Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) wrote numerous concertos, many of them for the young ladies who resided in the Venetian orphanage where Vivaldi was employed for most of his working career. (Many of these “orphans” were daughters of affluent  noblemen and their mistresses, and they lived in very comfortable circumstances and were given excellent musical training.)  Some of Vivaldi’s concertos are highly descriptive, including his most famous “Four Seasons” Concertos.  Vivaldi himself wrote descriptive titles and poems that accompanied each movement of the concertos in the Four Seasons cycle. Here is a translation of the titles and verses that accompanied Concerto #3 in F Major, “Autumn”:

Movement 1: Allegro (Peasant Dance and Song)
The peasant celebrates with song and dance the harvest safely gathered in.
The cup of Bacchus flows freely, and many find their relief in deep slumber.

Movement 2: Adagio molto (Sleeping after the harvest celebration)
The singing and the dancing die away
as cooling breezes fan the pleasant air,
inviting all to sleep
without a care.

Movement 3: Allegro (The Hunt)
The hunters emerge at dawn,
ready for the chase,
with horns and dogs and cries.
Their quarry flees while they give chase.
Terrified and wounded, the prey struggles on,
but, harried, dies?

Now enjoy the music of “Autumn,” as performed in the National Botanical Gardens of Wales by Julia Fischer on violin, accompanied by the  Academy of St. Martin’s in the Field.

Concerto No.3 in F Major, RV 293, "AUTUMN"

Tips for Teacher

1. Ask students if Vivaldi’s titles and verses for the movements are reflected in his actual music? Ask them to point out events in the poem when they hear them in the music. Discuss the tempos for each movement, and why Vivaldi chose them to express his musical and poetic ideas.
2. Discuss what a harvest festival is, and what it would mean to the peasants. Why would music be important during a festival?
3. Invent your own “peasant dance” and perform it to the music.
4. Show the class Pieter Breugel’s painting “The Peasant Dance.” Discuss the feasting, dancing, and revelry. Ask why the peasants might be celebrating, and what season of the year it might be.

5. Discuss what autumn means to children and families today.What events do they enjoy that occur only in this season?
6. Ask students to write a poem about autumn.
7. Is there an American holiday that happens in the fall, where we enjoy a feast?
8. Celebrate the changing of the season with a “listening” walk, and discuss sights, sounds, and the weather, to see what signs of autumn you can find. (And when you get home, pour a cup of hot apple cider and listen to Vivaldi’s “Autumn” again!)

How musical is a bonsai? Let me count the ways. . .

In the words of the composer/performer Diego Stocco:

“I always liked bonsai trees, and I was curious to try the approach I used for "Music from a Tree" on a smaller scale, so I bought a bonsai and recorded this little experimental piece.
To determine the key I used the lowest note I could play and recorded the rest around it.
Besides playing the leaves, I used bows of different sizes, a piano hammer and a paint brush.
As far as microphones I used my Røde NT6, a customized stethoscope and tiny MEAS piezo transducers.
I played all the sounds and rhythms only with the bonsai, I didn’t use any synthesizer or samplers to create or modify the sounds. I hope you’ll like it.”
                                                                                                                     –Diego Stocco

See and hear for yourself the musical renderings of a bonsai:

Find out more about sound designer and composer Diego Stocco

Born December 10, 1908 in Avignon, France
Died  April 27, 1992 in Clichy, France

“I give bird-songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colors for those who see none.” —Olivier Messiaen

The Musician who Loved Birds

Olivier Messiaen was perhaps the most influential French composer since Debussy. He redefined avant-garde, although his highly original works often reflect conservative values of spirituality, nature, and  beauty that set his music apart from the harsher trends of the 20th century. While others “musicalized” the harsh mechanized sounds of urban life, war, and the industrial age, Messiaen preferred nature, and most of all, birds.  As a passionate ornithologist, he painstakingly transcribed birdsongs, particularly the songbirds of France. Birds were the true musicians, he felt, and their songs were transformed exquisitely in his music, as seen in Catalogue de Oiseaux (1958).

