"Hearken to the Hermit-Thrush": A Case Study in Interdisciplinary Listening.

Emily L Doolittle

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.613510

Abstract

Birdsong is widely analysed and discussed by people coming from both musical and scientific backgrounds. Both approaches provide valuable insight, but I argue that it is only through combining musical and scientific points of view, as well as perspectives from more tangentially related fields, that we can obtain the best possible understanding of birdsong. In this paper, I discuss how my own training as a musician, and in particular as a composer, affects how I listen to and parse birdsong. I identify nine areas of overlap between human music and birdsong, which may serve as starting points both for musical and scientific analysis, as well as for interdisciplinary analysis as practiced in the developing field of “zoomusicology.” Using the hermit thrush (Catharus guttatus) as an example, I discuss how the song of a single species has been described by writers from a variety of disciplines, including music, literature, and the sciences, as well as how we can contextualise these varied perspectives in terms of broader cultural thought trends. I end with discussion of how combining approaches from multiple fields can help us to figure out new questions to ask, can help us identify how our own cultural biases may affect how we hear birdsong, and ultimately can help us develop richer and more nuanced understandings of the songs themselves.

Highlights

Musicians and ornithologists alike have a long history of listening closely to, analysing, and writing about birdsong, but they typically do so in very different ways
I identify nine areas of potential overlap between human music and birdsong, which can be used as starting points for both musical and scientific analysis, as well as for interdisciplinary analysis, as practiced in the developing field of “zoomusicology.” using the hermit thrush (Catharus guttatus) as an example, I discuss how the song of a single species can be understood from a variety of perspectives, including musical, poetic, naturalistic, and scientific, as well as how we can contextualise these perspectives in terms of broader cultural thought trends
What is clear is that there are enough similarities between some non-human animal songs and some human music that we can use some of the same perceptual skills and theoretical tools to look at both (Doolittle, 2007, 2015)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Musicians and ornithologists alike have a long history of listening closely to, analysing, and writing about birdsong, but they typically do so in very different ways. Whereas we have previously only been able to infer this from observation of singing behaviours or through comparison of animal song structures with human musical structures, recent research on the connection between singing behaviour and hormones in starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) supports the idea that some non-human species, too, may sing in part for “intrinsic reward” (Kubikova et al, 2010; Rothenberg et al, 2014; Stevenson et al, 2020) This is only a partial list, and others might emphasise other aspects – for example, Martinelli What is clear is that there are enough similarities between some non-human animal songs and some human music that we can use some of the same perceptual skills and theoretical tools to look at both (Doolittle, 2007, 2015)

THE HERMIT THRUSH

Findings

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT