Hark, Hark, the Lark: Birdsong in Music

Pini di Roma (1924) is the second of the three themed symphonic poems that the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi devoted to life in Rome, this time by way of its pine trees. The work has at least one "first" to its name. To quote the work's wiki page:

"Respighi took the opportunity to have the sound of a nightingale recorded onto a phonograph and requested in the score that it be played at the [third] movement's ending, the first such instance in music. The original score also mentions a specific recording that references a Brunswick Panatrope record player. According to author Martin Brody, the nightingale was recorded in the yard of the McKim Building of the American Academy in Rome situated on Janiculum hill."

This first stereo recording was made for RCA by Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Orchestra Hall in 1959–1960. Here is the movement in question, "The Pines of the Janiculum" (I pini del Gianicolo, lento). The recording of the nightingale begins just after 5:30:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pines_of_Rome

Long ago I was given a cassette tape of two albums by Dead Can Dance, Spleen and Ideal and The Serpent’s Egg. Minutes after TSE ended there was a mysterious song that I'd assumed was a "hidden track" on that album (I still don't know for sure). Later (actually, today!) I read that it had been included on a DCD comp called A Passage in Time. The wash of avian sounds on the enigmatic "Bird" includes the call of my all-time favourite feathered friend, the Northern Lapwing:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Passage_in_Time_(Dead_Can_Dance_album)

jk, how about this one!

At this sad time, perhaps the best choice of (live) birdsong in music is Einojuhani Rautavaara's Cantus Arcticus. This is the suitably elegiac central movement, "Melankolia", featuring a slowed-down recording of the song of the shore lark (see link).  

This is for Billy, and for all the bird species that have left us for good.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantus_Arcticus

All his life, the composer Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) was fascinated by birdsong. Armed with a tape recorder, he would capture the songs at locations in and out of his native France, often aided by his second wife, the pianist Yvonne Loriod, and transcribe them for incorporating in his music, necessarily at a slower tempo and a lower pitch.

Scored for full orchestra and featuring birdsong throughout, Chronochromie (1960) includes a fascinating passage of birdsong alone, divided among 18 solo strings: 12 violins, 4 violas and 2 cellos (see below). Lasting around four and a half minutes, "Epode" makes superhuman demands on the average listener. The effect when the rest of the percussion-heavy orchestra returns is quite breathtaking. (The entire work can be heard *here*.)




en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronochromie

Beethoven wrote very little that can be termed programme music. His Symphony No. 6 in F major (Pastorale) is a glaring exception. The sublime second movement, marked Andante molto mosso, is entitled "Szene am Bach" (Scene by the brook). Almost at the very end (here at 12:09) can be heard the calls of the nightingale (flute), quail (oboe) and cuckoo (two clarinets). It is as if time stands still.

Here is Otto Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, from a legendary 1957 performance of this work:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._6_(Beethoven)