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<!DOCTYPE html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Music and Bird Song</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="./style.css">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Quantico:ital,wght@0,400;0,700;1,400;1,700&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">
<style>
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="buttons">
<a href="https://ajwoolsey.github.io/artistbioname/">Artist Statement and Bio</a>
</div>
<h1>On Musicality and Bird Song: Ornitic serinette</h1>
<div class='quote'>
“The abyss is Time, with its sadness and weariness. The birds are the opposite of time. <br>They represent our
longing for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant song!”
<br>- Olivier Messiaen <br><br><br></div>
<p>In the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, “The Nightingale”, the sweet warbling of the songbird enchants an emperor and wards off death
(Anderson 20). Music has deep and complex origins in environmental sounds- likely providing the evolutionary catalyst for pre-linguistic
forms of social communication. Human speech and music have evolved concurrently with, not independent from, animal songs; a beautiful,
interwoven secret that reveals ancient complexities about the evolution of social communication and our musical relationship with the
natural world.</p>
<div class='imagewrapper'>
<div id= "leeimage">
<img src="https://64.media.tumblr.com/dfb1076f2e7c504a9886dffe85104b20/7ef6a017425f549b-85/s1280x1920/2ab1fd7674d29b2c8c56bfb14aafe153f1f8ee1e.png" alt="nighingale" style="width:400px;height:400px;">
<figcaption>Drawing of a nightingale <br>
(Lee 11)</figcaption></div>
<div class="imagewrapper">
<div id= "image2">
<img src="https://images-cdn.bridgemanimages.com/api/1.0/image/600wm.XXX.04129950.7055475/5988961.jpg" alt="nighingaleemperor" style="width:400px;height:400px;">
<figcaption>A nightingale warding off death in "The Nightingale"
<br>(Anderson 50)</figcaption></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>Composer and music historian John Hawkins posits that people learned melodies and diatonic music principles- or scales with seven notes
of a tone per octave- from birds, going as far to claim that bird songs contain in them “the rudiments of harmony” (Head 13). In similar
fashion, legendary French composer Olivier Messiaen dedicated his life to carefully transcribing bird songs into usable musical notation,
and using these songs as inspiration for his compositions, notably Le Merle noir (The Blackbird) and the Catalogue d'oiseaux ("Catalogue of
birds'') series, including works inspired by the calls of the Eurasian curlew, the Greater short-toed lark, and the Tawny owl (Fallon 116).
To Messiaen, birds are the world’s first, and most spiritually divine, musicians (Peltz 2-6). This sentiment is shared by others of his
time, with naturalist and author Schuyler Matthews stating <br><br>
“…I believe the birds with their music are the revelation of a greater world, one with just such a boundless horizon as that which we
view from the mountain’s summit marveling that it is indeed the same narrow world we live in” (Matthews 25).</p><br><br>
<p>However, there exists a complex and deeply unromantic debate on both the musicality of birdsong as well as the definition of music itself-
involving complicated dimensions of biology and aesthetics. While there isn’t a definitive definition of music, it is largely considered by
modern music theorists as a distinctly human trait; an aesthetic audio product bred from our innate and unique capacity for creative and
emotional processing- extending beyond pure necessity for survival. Despite music’s roots in natural sounds (Stewart 7), many modern music
theorists declare philosophers and composers’ fascination with bird song mere projection, with little to no merit on the validity of bird
song as music. As birdsong is hard-wired and biologically imperative for reproductive success- seemingly lacking the individuality,
creativity, and intent inherent to human music- it is considered too deterministic to be considered “music” as defined as an expression
of feeling and emotional output. In the technical sense, bird song tends to contain inconsistencies in pitch and rhythm, employs
notes outside the highest reaches of a piano, and is difficult to replicate on human instruments (Hold 115). </p> <br><br>
<div class='header'>
Defying Exclusion: The Hermit Thrush Song</div>
<p>In true testament to ecological perseverance, the musical prowess of avian songs prevails.
Hermit thrushes, small, robin-sized birds native to North America, sing songs that are notorious in musical and
ornithological circles for their alleged musicality. Walt Whitman describes the warbling of a hermit thrush as
“death’s outlet song of life”: haunting, melancholic, echoing as an ethereal whisper instead of a symphony.
