I'm gonna take the song from every bird
And make ‘em sing it just for me, yeah
Bird's got something to teach us
All about being free, yeah
Be no rain, be no rain
-Gil Scott Heron
The other day, I asked my wife, “If you had to pick a spirit animal, what would it be?” She told me, “I don’t have a spirit animal. I don’t have time for that.” Fair enough, I thought, not everyone needs to have a spirit animal - even if I felt I had one.
I’m not sure when I first realized I had a spirit animal. One day, it just seemed there had been one all along, and it was a bird. I don’t think it’s a specific bird, but it’s not a bird of prey - like an eagle or a hawk. I feel it most often manifests itself in a songbird.
I’m sure the history of that feeling must go back to when I was a young kid in the 1970s visiting my grandmother in California. She lived in a classic farmhouse out in the country near Sacramento. It had a huge garden in the back, with many toads - they were big and everywhere. But the thing I remember most about that house was her two parakeets. She kept them in one of those vintage Hendryx Art Deco bird cages. She trained them to talk - a strange thing to a young boy. I sat and watched them, waiting for them to tell me, “Let us out.” I wanted to, but I never dared. However, what I liked most about them was that the caged birds sang. They made birdsong, which brought me feelings of peace and joy.
In 2016, in the UK, there was a revival of interest in birdsong. In particular, a series of programs devoted to birdsong played on BBC Radio 3. The series included a birdsong mixtape, a debate on the topic ‘Is birdsong music?’ (the Ludwig Koch interview at the 29:32 minute mark is essential listening), new interpretations of birdsong-inspired music - perhaps most notably Pierre-Laurent Aimard's day-long performance of Messiaen's Catalogue d'Oiseaux at the Aldeburgh festival, and a wonderful video of 17-year-old pianist Julian Trevelyan playing Le Courlis (the Curlew) from Catalogue d’Oiseaux with the River Alde and reed meadows of Snape Maltings providing a spectacular backdrop:
The series also featured a weekly birdsong segment on Radio 3’s Sunday Breakfast show with Chris Watson’s remarkable field recordings of different species of birds paired with excerpts of music from a variety of composers from Ravel to Respighi. I am a big Watson fan, which is how I stumbled upon the series. I wrote here about Chris Watson last August.
100 years ago this year, in 1924, the first recording of birdsong was broadcast over the airways, and it created quite a stir. Oddly enough, that recording was of a celebrated cellist playing in her garden accompanied by a nightingale.
This week, to celebrate Spring and the March equinox, our journey will step away from that Big River called Jazz to look back on the history of recorded birdsong.
The earliest known bird recording is of a captive Indian white-rumped shama at the Frankfurt Zoo. It was made in 1889 by the godfather of bird recording, Ludwig Koch, then only eight years old, and not much younger than me when I first visited my grandmother.
Koch recorded the bird using the first retailed recording device, the Edison cylinder machine, which focused the sound through a horn onto a stylus, whose vibrations cut a groove into the surface of a wax cylinder revolving at a speed of 160 rotations per minute. The cylinders, limited to two minutes of recording time, played back on the same machine. It would have looked very similar to this:
Koch is one of the first and greatest figures in the history of wildlife sound recording. After his first childhood recording in 1889, he went on to pioneer techniques for recording wild animals and birds in their natural surroundings, first in his native Germany and then in Great Britain.
When pressures from the growing Nazi regime became too dangerous, Koch was forced to flee his native Germany and abandoned his precious and painstakingly collected recordings. He wrote in his 1955 autobiography Memories of a Birdman: “All these recordings on wax cylinder and wax discs, including my collection of nearly fifty birds recorded between 1927 and 1932, were deliberately destroyed by the Nazis, together with the bulk of my unique collection of gramophone records.” Koch settled in Britain “unknown and penniless”, according to The Times; however, by 1940 he had quickly established himself as a leading figure in the world of natural history sound recording.
He was responsible for the country’s first birdsong recordings, Songs Of Wild Birds. It was recorded and released in 1936. This sound-book was Koch’s first publication after arriving in Britain and comprised two double-sided 78rpm discs accompanied by an illustrated textbook written by ornithologist Max Nicholson.
The Songs Of Wild Birds attracted vast media attention, effectively making Koch an overnight star in the UK. For the first time, people could listen to the songs and calls of Britain’s most common birds in the comfort of their own homes. Here are the recordings from Songs Of Wild Birds:
By 1940, Britain was in the grips of a war. Thousands of British troops were already fighting on the battlefields of France. During this bloody conflict, Koch encouraged readers to find solace in the beauty of birdsong:
War or no war, bird life is going on and even the armed power of the three dictators cannot prevent it. I would like to advise everybody in a position to do so, to relax his nerves, in listening to the songs, now so beautiful, of the British birds. If one watches carefully, one can be sure of surprises.
Here is Koch at work in the field doing what he loved most:
In 1960 Ludwig Koch was recognized for his services to broadcasting and natural history and awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth II. He died in London on 4 May 1974. He was 92 years old.
