The author of Why Birds Sing sets forth this minimum requirement: "Birdsong is something you must reach out to love before it will reveal itself to you." You've probably heard your coworkers bragging about how they travel from garage to car to parking garage elevator to office and never have to step outside-they never get rained on. But they are deaf to the world of Nature, and what poor souls they are to choose to segregate themselves in such a manner.
You might need a degree in musicology with a minor in ornithology to appreciate this book fully-it's a bit inaccessible for most of us. It's the most exhaustive and exhausting treatise on birdsong imaginable. The author's own richly-textured viewpoint ranges from thumbs-up environmental philosophy to anthropomorphic fantasizing. His description on page 33 of the diversity of life is succinct and beautiful. His statement that nature is a paradise of precise engineering says it all.
You might need a degree in musicology with a minor in ornithology to appreciate this book fully-it's a bit inaccessible for most of us. It's the most exhaustive and exhausting treatise on birdsong imaginable. The author's own richly-textured viewpoint ranges from thumbs-up environmental philosophy to anthropomorphic fantasizing. His description on page 33 of the diversity of life is succinct and beautiful. His statement that nature is a paradise of precise engineering says it all.
The book is essentially a tour, however, of everyone else's take on why birds sing. The truly resonating sentiments are in the section on poesy. We are reminded of Coleridge's words: "In nature there is nothing melancholy." Everyone from Elizabethan poets to the Everly Brothers has celebrated nightingales and skylarks. Some of those lines are reproduced here, and it's the most lyrical section of the book, musical notations notwithstanding. My favorite description of a thrush comes from Thomas Hardy, and I like Siegfied Sassoon's description of the dawn chorus, although these two are not included here. The Kaluli people of New Guinea say birdsongs to them are voices in the forest.
Rothenberg reminds us that Nature is never boring, and humanity is not a needed adjunct to beauty in the natural world. Emmanuel Kant raised the question: Why can we listen to endless repetition of birdsong without wearying of it, but the same few notes played over and over by a human would drive us to distraction? Because birdsong is sublime. Kant's dissertation on size and splendor (volcanoes and cliffs) versus organized symmetry and art in nature (the music of birds) gives much food for thought.
Rothenberg reminds us that Nature is never boring, and humanity is not a needed adjunct to beauty in the natural world. Emmanuel Kant raised the question: Why can we listen to endless repetition of birdsong without wearying of it, but the same few notes played over and over by a human would drive us to distraction? Because birdsong is sublime. Kant's dissertation on size and splendor (volcanoes and cliffs) versus organized symmetry and art in nature (the music of birds) gives much food for thought.
The next section reviews many types of scientific research on birdsong, including one jarringly gruesome experiment wherein the researcher kills a bird every day, extracts the syrinx (voicebox), and attempts to play it with strings.
Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man that "birds have strong affections, acute perception, and a taste for the beautiful," and Rothenberg opines that "evolution does not erase meaning and feeling from nature." Pavlov likens air under the wing of a bird to facts supporting science. So this section of the book is a necessary underpinning.
The author says of Erich Jarvis's work, "He also feels that most birds sing more for mate attraction than territorial defense, with melodic sounds more attractive and noisy sounds more territorial..." But Rothenberg sums up: "Therein lies the rub. No scientist worth his data set really wants to tell you why birds sing." He further states there is much more specific meaning in bird calls than in songs, probably true.
Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man that "birds have strong affections, acute perception, and a taste for the beautiful," and Rothenberg opines that "evolution does not erase meaning and feeling from nature." Pavlov likens air under the wing of a bird to facts supporting science. So this section of the book is a necessary underpinning.
The author says of Erich Jarvis's work, "He also feels that most birds sing more for mate attraction than territorial defense, with melodic sounds more attractive and noisy sounds more territorial..." But Rothenberg sums up: "Therein lies the rub. No scientist worth his data set really wants to tell you why birds sing." He further states there is much more specific meaning in bird calls than in songs, probably true.
Lavish descriptions of birds' songs and habits, musical notation, scat-like jazz syllables, and sonograms are all used to depict what can be heard in the woods or jungle or even in your backyard. But there is no substitute for standing on your patio and hearing a Swainson's thrush singing counterpoint to your morning coffee. The author's musical gift for language labels it "the ethereal swirls of American forest birds-the wood thrush, veery, and especially the hermit thrush".
He quotes Ludwig Koch, an early recorder of birdsong: "Those musical notations and curves mean nothing either to a scientist or to a bird lover." The crux of the book is that "anything we say about them is a human abstraction from the truth: Neither science nor art can convey the actuality of birds' experience from within."
If you've never heard a skylark, a nightingale or an Albert's lyrebird, much less a mockingbird or a veery, don't even think about reading this book until you've gone online and listened to examples. Given the inability of various forms of parsing to actually convey such beauty, the medium of books on tape would bring this book alive. The opus would be transformed from opaque to heartbreakingly beautiful.
He quotes Ludwig Koch, an early recorder of birdsong: "Those musical notations and curves mean nothing either to a scientist or to a bird lover." The crux of the book is that "anything we say about them is a human abstraction from the truth: Neither science nor art can convey the actuality of birds' experience from within."
If you've never heard a skylark, a nightingale or an Albert's lyrebird, much less a mockingbird or a veery, don't even think about reading this book until you've gone online and listened to examples. Given the inability of various forms of parsing to actually convey such beauty, the medium of books on tape would bring this book alive. The opus would be transformed from opaque to heartbreakingly beautiful.
