Sung Birds

Elizabeth Eva Leach is University Lecturer in Music at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Hugh's College.

"An interesting and encouraging intersection between the 'two cultures' of science and humanities is the emergence of books and conferences on whether or not the delightful songs of birds can be considered a form of music, situated as it is in a time of fascination with questions of animal consciousness with the realization that under sexual selection, animals make choices based on signals; and birdsongs are surely signals that appeal to other birds, but even to humans but wholly aesthetic reasons. There is a surge in interest among ethologists as well as musicians as to whether we can judge the often melodic and even haunting songs of some birds as musical. Thus, Elizabeth Eva Leach's book, Sung Birds: Music, Poetry, and Nature in the Later Middle Ages is a timely contribution, in addition to its welcome fresh look at an aural relationship that has existed between the natural world and humans that stretches back to the origins of the latter. It is clear that musical scholars, even in the later Middle Ages, have been taking the measure of birdsong in cognitive, anthropocentric terms. Music was composed and appreciated in terms of a mathematically precise order: intervals separating tones were defined within a ratio system that had its origins with the Pythagoreans (3:2 for fifths, etc.). This book will be attractive to an audience beyond its target of musicologists and historians. Anyone interested in the ways the natural world affects the artist, and those naturalists interested in birds, including birdwatchers (and listeners) as well as environmentalists who enjoy music, will be rewarded by reading this book."