Although Koch made the first field recordings, the credit for producing the first commercial wildlife recording goes to fellow German, Carl Reich. In 1910, the German branch of the British Gramophone Company released Actual Bird Record made by a Captive Nightingale. The recording became known as Song of a Nightingale:
In May 1910, eight separate recordings of Nightingale were collected by audio engineer Max Hampe, who traveled to Reich’s aviary in Bremen, Germany. Each recording was originally released in Germany in single-sided form and copies were soon made available in European countries, including the United Kingdom, Russia, Australia, and the USA.
This recording had a direct influence on Italian composer Ottorino Respighi, who in 1924, completed his tone poem in four movements, Pines of Rome. The third movement is known for the sound of a nightingale played on a 78rpm record during the ending. In the original score, he calls for a specific record to be played: “Song of a Nightingale, No 2” from disc No. R6105, the Italian pressing released across Europe between 1911 and 1913.
Here’s the third movement. At the 6:30 minute mark, when the harp comes in, you can hear the recorded birdsong:
The use of an actual bird recording during a performance was innovative at that time and opened up a completely new variety of sound recordings for commercial and educational markets.
The first commercial recording of wild birds came about not from a naturalist but through the suggestion of a musician, British cellist Beatrice Harrison, who had been accompanied by a nightingale while practicing in her back garden in Oxted, Surrey.
Beatrice Harrison was a celebrated cellist who gave the first performance of Delius’s Cello Sonata and was chosen for the first recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto conducted by the composer himself.
On a balmy Spring evening in May 1924, while practicing her cello in the garden, a nightingale began to sing, echoing her melody. Recognizing the appeal of the duet, she approached the BBC to broadcast the event. She recalled: “... I telephoned Sir John Reith [managing director] at the BBC, who seemed very dubious at first. Meanwhile, the song of the nightingale was at its height at Foyle Riding and I knew that it must be now or never as from now on he would sing later and later at night, and in two weeks he would be gone.” On May 19, 1924, in the summerhouse of Miss Harrison’s garden in Oxted, BBC engineers rigged up a magnetophone on a stand to broadcast the encounter. Then the crew crouched and waited as Harrison played…
The Marconi-Sykes magnetophone was the first custom-built microphone commissioned by the BBC. It was made in 1923 by Marconi's Wireless Telegraphy Company Limited. It was much more sensitive at picking up sound than previous technology and dramatically improved the audio quality of the BBC’s radio broadcasts:
The extremely heavy iron device was held in a Faraday Cage, invented in 1836 by English scientist Michael Faraday. It was called a “meat safe” stand, named after the meat storage cupboard it resembled:
After Miss Harrison played for some two hours, the nightingale finally joined in and, without announcement, Londonderry Air, for cello and songbird, was broadcast from Oxted across the empire. Listeners were captivated, sending more than 50,000 fan letters to Harrison, some addressed simply to “The Nightingale Lady”.
This was the first BBC outside broadcast and was immediately pressed into a 78rpm record:
Here’s a recording from May 1927:
The performance was so popular the BBC returned to Foyle Riding each May for the next 12 years. Lord Reith commented how the Oxted nightingale “has swept the country… with a wave of something closely akin to emotionalism, and a glamour of romance has flashed across the prosaic round of many a life”.
Here is another stunning and unique recording called Nightingales And Bombers, recorded on May, 15, 1942. During the yearly Harrison nightingale recording suddenly heard overhead was the sound of Wellington and Lancaster bombers flying on a bombing raid of Mannheim, Germany. Harrison stopped playing, but the crew continued to record. The record has very nice sound quality played on a MG Xa Gramophone.
The first side is Bombers Approaching and the second side is Bombers Retreating:
Recording and broadcasting birdsong continued to be very popular after Miss Harrison’s Oxted garden nightingale aired on the BBC in 1924. Here are a few of my more contemporary favorites.
In a career spanning 40 years, American composer and sound sculptor Bill Fontana is a pioneer experimentalist in sound art. In 1983, he recorded Birds Along A Rivers Edge In A Chaparral South Of Monterey from the album Field Recordings Of Natural Sounds:
French ornithologist and wild life recordist Jean-Claude Roché recorded bird songs worldwide for over 30 years and released over 130 records out of his recordings. In 1991, he recorded Woodland Edge In Bourgogne, May from his 1991 CD A Nocturne of Nightingales:
And finally, here’s one more for the road. The first time I heard this song I was in high school. I loved it then and still do. Christine Anne Perfect died in November of 2022, and I dedicate this week’s journey to her memory.
Over four decades, perhaps no other composer drew as much inspiration from birds than Messiaen, who filled thousands of pages of manuscript paper with fragments of birdsong. In 1958, Messiaen, completed his magnum opus Catalogue d’Oiseaux (Catalogue of Birds), a work for solo piano. For Messiaen, birds were spiritual messengers. When I think back on my grandmother’s caged parakeets - how did caged birds bring me peace and ultimately freedom? In the end, perhaps the songbirds are my spiritual messengers and they know the score after all.
Next week, we’ll get back on that Big River called Jazz and dig our paddles in and explore the world of the 1970s musical Black Fairy.
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Until then, keep on walking….