Second Monday Music: Sounds of the natural world

Music?

By André Duvall

Our world is filled with natural sounds. Inanimate nature has provided aural stimulation for humankind across the ages in the form of waterfalls, rain, thunder, wind, rustling leaves, and ocean waves. Collectively, these types of sounds are termed geophanies. Geophanies have the power to affect human emotions in various ways. The steady flow of a waterfall may calm one’s agitated nerves, a sudden clap of thunder on a dark night may frighten a child, and the sound of waves crashing on the beach may create nostalgia for one who used to live on the coast.

    Nature is also full of sounds produced by animals, known as biophanies. Many biophanies serve to facilitate courtship, mating rituals, and various types of communication within a species. Some of these biophanies can go unnoticed by human ears; for example, queen ants create chirping sounds to alert worker ants to assume defensive behavior. Other biophanies, such as whalesong and birdsong, are easily perceived, and may even be considered musical by humans.
    Have any readers of Moristotle & Co. ever stopped to consider whether or not certain natural sounds are actually music? It is an interesting idea to ponder. I first seriously considered this question when I took a Music Psychology course a few years ago. To answer this question, it helps to consider one’s definition of “music.” Two angles at which one may consider sounds are their actual content (pitched sounds, non-pitched sounds, noise, rhythms, etc.) and their function.
    When I have listened to samplings of birdsong produced by the Superb Lyrebird, the Musician Wren, and the Kauai Oo, among others, I am struck by the many musical elements that these sounds share with human-produced music. Each of the songs featured repetition of melodic units, sequencing of these units at different pitch levels, a range of several clearly distinguishable pitches, and repeated rhythmic patterns. From a purely sonic standpoint, I would consider these and certain other animal sounds to be music. Moreover, in addition to featuring repetition, these melodic and rhythmic patterns exhibited variation, resembling variation heard in musical improvisation. The sounds were interesting and varied enough to maintain my interest both intellectually and emotionally; they were also unified enough to sound like a coherent musical statement, as though someone had composed these sounds. Simply the sound qualities alone (timbre) of these birds, taken independently of other musical elements, were pleasing to my ear, mind, and spirit. Thus, from an aesthetic standpoint, I would also consider these sounds to be music.

One of the difficulties in classifying certain biophanies as music surfaces when considering the purpose and conscious forethought these animals may or may not have had when producing those sounds. Many of the musical sounds function to attract mates, and to a large extent, urges to make these sounds (and execution of these urges) are instinctual; we do not know to what extent, if any, the animal derives pleasure, release of tension, or anxiety from producing these sounds, beyond the pleasure derived from finding a mate. Furthermore, it is hard to measure the presence of any creative process (planning, crafting, and/or trained skill) in an animal’s production of sound. Do the animals consciously repeat, vary, sequence, etc. these sounds in what would be their equivalent of the human compositional process, or is any semblance to human creative processes again instinctual? From this perspective, then, some may argue that these sounds are only imitations of music.
    A possible way one might counter such an argument is to consider that the differences between non-human and human sounds do not have to always be differences in types of sounds; they can also simply differ in degree of intent and conscious purpose. Birdsongs may not contain the same amount of musical development and craft that humans are capable of, and the birds themselves may not be completely conscious of what they are producing. Yet, it is clear to me from listening that birds make sounds that are not entirely random. Moreover, even if one were to postulate that biophanies do not autonomously produce an emotional reaction within the animals producing them, the sounds are often at the very least a means to some satisfying or awareness-increasing (and perhaps emotional) end. For example, female tree-hole frogs are certainly discovering, experiencing, and expressing a type of knowledge when they select male tree-hole frogs based on the resonance of their water log calls. By “knowledge” in this context, I am referring to any way in which living creatures can share and understand information about themselves and their relationships to one another.
    It seems reasonable to me that the biophanies of a given species may represent a “knowledge system” for that species, allowing its members to become more aware of their environment and to connect with other animals. Connecting and understanding fellow animals may result in a form of “pleasure” for an animal. Might one view this “connecting” and possible pleasure derivation as a form of aesthetic experience, even if it is to a much lesser and rudimentary degree compared to the kinds of aesthetic experiences that humans experience? For persons sitting on their porch enjoying a bird’s song, I am not sure if it is of any great consequence whether or not they consider the song to be music or not, so long as it does not hinder them from enjoying the experience. Yet, considering these sounds as musical might cause them to tune in more carefully to the delightful patterns of something like a birdsong, as well as to the emotional and intellectual responses their bodies produce to these sounds.

Some composers have incorporated birdsong into their compositions, such as the French 20th century composer Olivier Messiaen. I enjoyed hearing the anecdote from a teacher of mine who attended Cornell University that when Messiaen visited that campus in the 1970’s, he went straight to the ornithology lab rather than the music building, as was much anticipated.
    Even if certain animals are not fully aware of, or receptive to, the aesthetic potential and musical structure of their sounds, I as a fully musical human being can still appreciate and react to the beauty and structure of this form of music. The facts that certain animal sounds do share certain “elemental” traits with music from the human world (rhythm, repetition, pitch, etc) and that these sounds can fit within my own musical human knowledge system of aesthetic experience qualifies them as music for me personally, even if the animal does not respond in the way I do. I don’t mean to say all animal sounds are musical, but only certain ones. Just as humans can make “noises,” many animal sounds are noises as well. My current criteria of degrees of aesthetic response and similarity to human music help me to draw the line, although this is certainly a gray area.

Regarding geophanies, one must rule out intent as criteria for whether these sounds are music. A waterfall does not know it is making music. Yet, the sounds of water and wind are sometimes used in conjunction with musical sounds to enhance the listeners’ aesthetic experience. This is easily observed at Target or Walmart, where various CD’s of “natural” music are on sale with titles like “Ocean Dreams” and “Forest Memories.” Some listeners may find these connections to be intensely satisfying, but others I have known are repelled by the idea, finding it “cheesy.”

    I would be interested in hearing how some of Moristotle & Co.’s readers react to various sounds produced by natural, inanimate processes. Personally, I find the idea of certain rhythmic patterns in nature to be fascinating and emotionally stimulating. I have no issue with considering the periodicity of waves to be music, for example. Rain falling on the roof of my home at night can be just as soothing as peaceful music if I am in the right mood; falling rain may change patterns frequently, but there are many localized rhythmic patterns my ear can detect; rain to me is not just disorderly “noise.”
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Copyright © 2013 by André Duvall

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