From the 17th century's adventuresome Heinrich Biber (whose violin sonata mimics nightingales, hens, and quails) right up through today, composers have been fascinated with our fine-feathered friends, ...

Brazilian composer Jarbas Agnelli saw a photo in a newspaper of birds sitting on five parallel wires, and was inspired to treat their positions as avian sheet music. He interpreted what he saw as ...

Nature is a valued source of inspiration for artists. But what have artists offered the natural world? Would a bird even like rock and roll? Conceptual sculptor Elizabeth Demaray, an assistant ...

One hundred years ago, in 1922, the American musician and scholar W. B. Olds contributed to this debate with “Bird-Music,” an essay whose very title itself demonstrates his position. Olds makes the ...

It’s no secret to those who know me that birds and music have both helped sustain me through the pandemic. So they’ll not be surprised to learn that I’ve also become obsessed with the combination of ...

Poets frequently liken birdsong to music, but in the case of the North American hermit thrush, the comparison isn’t just lyrical—it’s mathematically accurate. When the bird sings, it adheres to the ...

To human ears, the trilling of birdsong ranks among nature’s most musical sounds. That similarity to human music is now inspiring researchers to apply music theory to avian vocalizations. For example, ...

Nature is a valued source of inspiration for artists. But what have artists offered the natural world? Would a bird even like rock and roll? Conceptual sculptor Elizabeth Demaray is is giving birds a ...