With modern statistical analysis tools, hermit thrushes have been legitimized as genuine musicians and producers of harmonic song.
In 2014, a hybrid research team of avian cognitive biologists and music theorists proved that select hermit thrush songs
mathematically follow the same rules that underlie human musical scales, favoring frequency ratios from the harmonic series
(Doolittle et al. 4). This new research challenges the anthropocentric notion of music as a human trait and suggests an overlap
between avian and human song cultures, suggesting that birdsong may have an aesthetic function outside of biologically imperative
reproductive behavior. </p> <br><br>
<div class="header">
Project Description and Motivations
</div>
<p>As a scientist with a spattering of ornithological experiences- primarily researching the reproductive behavioral and migratory
ecology patterns of birds of prey and Chinese songbirds- birds and bird songs have deeply influenced my inspirations as an artist
and an enjoyer of music. To honor my experiences in field ornithology, I want to bridge the gap between human and animal music and
offer an alternative definition of music that includes both culturally and biologically determined sound.
My installation, “Ornithic serinette”, takes song notation from a specific harmonic hermit thrush song, as denoted by Doolittle
et al., and transforms the notes into a tangible musical instrument. In utilizing digital tools to create a musical symbiosis between
human and avian actors, I am continuing Messiaen’s musical legacy and promoting the philosophy of birds as the world’s first musicians.
In creating the instrument in the form of a nest with eggs, I want to both honor my origins as a reproductive avian ecologist and
create a grounding experience that connects the human users to both their sense of play and to the natural environment- creating a
kinship in the hopes of shedding light on ancient secret of concurrent human-animal music evolution and promoting music as a means of
social communication. This project seeks to delegitimize the anthropocentric notion of music as a definitively human trait and promote
animal sound and song as a form of aesthetic music, rather than just a product of reproductive necessity. </p> <br>
<div class= 'header'>
In Action
</div>
<iframe width="315" height="560"
src="https://youtube.com/embed/e2uTfpnQpmg?si=d-3Mejw7TU9k1GFo"
title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0"
allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media;
gyroscope; picture-in-picture;
web-share"
allowfullscreen></iframe>
<div class='header'>
A Note on Overtones</div>
<p>All relevant musical data for Ornithic serinette was sourced from <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1406023111">"Overtone-based pitch selection in hermit thrush song:
Unexpected convergence with scale construction in human music"</a> from Emily Doolittle, et al. These researchers used the "overtone hypothesis" to test the harmoniousness of hermit thrush songs.
The overtone series refers to how single pitches produce multiple additional harmonic pitches that are all divisible by a base or fundamental frequency. The resulting pitches from the overtone
series serves as the foundation for much of modern harmony theory and is at the root of most Western music. <br><br>
The frequency of the 1st overtone is calculated by doubling the fundamental frequency, the 2nd overtone is calculated by adding 1/2 of the 1st overtone to the first overtone, the 3rd overtone is
calculated adding 1/3 of the 2nd overtone to the 2nd overtone, and so on. The below table shows the pitch and frequencies of overtones 1-5 with a fundamental
frequency of 110hz.<br>
<div class='table'>
<table>
<tr>
<th>Pitch</th>
<th>Overtone</th>
<th>Frequency</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>A</td>
<td>Fundamental</td>
<td>110hz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>A</td>
<td>1st overtone</td>
<td>220hz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>E</td>
<td>2nd overtone</td>
<td>330hz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>A</td>
<td>3rd overtone</td>
<td>440hz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>C#</td>
<td>4th overtone</td>
<td>550hz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>E</td>
<td>5th overtone</td>
<td>660hz</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
<br>
<br>
<div class="header">
Sound Recording and Analysis
</div>
<p> The hermit thrush song recording used to create "Ornithic serinette" can be listened to by clicking the play icon down below. This
particular hermit thrush song was determined by Doolittle, et al. to follow the
mathematical rules of the overtone series; ie. predictably generating integer frequencies divisible by a foundational frequency.