Messiaen enjoyed a happy childhood filled with music and poetry. At age 10 after discovering Debussy he declared his intention to become a composer.  His mother penned a long colorful poem to him before he was born, and the synaesthesia which caused the composer to experience sounds as colors (as did fellow composers Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin) he attributed to her. “When I hear music, I hear colors,” he said. “When I compose, I see the colors as I see the sounds.” He described one of his harmonic sequences as changing “from blue striped with green to black spotted with red and gold, by way of diamond, emerald, purplish-blue, with a dominant pool of orange studded with milky white.” (Once he got a stomach ache at a ballet when the violet lighting clashed with his color conception of the Key of G!) His father,  a teacher of English, translated Shakespeare into French. As a child, Messiaen delighted in adapting Shakespeare plays for family productions.  Considering that Shakespeare wrote more about birds than any other poet,  is it any wonder that birds would sing in  Messiaen’s music more than in any other composer’s?

Messiaen underwent a rigorous classical musical education at the Paris Conservatoire (1919-30), studying with Paul Dukas, Charles-Marie Widor, and Marcel Dupré.  His education came full circle when he taught there from 1941-78, instructing such influential musicians as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin, and Iannis Xenakis. The most profound influence in his life was his strict Roman Catholicism, which he expressed strongly in his music and in his 61-year tenure as organist of Eglise de la Trinité in Paris. [It was at La Trinité where I was privileged to hear Messiaen at the organ during the annual memorial service Nadia Boulanger held for her sister Lily Boulanger; this venerable neo-gothic church was at my metro stop during my junior year in Paris, near Mlle. Boulanger’s home in nearby Montmartre where I was privileged to attend her weekly music analysis classes.]  

Messiaen’s deep spiritual faith was akin to Bach’s. Both felt that the essential goal of music was to glorify God. “I want to write music that is an act of faith, a music that is about everything without ceasing to be about God,” declared Messiaen. When his faith was tested during his 2-year captivity in a German POW camp, he composed his most important work Quartet for the End of Time (1941). Written for piano, clarinet, violin and cello–the only 4 instruments available to him in the prison camp, this intensely mystical work had a profound effect on 5000 fellow prisoners in the camp, where it was performed for the first time.

Messiaen’s compositional innovations included the use of Greek meters, Hindu rhythms, rhythmic palindromes, adventurous harmonies, and a vivid use of color in his orchestrations through unusual percussion such as the ondes martenot (a vacuum tube instrument that was successor to the spooky theremin). He  also briefly experimented with electronic music (Fête des belles eaux, 1937) and serialism (Quatre études de rythme, 1949). His legacy includes  works for organ, piano, voice, orchestra, and an almost 6-hour-long opera (Saint Francois d’Assise, 1975-1983).  He was in ill health when he finally completed what he thought would be his final work,  but how fitting is it that St. Francis is the subject of his only opera. (Hear St. Francis’s ecstatic sermon to the birds, Act II, Scene 6). In this gentle saint Messiaen found someone who quietly worshipped God and passionately loved nature and birds as much as himself.

Biographers Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone reflect on Messiaen’s techniques of transcribing and composing with birdsongs:

Here’s a good children’s book on Messiaen:

Music for the End of Time

by Jen Bryant, illus. by Beth Peck

“In my hour of gloom, when I am suddenly aware of my own futility. . .what is left for me but to seek out the true, lost face of music somewhere off in the forest. . .among the birds.” -Messiaen

This poetic children’s biography  reveals the small miracle of how French composer Olivier Messiaen wrote his most important work, Quartet for the End of Time. Imprisoned in a German POW camp, Olivier longs for his family, friends, and home. . .but most of all he misses music. A chance encounter with a nightingale and a German officer, however, provides him with the opportunity to write music again. When a make-shift concert on broken-down instruments takes place in the camp in 1941, Quartet for the End of Time (and the song of the nightingale which is in it) offers a message of hope and beauty that inspires Messiaen’s 5000 fellow prisoners.

One of the more delightful oddities of nature is the musical mating practice of the mosquito. In order for such a romantic event to have a “happily ever after” ending, the male and female have to tune up and harmonize in the interval of a perfect fifth.  The male sound is roughly a D (600 Hz) and the female a G (400 Hz). When they adjust their tones to create a perfectly tuned 5th, then the overtone of the 3rd can be heard (making the major triad) and mating will take place. A less talented and musical male, who can’t perfectly tune with the female, quickly becomes a rejected suitor. (A diminished 5th would be the death of the relationship!)

So maybe mankind should credit the mosquito love duet for the sound of the perfect fifth, the most euphonious interval in music history since the days of Gregorian chant. The perfect fifth is also the foundation of chordal harmony and the pivot point for tonality (which is always a pull between the tonic (first degree of the scale) and the dominant (5th degree). (All music students have heard of the infamous “Circle of Fifths” but never knew of its unsavory origins.) Maybe the history of Western music owes a debt of gratitude to the courtship duo of the pesky mosquito.

