Music of the Birds:
Celebration of Bird Song
by Lang Elliott
Houghton Mifflin
October 1999
136 pages, Paperback
9.53 x 9.03 x 0.50 inches
1 Audio CD, 74 Minutes
Over 125 Color Photos
Over 70 species
ISBN: 0-618-00697-4
As a music reviewer and radio programmer, the aesthetics
of recorded music are foremost in my thoughts. "What
sounds beautiful?" "Who plays the more
imaginative versions of Autumn Leaves?"
"Why do I like Scherchen's low-fi, scratchy
version of Mozart's Requiem better than
Abbado's brilliant, high-tech one?"
This sense of aesthetic discrimination influences my
birding habits. Just as I derive more visual joy from from
watching blue jays hop around in my backyard oak than I do
scoping dowitchers at 300 yards, l prefer to hear the
pristine piccolo of our everyday White-throated Sparrow to
the more elusive buzzsaw of a Cerulean Warbler.
As listening to birds is an increasingly precious ability
as my auditory acumen dims in middle age, it is with
pleasure that I read Lane Elliott's examination and
celebration of bird song. This unique book gives voice to
the poetic and aesthetic aspects of mans' perception of
bird song. Elliott -- a writer, recordist, and photographer
best known for his work in Stokes Field Guide to Bird
Songs: Eastern Region -- affords us his seasoned choice of the finest
avian singers of North America. He follows his aural agenda
in every aspect of this book. Nearly every bird mentioned
in his flowing text is accompanied by a color portrait,
shown in full voice, beak open and sometimes nearly
exploding with air (and rapture).
Elliott turns ontological order topsy turvy and leads
with the virtuosi of the bird world: the thrushes. The other
leading songsters Elliott selects are wrens, singing
sparrows, finches, mimics, and meadowlarks. Bobolink,
American Robin, Red-breasted Grosbeak, tanagers, Northern Cardinal,
and Baltimore Oriole also make the Top Twenty.
The CD follows the book's order and the author
actually reads bits of his text, weaving quotes into his
remarks prefacing the songs. There are some nice surprises.
Elliott slows thrush songs to 1/3 speed so we may revel in
the Veery's waterfall, the Hermit Thrush's wooden
flute, and the Swainson Thrush's rich overtones. These
renderings, ever surprising and haunting in their unearthy
beauty, may alone merit the cover price. Of the 50
other tracks on the disc, lesser songsters include buzzy
sparrows (the Henslow's song is slowed to show
niceties) and several backyard familiars (phoebe, titmouse,
nuthatch, chickadee, crow).
Elliott cherry-picks a few flight, dawn and night songs,
and male/female duets (Red-wing Blackbird, Cowbird). Warblers
making the cut include Ovenbird and Common
Yellowthroat (typical and flight song); Northern Parula,
Blue-winged, and Black-throated Green Warblers (typical and
dawn song). Mimic repertoire of the Chat (along with
Mockingbird and Starling) are compared with species
imitated. House Finch's courtship song and Purple
Finch's aerial predator song are also perceptive
inclusions.
The many poetic inclusions, from perceptive, humorous to
the rapturous babblings over the indescribably bubbly
Bobolink, remind me of those that once graced the Brookline
Bird Club's bluebooks (our local bird club's bulletin).
Among Elliott's more memorable quotations are Trowbridge's
apt and aspirate articulations upon hearing the dowager
denizen of dells:
Like liquid pearls fresh showered from heaven,
The high notes of the lone wood-thrush Fall on the
forest's holy hush.
and Clarence Hawkes
amused musing on a parley of unmusical grackles:
The morning is ringing--not with their singing,
But with their talking, they're piping and
squawking Some scandalous ditty, the more then's
the pity.
Particularly fascinating is
Elliott's recounting of the writers' emotive
expressions which transcend their metier. Some of the
scientific observations appear charmingly romantic, and a
few celebrations in poesy are laser-sharp. H. W.
Longfellow's description of the Wood Thrush's call
as a "silver bell" seems exceptionally precise,
while Frank Chapman's "Aeolian harp" seems
rather whimsical.
Many quotations, far from being specific, merely express
the awestruck wonderment of man, God's child in the
woods. Here, too, Elliott's selections shine. Henry
Thoreau's marvellous comment strikes us as a deja-vu
revelation: "We find that we had virtually forgotten
the note of each bird, and when we hear it again it is
remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of
existence." And we identify readily with Elizabeth
Browning's shedding day-to-day petty woes a-field:
The little cares that fretted me I lost them
yesterday... Among the singing of the birds
The humming of the bees.
Elliott's
handsomely recorded songs of avian divas, his vivid
portraits, and his thoughtful selections from two centuries
of naturalists, scholars, and poets all serve to give us
pause in our well-intentioned work of trudging, listing,
emailing, and censusing. We may not need yet another spin
on the field guide, but we can certainly use a happy
reminder that our true pursuit is simply that of beauty.
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