Excerpts from Mighty Muso - Musings behind Violetta's adventures for adult minds and readers.
Describing a person as a force of nature conjures all kinds of imagery. Leopard print tights, for example—fantastic, but they take confidence to carry off. I also picture super heros, flying through the universe and saving the planet from electronic white goods and motor-bikes.
If a person was a force of nature, then they’d no doubt have an effect on the universe. Of course we all do, as we are surrounded by a biosphere. Speculation on an organism’s effects on their ecosystem stimulated the Gaia hypothesis, and if you were wondering what Gaia is; it’s a day spa in Byron bay, nestled in the hinterland of… Huh? Oh whoops, I must have selected the wrong thing in my google search results.
The Gaia hypothesis, on the other-hand, was interested in the Greek God Aeolus and his Aeolian harp, controlling the wind, keeping storms at bay, and the atmospheric effect of the havoc he wreaked when he released them.
No? Oh. I suppose you are right. Not as interesting, but I agree, it was a lot more serious and scientific; and they used ‘Daisyworld’ to prove it.
“The environment of Daisyworld is reduced to one variable, temperature, and the biota consists of two types of life, black and white daisies, which share the same optimum temperature for growth and limits to growth. The soil of Daisyworld is sufficiently well watered and laden with nutrients for temperature alone to determine the growth rate of the daisies. The planet has a negligible atmospheric greenhouse, so its surface temperature is simply determined by solar luminosity and its overall albedo, which is, in turn, influenced by the coverage of the two daisy types. This produces a nonlinear system with interesting self-regulating properties. The governing equations were first given and analyzed by Watson and Lovelock [1983].’
Watson and Lovelock hypothesised, the Earth makes its own self-sustaining adjustments to temperature, based on what is going on down below. Likewise—through the process of Darwin’s natural-selection—the daisies balance themselves out too.
Now, you’re probably getting worried. After all, if all the footballers get paid millions of dollars, and the classical musicians get nothing, they could eventually cease to exist. Natural selection would mean that people would forget Beethoven, Mozart and even Bach, and in order to survive, musicians would end up kicking balls, or working in pharmacies.
Oh, sorry, that’s just me.
But no, that’s not why I found it interesting. The effect that we have on the earth, environmentally, is an enormous topic. Enormous and important. We also know what we do, and how we live, affects each other. Equally important. Likewise, we are affected by our environment. It determines how we dress, how we travel, how we eat, sleep, etc. etc.
But perhaps there is something else? Perhaps we can converse, and perhaps our conversation can actually be positive.
‘From a minute study of bird-song and insect music to the utopian vision of planet Earth designed and managed as a single, organic Gesamtkunstwerk [Pont 1997]’.
What’s a Gesamtkunstwerk? I hear you ask. Well, it translates to mean ‘total work of art,’ and if you’ve ever stood in a rainforest, you’d probably agree; earth has it down pat. We wouldn’t want to mess that up, but we can’t help enjoying being a part of it. But what about the force of nature and other composers? Well, many have written music to sound like the wind, birds, waves, and other animals.
Chopin’s etude op25. No.11, called Winter Wind, starts softly and plaintively—almost like a chant before it explodes into rising and falling semi-quavers over an ominous melody in the bass. Interestingly, The Ocean (no.12) also has a lot of semi-quavers, rising and falling, with the melody in the bass, but what is different?
They key for one, Winter Wind is in A minor, whilst The Ocean is in C minor. Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, keys—or modes as they were back then—have been associated with moods, spiritualism and even signs of the zodiac. During the baroque era and classical era, when equal temperament was preferred, there were all kinds of reasons for choosing a key. Some instruments and voices are happier in a particular key, and in Chopin’s case (like Bach) he used all of them. So why would C minor sound like the ocean and A minor sound like the wind?
Szymanowski’s The infatuated east wind ( from the Love songs of Hafiz), suggests it is in f minor, although it is quite atonal. That means it isn’t written in any particular key or mode. Likewise Scirocco (Hot desert Wind) written for Marimba by Michael Burritt has no key signature, but the flats suggest it goes from C major to C minor. Debussy’s La Mer (the Sea) begins in B minor, then quickly moves to D flat minor and What the West Wind has Seen is in A major, though there are so many accidentals.
Perhaps it is the semi-quaver movement that sounds like the wind? All of these pieces have that in common—rapidly ascending and descending, like our Melody Lolly pop, though a lot more difficult.
In Antonio Vivaldi’s La E’state (summer) from The Four Seasons, the third movement captures that semiquaver movement in tempestuous, and stormy weather. There is hail and thunder, and by contrast the first movement has a distinct lack of wind—dry and hazy, with lazy slurred descending quavers, too hot to move. In winter, running across the ice is captured by pitches leaping across the strings. In Autumn, dogs bark by the violas playing close to the bridge; and in Spring (La Primavera) from The Four Seasons (La Quattro Stagioni), the first movement is full of trilling bird sounds.
All of these compositions could be described as ‘impressionistic,’ or ‘programmatic in Vivaldi’s case. They capture the impression of a sound, the feeling of a season, the rolling of a wave, and the motion of a bird gliding across the water; inspired by a feeling, or a particular verse.
Actually, I’m just watching an eagle out the window now. It’s fascinating how fast they can go, and how unflappably calm they are. I discovered it is known as dynamic soaring. They cleverly use the wind to their advantage. An Albatross is another great example as when air collides with the rough surface of the waves, it slows down—almost becoming stationary—whereas air speed is much faster than ten metres above the wave. The Albatross knows this, and so it appears to us to be stationary close to the surface.
Now, who wouldn’t want to write music about that?
Of course, we couldn’t discuss birds and not mention The Lark Ascending by Vaughn Williams. In fact, I was practicing this in a church on one occasion, preparing for a performance in the evening. Unbeknownst to me, and the small crowd of listeners, there was a bird nesting in the rafters along with its family. However, when I began to play the cadenza, they flew—swooping around the church. One could argue that any type of music would enlist this response. Moreover, rehearsals had been occurring all day, and it was the first time the birds moved.
So, whether Vaughn Williams experienced this too, I don’t know, but clearly, it worked. He managed to emulate their sounds in a way that inspired them to fly.
#ViolettaandtheVenetianViolin #Musicandbirds #classicalmusicandnature #Vivaldifourseasons #musicalmusings #scienceandmusic
This is a seagull, but you get the idea :)
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