Birds in Quartet for the end of Time

[MrGongGong]

A quick research question
Does anyone have or know about an analysis of the first movement which shows the birdsong quotations? (Nightingale and Blackbird)
The opening is obvious but I hear other fragments in the first movement.
For what I need it's just that one (the concert i'm working on will only have the first movement ..... yes yes I know it's a "bleeding chunk" but in the context it should work perfectly to illustrate the transition from heard sounds in the environment to "composed music")

Any thoughts most gratefully received

thanks

[Beef Oven!]

A quick research question
Does anyone have or know about an analysis of the first movement which shows the birdsong quotations? (Nightingale and Blackbird)
The opening is obvious but I hear other fragments in the first movement.
For what I need it's just that one (the concert i'm working on will only have the first movement ..... yes yes I know it's a "bleeding chunk" but in the context it should work perfectly to illustrate the transition from heard sounds in the environment to "composed music")

Any thoughts most gratefully received

thanks

Must it be QPLFDT?

Einar England's Symphony No. 2 (Blackbird) has the flute mimicking a blackbird, from the word go.

[MrGongGong]

Must it be QPLFDT?

Einar England's Symphony No. 2 (Blackbird) has the flute mimicking a blackbird, from the word go.

It needs to be the Messiaen
but the Einar is interesting (and Rautavaara, Hovhannes et al)

[teamsaint]

And Mozart 40.

[Richard Tarleton]

Any thoughts most gratefully received
thanks

Taking you at your word a birder writes, nervously - coming to the piece with a relatively innocent ear, but forewarned, the nightingale fragments fairly obvious, blackbird less so (given that each individual blackbird song is an original composition with a certain amount of mimicry I was looking for patterns). Certain repeated phrases made me think song thrush, and at one point a wren.

But - if it helps, and you haven't already come across her, I'd refer you to the work of Joan Hall-Craggs, e.g. see this synopsis and this article. She was both a musician (pianist and cellist I think) and a bio-acoustics expert who wrote extensively on the subject especially blackbirds.

[MrGongGong]

Taking you at your word a birder writes, nervously - coming to the piece with a relatively innocent ear, but forewarned, the nightingale fragments fairly obvious, blackbird less so (given that each individual blackbird song is an original composition with a certain amount of mimicry I was looking for patterns). Certain repeated phrases made me think song thrush, and at one point a wren.

But - if it helps, and you haven't already come across her, I'd refer you to the work of Joan Hall-Craggs, e.g. see this synopsis and this article. She was both a musician (pianist and cellist I think) and a bio-acoustics expert who wrote extensively on the subject especially blackbirds.

Brilliant, thanks (plenty of things they to divert and procrastinate )

[Pulcinella]

I googled Paul Griffiths Messiaen birdsong, thinking that he might have written something, and came across this, which you may well have discovered: a PhD thesis.

https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/6445/1/Kraft-Birdsong_in_the_music_of_Messiaen_VOL1.pdf

A very quick skim found mention of identified birdsong in the Quartet on page 7 of the thesis, so I suspect more is mentioned later.

[MrGongGong]

I googled Paul Griffiths Messiaen birdsong, thinking that he might have written something, and came across this, which you may well have discovered: a PhD thesis.

https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/6445/1/Kraft-Birdsong_in_the_music_of_Messiaen_VOL1.pdf

A very quick skim found mention of identified birdsong in the Quartet on page 7 of the thesis, so I suspect more is mentioned later.

Thanks for this , fascinating stuff
It's a shame the Pdf doesn't include the examples (which is what i'm after) but I can track down the author and ask for them.

[ardcarp]

Fascinating question. Another possible avenue is to know where M. was interned while writing it, and what birdlife might have been in the vicinity?

[Richard Tarleton]

Fascinating question. Another possible avenue is to know where M. was interned while writing it, and what birdlife might have been in the vicinity?

Wiki says Stalag VlllA - the list of birds with a more easterly distribution would be considerable, the bird list for the area would be many hundreds....I don't imagine OM, who had poor eyesight, would have had access to binoculars....the handiest reference here would be Gerard Gorman's Birding in Eastern Europe, pages 168-191 for Poland (as it is today).

Gorman says: "Author's Tip - Scrutinise nightingales carefully - Common Nightingale the norm, but Thrush Nightingale's westernmost limit not far away". Lars Svensson in the Collins Bird Guide says of the Thrush Nightingale's song: "Song more loud than beautiful (still remarkable!), series of tongue-clicking and gurgling notes, the verses often introduced by a few pensive sharp whistles. Audible for kilometres on still nights". Here it is.....

[makropulos]

A quick research question
Does anyone have or know about an analysis of the first movement which shows the birdsong quotations? (Nightingale and Blackbird)
The opening is obvious but I hear other fragments in the first movement.
For what I need it's just that one (the concert i'm working on will only have the first movement ..... yes yes I know it's a "bleeding chunk" but in the context it should work perfectly to illustrate the transition from heard sounds in the environment to "composed music")

Any thoughts most gratefully received

thanks

One important point: this was a decade before OM began the systematic transcription of birdsong, so what you get in the Quartet is impressionistic and almost certainly remembered rather than heard while he was in Stalag VIII-A at Görlitz. The description of the birds is much more vague too. The opening clarinet and violin phrases are both marked "like a bird" (unspecified) and in the Preface they are described as "a blackbird or a nightingale" and the intention is to evoke the dawn chorus. I'm not sure there's anything more scientific than that for Messiaen in 1941 - though it is a first as the earliest mention of birdsong in a Messiaen score. You might (or my not) find something useful in my book: Messiaen (which I co-wrote with Peter Hill, Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 97 onwards.

[MrGongGong]

One important point: this was a decade before OM began the systematic transcription of birdsong, so what you get in the Quartet is impressionistic and almost certainly remembered rather than heard while he was in Stalag VIII-A at Görlitz. The description of the birds is much more vague too. The opening clarinet and violin phrases are both marked "like a bird" (unspecified) and in the Preface they are described as "a blackbird or a nightingale" and the intention is to evoke the dawn chorus. I'm not sure there's anything more scientific than that for Messiaen in 1941 - though it is a first as the earliest mention of birdsong in a Messiaen score. You might (or my not) find something useful in my book: Messiaen (which I co-wrote with Peter Hill, Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 97 onwards.

Many thanks for this which is exactly what I was after.

[Barbirollians]

Chronochromie is a quite spectacular depiction I always think .

[makropulos]

Chronochromie is a quite spectacular depiction I always think .

Breathtaking - yes - and by then OM really knew what he was doing with birdsong, after the dazzling use of them in Oiseaux exotiques and Catalogue d'oiseaux - and before then with Réveil des oiseaux (which I personally find a bit dry, although fascinating).

[Lento]

Must it be QPLFDT?

Einar England's Symphony No. 2 (Blackbird) has the flute mimicking a blackbird, from the word go.

Advance apologies for a trivial and unhelpful post, but I've just had a vision of a battery of percussion imitating a lyrebird imitating everything in the forest!