I couldn’t make this stuff up. Read the NPR article for yourself: “Mosquito Duet Leads to Love.”

Teaching Tip: Try this acoustic experiment in the classroom to understand the physics behind the mosquito love duet. Have 3 children twirl three Whistling and Listening Tubes at 3 different speeds. One will twirl slowly to create the tonic  (first degree of the scale) representing the female mosquito, and the other twirl faster to create the dominant (5th degree of the scale) for the male mosquito. If the 3rd child can twirl even faster to get the next tone in the overtone series (the 3rd scale degree), you will hear a major chord,   signaling the finale of the  successful mosquito love duo.

Do monkeys respond emotionally to music? Well, maybe not to human music, but they respond with excitement or relaxation to species specific music  composed  just for them. David Teie, composer and cellist with the National Symphony Orchestra (who sometimes plays with the heavy metal band Metallica), composed  music  based on natural vocalizations of the monkeys in various emotional circumstances. The music, played and recorded on actual instruments, was then transposed 3 octaves higher with the tempo 8 times faster. The monkeys responded to the music physically and emotionally. In fact some of their natural vocalizations are in fact diatonic and in the Key of E flat, according to the composer. Makes one wonder who really invented music, man or monkey!

Listen to this NPR interview, along with some of the monkey-inspired music. Now the flip side of the question is, do humans respond to monkey music? Well, maybe not. But perhaps the bottom line of this experiment is, both humans and monkeys respond emotionally to their own kind of music. There’s just no accounting for musical tastes.

Hear some monkey musical improvisations when Patricia Gray–scientist, musician, and biomusic researcher from the National Academy of Sciences—discusses  music-making apes that have jammed in studio with Peter Gabriel and Paul McCartney.

Is music something we share with the animal kingdom? Or did they first introduce us to music? This is the musical chicken-or-egg question, and I might just lay my bet on the animals.

From singing whales in the seas to birds in the trees, frogs on a log to crickets in a fog, the music of the natural world surrounds us. Man imitates these sounds and rhythms and calls it music. They say we stole fire from the gods, and we should also  ‘fess up that we stole music from the animals. Maybe it’s time to give credit where credit is due. Camille Saint-Saens certainly did in Carnival of the Animals, and so should we.

If you need  convincing, check out  these musical critters:

Snowball, the dancing cockatoo, shares the stage with a less rhythmic species of scientists at the World Science Festival 2009.

The smallest feline is a masterpiece.” (Leonardo da Vinci). And prodigy cat Nora composes at the piano, with a keen ear for rhythm and a sensitive touch for dynamics.

Music hath charms to soothe the savage “beast.” Watch this dog play and sing the blues.   (Eat your heart out, Bessie Smith!)

For more beastly music, see:

Carnival of the Animals DVD. St.-Saens’ musical salute to “feathers, fur, and fin” with the humorous verse of Ogden Nash, and a live youth orchestra joined by animals from the San Diego Zoo.

Wildlife Symphony DVD. Animal “choreography” to classical works.

The Songs of Wild Birds by Lang Elliott. Over 50 native birds, including songbirds and lesser-known birds that make curious, bizarre sounds. Color photos, interesting bird stories, sonagrams that show phonetic and visual representation of their songs, and a 65-min. CD of all birds, narrated by the author. Paperback and CD

Wild Soundscapes:  Discovering the Voice of the Natural World by Bernie Krause. Discover nature’s music and learn how to make your own field recordings. Tips on inexpensive equipment, methods, and WHY we need to preserve these “biosymphonies.” Includes a 55-min. CD sound safari, with singing ants, shifting sand dunes, creature choruses, baboon duets, & more. Paperback and CD.

The Book of Music and Nature. This innovative collection includes classic texts on music and nature, essays, fiction, plus a CD of natural sounds (from Pygmy music to butterflies) and music reflecting nature by Pauline Oliveros, Brian Eno, & others. 260 pp. Paperback

Music of the Birds: A Celebration of Bird Song by Lang Elliott. Beautiful photographs, inviting text, bird poetry and prose by Shakespeare, Dickinson, Wordsworth, and more, plus a joyous CD of songbird symphonies and solos. Paperback and CD.