Delius - Sea Drift

The middle of June in the northern hemisphere - the start of an ornithological graveyard for a few weeks, as birds vanish, either hidden behind leaves or looking after young. Although in Britain, June can also be the time when something viciously rare turns up, usually something small, very attractive and from the east. Like a Cretzschmar's Bunting on Bardsey Island in Wales.

But on the whole, June ain't too great for birds. Unless you're interested in annoying birds at their nest, which you shouldn't be, because it's illegal.
 
Frederick Delius (1862-1934) wrote a great piece about nesting Mockingbirds, Sea Drift, which he finished in 1904. It's a setting of Walt Whitman's poem Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, from Whitman's collection Leaves of Grass. It's about a boy walking along the beach at Paumanok, in Long Island, New York. He finds a Mockingbird nest and starts to study it, until one day the female vanishes. There's a great analysis of the poem HERE.

The performance below is from the opening night of the BBC Proms in 2012. Enjoy.

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Respighi - The Pines of Rome

I've already written about the first ever recording of a bird, made by Ludwig Koch in 1889, HERE. It's generally agreed that the first time a recording of a bird was used in a piece of music was in 1924, in The Pines of Rome by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936). In the third piece from the set of four, Respighi depicts a nocturnal visit to the pines on Janiculum Hill, and puts in a real recording of a Nightingale at the very end - a live orchestra is joined by the recorded bird.

I'm not sure about who / when / where the Nightingale was recorded, but Respighi did suggest that in a performance, the recording of the bird should be played on a Brunswick Panatrope, which I think would have been a brand new invention at the time. Nowadays, performances use modern technology like the cassette player and mini-discs.

Brunswick Panatrope

Every time time I listen to this, I always think that the sudden arrival of a genuine Nightingale from out of the orchestra is really powerful and actually quite moving. Not everyone agrees - this piece has been a long time source of controversy amongst people who like to find things to wind themselves up over. Respighi has been criticised for sickbag over-sentimentality. Did he lack the musical imagination to depict a Nightingale using the orchestra? And best of all, there are suggestions that by using a machine to replace a living creature, Respighi's Nightingale is symptomatic of the totalitarian Fascism of Mussolini's Italy. Obviously. So there you go.

There's no rush - don't worry, your Findus Crispy Pancakes have got ages until they start to burn - so take the time to watch all of this. Trust me, it's really good (other than a few people in the audience dying from some lung disorder). But if you can smell burning, then the Nightingale starts to sing at 5:50.

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Couperin - Pièces de clavecin

Here are two Nightingales, a startled Linnet and some singing warblers, in the third book of keyboard pieces (Pièces de clavecin) written in 1722 by François Couperin (1668-1733). The books are divided into suites, or ordres, and these bird pieces make up the first four of the seven pieces from the 14th ordre. I nearly put in another piece by Couperin called the Dodo, then I found out that 'dodo' is a word that kids and parents use in France for going to sleep. I suppose I could have just lied. Anyway ...

Leading on from last week, Olivier Messiaen said, "I think that Couperin, given what he wrote, never heard a Nightingale, but this takes away nothing from the charm of the piece." That's not actually true, because Couperin does attempt to create the effect of the most well known part of a Nightingale's song - the machine gun repeated notes - which Couperin imitates on the keyboard with accelerating trills at ends of sections. But the Linnet and warblers are written in a generic bird-style.

- Le Rossignol en amour (the Nightingale in love)
- La Linotte éffarouchée (the startled Linnet) 3:14
- Les Fauvéttes plaintives (the plaintive song of the warblers) 4:59
- Le Rossignol vainqueur (the vanquished Nightingale) 10:00

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