sets of his LP albums were the first commercially available recordings. In the 1950s those LPs had a huge impact on Mr Bird-Music himself, Olivier Messiaen (I really do need to hurry up and write a lot more about Messiaen before the end of the year).
Recording birds was very definitely a niche pursuit until very recently, but now any idiot can do it. Even I've recorded birds. The greatest website on the entire world wide internetsphere is Xeno Canto, where both amateurs and pros upload their bird recordings just for the fun of it. As I write, the current stats on the front page are that 226,005 recordings have now been uploaded onto the website, of 9,285 species and recorded by 2,250 different birders - just one user Frank Lambert has uploaded 10,000 files! And yet you still dare to disagree that it's not the single most bestest website ever?
The first time a recording of a bird turned up in music was in 1924 in The Pines of Rome by Ottorino Respighi, where at the end of the 2nd movement, a real Nightingale joins in with the orchestra. But in 1950 a really interesting piece of musique concrète was created by Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995) at the French Radio and Television studios, where Schaeffer had been carrying out some of the earliest experiments with electronic music.
Musique concrète was a term used by Schaeffer to describe recordings of real sounds which are then manipulated in the studio and edited into pieces of electronic music. Back in the prehistoric times of the 1950s, creating the effects that you'll hear, which now sound quite basic, was a massive ball ache - these sounds actually had to be either invented (like using an echo chamber to produce massive reverb) or were found by accident through constant laborious experimentation. I suspect there was lots of sticky tape, scissors and chopped up magnetic tape knocking about the place. Also, you have to presume that there was an enormous amount of screaming and smacking each other in the face going on, borne of hysterical frustration every time they couldn't find the end of the sellotape.
As far as I know, L'Oiseau RAI is the only piece Schaeffer wrote using bird song. The title is obscure and there's virtually no background information about the piece, but after a bit of digging the only realistic explanation I can find is that 'RAI' refers to the Italian broadcasting company Radiotelevisione italiana, who seem to have used this piece in broadcasts and possibly even commissioned it. Do let me know if you have a better explanation. Also, because so much studio processing has taken place, what's the bird? Any suggestions?
Koch continued recording birds throughout his life and sets of his LP albums were the first commercially available recordings. In the 1950s those LPs had a huge impact on Mr Bird-Music himself, Olivier Messiaen (I really do need to hurry up and write a lot more about Messiaen before the end of the year).
Recording birds was very definitely a niche pursuit until very recently, but now any idiot can do it. Even I've recorded birds. The greatest website on the entire world wide internetsphere is Xeno Canto, where both amateurs and pros upload their bird recordings just for the fun of it. As I write, the current stats on the front page are that 226,005 recordings have now been uploaded onto the website, of 9,285 species and recorded by 2,250 different birders - just one user Frank Lambert has uploaded 10,000 files! And yet you still dare to disagree that it's not the single most bestest website ever?
The first time a recording of a bird turned up in music was in 1924 in The Pines of Rome by Ottorino Respighi, where at the end of the 2nd movement, a real Nightingale joins in with the orchestra. But in 1950 a really interesting piece of musique concrète was created by Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995) at the French Radio and Television studios, where Schaeffer had been carrying out some of the earliest experiments with electronic music.
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| Schaeffer in 1948 |
Musique concrète was a term used by Schaeffer to describe recordings of real sounds which are then manipulated in the studio and edited into pieces of electronic music. Back in the prehistoric times of the 1950s, creating the effects that you'll hear, which now sound quite basic, was a massive ball ache - these sounds actually had to be either invented (like using an echo chamber to produce massive reverb) or were found by accident through constant laborious experimentation. I suspect there was lots of sticky tape, scissors and chopped up magnetic tape knocking about the place. Also, you have to presume that there was an enormous amount of screaming and smacking each other in the face going on, borne of hysterical frustration every time they couldn't find the end of the sellotape.
As far as I know, L'Oiseau RAI is the only piece Schaeffer wrote using bird song. The title is obscure and there's virtually no background information about the piece, but after a bit of digging the only realistic explanation I can find is that 'RAI' refers to the Italian broadcasting company Radiotelevisione italiana, who seem to have used this piece in broadcasts and possibly even commissioned it. Do let me know if you have a better explanation. Also, because so much studio processing has taken place, what's the bird? Any suggestions?
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