Figure 1 shows the frequency comparison of the selected hermit thrush song (A) as compared to 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the overtone series (B). Figure 2 shows
a spectrogram of the recorded song. Spectrograms visualize bird songs by plotting the frequency of sound
over time (kHz/s), acting as a sort of auditorial "signature" unique to each species of bird. Individual
notes from the song were extracted using Melodyne, a music analysis software, and assigned to keys using Max/MSP/Jitter.
</p>
<br><br>
<div class="songfile">
<audio controls>
<source src="https://od.lk/s/MTNfMjA0NzEzNDVf/overtonesongfromfigure.mp3"/>
</audio>
</div>
<br><br>
<div class='figurewrapper'>
<div id= "overtone">
<img src="https://www.pnas.org/cms/10.1073/pnas.1406023111/asset/37b1e27a-4ef5-4592-b481-6eb0d968f09d/assets/graphic/pnas.1406023111fig02.jpeg" alt="overtone" style="width:400px;height:500px;">
<figcaption>Figure 1. (Doolittle et al., 3) </figcaption></div>
<div class="figurewrapper">
<div id= "spectrogram">
<img src="https://i.postimg.cc/KjMj0TGp/overtonethrush.png" alt="spectrogram" style="width:600px;height:400px;">
<figcaption>Figure 2. Created using RavenLite.</figcaption></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br><br>
<h2>Acknowledgements</h2>
<div class="acknowledgements">
Without the patience and help of a select few people, this project would not be possible. Art is a collective experience, after all.
I would like to thank my sweet room mate Iris for allowing me to monopolize our living room with my nesting mess, and accidentally blowing
our apartment's circuits out with my conductive mat (sorry!). Thank you to my dear friends; Bella for joining me to collect and hand saw branches in
Central Park, without hesitation or prior knowledge on what I was building, and to Yo for helping me schlep my nest from Astoria to Hunter. With a little faith
and a slightly terrifying drive over Queensborough bridge (shout out Ford trucks), we successfully made the pilgramage to 68th and Lexington. I truly
could not have done it without you.
Thank you to David Winkler
and John Kochs Antiques for graciously providing me with scrap wood and allowing me to use your jigsaw. (FYI: If you are a set designer in New York,
hit up John Kochs for the best stuff in town. The staff ain't too bad either) Thank you to Sha Sha Feng, who's knowledge and guidance on interactive
installations and Max MSP proved instrumental to me throughout the course of this project. <br>
For the birds, thank you does not cover it. As dickinsonian as it sounds, hope truly is a thing with feathers.</div>
<br><br>
<div class="references">
<div id= "referenceheader">
References
</div>
<div class="references">
<div id="referencecontent">
Anderson, Hans Christian. New Fairy Tales. First Volume. First Collection. C.A Reitzel, 1843. <br>
Doolittle, Emily L., et al. Overtone-Based Pitch Selection in Hermit Thrush Song:
Unexpected Convergence with Scale Construction in Human Music. no. 46, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1406023111. <br>
Fallon, Robert. The Record of Realism in Messiaen;s Bird Style. www.academia.edu, https://www.academia.edu/16754614/The_Record_of_Realism_in_Messiaens_Bird_Style. <br>
Head, Matthew. “Birdsong and the Origins of Music.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association, vol. 122, no. 1, ed 1997, pp. 1–50. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1093/jrma/122.1.1. <br>
Hold, Trevor. “Messiaen’s Birds.” Music & Letters, vol. 52, no. 2, 1971, pp. 113–22. <br>
Lee, John. A Short History of Birds and Beasts, for the Amusement and Instruction of Children. F. Houlston and Son, 1828. <br>
Matthews, F. Schuyler. Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Music : A Description of the Character and Music of Birds, Intended to Assist in the Identification of Species Common in the United States East of the Rocky Mountains. New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, c1921, 1904. <br>
Peltz, Charles H. J. “Messiaen, Saint Francis, and the Birds of Faith.” Yale Institute of Sacred Music, 2006. <br>
Stewart, Katricia D. F. “The Essentialism of Music in Human Life and Its Roots in Nature.” Senior Theses, 2014. <br>
</div>
</div>
</body>