Use Your Imagination 4
The Birds and the Bees

Much classical music is abstract in the sense that it stands alone, neither needing words, nor images, to make sense to the listener.

Harmony, rhythm and structure and other such internal workings help us to make sense of the sounds and mark “music” off from “noise”. Nevertheless, the sounds of the outside world, usually the natural world, have sometimes slipped into the concert hall, either deliberately, or in imitation.

Entering more recent eras, some composers have gone that step further and incorporated natural sounds into the music. Here are a range of portraits, from birds to bees, donkeys, and a ...fish! (We've already heard some bird calls on Beethoven's country walk. The ultimate collection of animal and other cheeky portraits is Saint-Saëns – Carnival of the Animals)

Here is a collection of some better-known music that has drawn its inspiration from the animal kingdom:

1. Delius – On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring

As the title suggests, a cuckoo is heard through the evocative spring morning atmosphere.
2. Grieg – Lyric Pieces, op.43, no.1. Schmetterling (Butterfly)
   Delicate fluttering up and down the keyboard traces the carefree flight of a butterfly.
3. Grofe – Grand Canyon Suite - On the Trail

Donkeys's Bray and carry on before they make the steep ascent - 'clip clop' - into the Great Canyon
4. Handel – Organ Concerto No. 13 In F, op.4 "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale", HWV 295 - 2. Allegro

Right in the middle of this movement, there they are, the unmistakable calls of birds!

5. Mussorgsky – Pictures at an Exhibition – 3. Bydlo
   An old Polish ox trudges past in the mud
6. Respighi – The Birds (Gli Uccelli) - Preludio
   Using the bird music of older composers, Respighi constructed this atmospheric suite full of good tunes and numerous bird calls.
7. Respighi – Pini di Roma (The Pines of Rome) - 3. I pini del Gianicolo
   Respighi calls on the services of an actual (recorded) Nightingale to sing out its song against the atmospheric musical background.
8. Schubert – Die Forelle, D 550, (The Trout)

You can literally hear the trout happily skipping along up-river in this song. Unfortunately it gets caught because of a fisherman's dirty tricks.

9. Sibelius – Lemminkainen Suite, op.22 - 3. The Swan of Tuonela
   A beautiful lament for the less-known cousin of the oboe, the Cor Anglais. This woodwind instrument produces the most beautiful melancholy tone.
10. Rimsky-Korsakov – Tsar Sultan - The flight of the Bumblebee - Probably one of the most famous and clever musical representations of all!