Béla Bartók's most well known use of birdsong features in the second movement of his 3rd Piano Concerto, but he also wrote at least two more pieces where birdsong is used - the third movement from the String Quartet no.4 and a movement from the piano suite Out of Doors. There are other pieces where he hints at birdsong and calls, but not as obviously as in these pieces.
These are both good examples of Bartók's
night music, a particular musical character that he used over and over again in
slow movements in pieces composed in the last twenty
years of his life. It's music that unfolds very slowly, with slow shifting harmony, there's a weird sense of unease underpinning everything, with constant interjections, said to be the sounds of birds, insects and other
animals.
String Quartet no.4
Bartók wrote this in the summer of 1928. It's in five movements, four of them manic, with a violent energy that comes to a complete standstill in the central third movement - where a Nightingale (or at least I presume it is) starts to sing on the first violin - before firing off into the fourth movement and back to the relentless energy.
This is one of my very favourite pieces of music - it is totally mindblowing, so you'd better like it, or I'll be livid. Do yourselves a massive favour and listen to it all. But I understand that you're busy (Hollyoaks, Holby City, Judge Rinder, Homes Under the Hammer, etc...) so if you can't spare 22 minutes, then first of all, shame on you, but secondly, you can skip to the 3rd movement which starts at 08:42. The Nightingale starts to sing at 11:13.
String Quartet no.4
Bartók wrote this in the summer of 1928. It's in five movements, four of them manic, with a violent energy that comes to a complete standstill in the central third movement - where a Nightingale (or at least I presume it is) starts to sing on the first violin - before firing off into the fourth movement and back to the relentless energy.
This is one of my very favourite pieces of music - it is totally mindblowing, so you'd better like it, or I'll be livid. Do yourselves a massive favour and listen to it all. But I understand that you're busy (Hollyoaks, Holby City, Judge Rinder, Homes Under the Hammer, etc...) so if you can't spare 22 minutes, then first of all, shame on you, but secondly, you can skip to the 3rd movement which starts at 08:42. The Nightingale starts to sing at 11:13.
*
Out of Doors
This is a suite of five short pieces for solo piano written in 1926, the fourth movement is titled Musiques Nocturnes (starts at 6:06 in the clip below). The pulse is maintained all the way through by a constant chromatic blur of four notes played with the left hand, and above that, the right hand throws in fragments of birdsong, and also cicadas and supposedly the calls of Fire-bellied Toad (known in Hungary as the Unka Frog). It's hard to say what the bird is, but repetitive song structure could point to a Song Thrush, although you also get a hint of the machine gun repetition, which suggests it's just another bloody Nightingale.
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