Customer Reviews

Why Birds Sing: A Journey Into the Mystery of Bird Song

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This book is a hoot, a tweet, and a cheerup!

David Rothenberg has interwoven a personl journey of playing music with birds with a comprehensive history of bird song studies - from their poetic beginnings to their present scientific analysis. Because of his diverse talents, he is the perfect guide through these intellectual and musical forays.

Why do birds sing? There are many answers, but none are as satisfying as the relentless questioning in this book. I enjoyed it immensely and found it impossible to put down. I am sure you will enjoy it too.

Rothenberg writes with an easy intimacy, but if one takes him at his word, the intimacy that means most to him comes not by means of words but of music, and less by means of music as such than by an improvisatory exchange between, usually, himself on his clarinet, and someone else on whatever instrument the other person is using.

Given this driving urge, it seems inevitable that Rothenberg should want to cross the barrier between those most musical of creatures, the birds, and those with the most productive curiosity, the humans. His own curiosity leads him first to the birds and then to the human experts in birdsong. He gives vivid descriptions of these researchers' extraordinary devotion to their work. I especially enjoyed his description of the ability of the composer Olivier Messiaen to hear, transcribe, and whistle the complex songs of a bird he had never heard before.

Although, like a few of the researchers - Donald Kroodsma, for example - Rothenberg believes in the innate pleasure birds take in their song, he checks his intuitive sense of their muisicality by carefully summarizing what is scientifically known about their abilities and ways of life. Yet even though he takes to heart the criticism that the romantics "listened to birds and heard only themselves," he recalls that science, too, is fallible, and he plays on the ornithologists' conclusion that not only is each species of birds unique, but so is every individual bird.

"Why Birds Sing" ends in the climactic scene in which Rothenberg and a friend go to Australia to hear, see the dance of, and try to enter into a musical dialogue with the lyrebird named George, the only member, he says, of his elusive, musically gifted species who can stomach the sight and sound of human beings. The bird lights to sing just a few meters from Rothenberg's tape recorder. He hears that the lyrebird's song is composed but alien, in a human sens crazy, music. After he hears a full cycle of the lyrebird's music, he joins in, dancing, not to copy the bird's song, but to play music, in and around the song, that is worthy of the bird's acceptance. The bird seems to respond to the clarinet, dances, and disappears. Rothenberg develops this last, climactic chapter, which he calls "Becoming a Bird," with thoughtful eloquence. He feels he has given his gift and made his human offering to an animal of another singing species. But his gift is also to all of us who read him.

In this slightly meandering but sincere book, musician and philosopher Rothenberg shows us that there are qualities to birdsong that transcend what science can tell us. Part of that transcendence is their emotional involvement with their songs, and Rothenberg can be counted among earlier authorities--including Len Howard, Charles Hartshorne, and Alexander Skutch--who believe that birds enjoy singing. His enthusiasm is most apparent when the discussion turns to music, and as an amateur musician I also enjoyed perusing the musical scores and sonograms of various feathered songsters.

Rothenberg hits the mark with his observation that "bird songs are a genuine challenge to the conceit that humanity is needed to find beauty in the natural world." Another conceit is the disturbing laboratory experiments he describes, in which singing birds have their brains pierced by wire electrodes and are later killed for dissection.

Readers get a bonus CD of the author's music with birdsong and other nature sounds.

Great book, references scientific research as well as aesthetic qualities of many song birds and non-song birds bringing the two realms of reasoning to somewhat of a compromise. I would definetly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know why birds sing.

David Rothenberg's lovely book, WHY BIRDS SING: A Journey Through
The Mystery of Bird Song, is an impressive achievement. The subject is fully researched, totally accessible, often fascinating, and always moving. I have long found that the wonder of bird song can bring profound solace to a troubled
spirit. Mr. Rothenberg's study completely validates my belief.

This book and CD are simply wonderful. Rothenberg is gifted writer and musician. Don't think twice about it. This is also an incredible gift.

Great book. It was a pleasure to read. The breadth of sources the author consults and clearly understands and appreciates is amazing. He mentions, "Over the last five years I have read far too much." Thank you. :)

With such an inspiring subject this should have been great book, but it's not. Reading this book was like watching a lava lamp - moving (turning pages) but going nowhere. I only read 40 pages before I couldn't bring myself to pick it up again. Good writing grabs you and compels you to continue - this doesn't. Singing birds are inspiring - this book isn't. The CD that came with it closed the lid on the coffin for me. The birds aren't allowed to star here but the author himself. He fails to communicate with the birds who provide great motifs for improvisation - only recall one time on the CD where the author generated a musical idea based on the bird songs. The book and CD are pretentious.

I really enjoyed it. And it is so full of goodies. Best for me is that not since Schafer's Tuning of the World has the whole complex of natural sound and the composer been put back up where it belongs, stage almost center. Mulling over the whole business, I just thought an alternate title might be: "what should humans sing?" And next most useful advice, to paraphrase you: "Take a tip from the Mockingbird." There's enough chock full in both those snippets to keep me creatively scratching my head.

Rothenberg is a New Age writer and musician that enjoys playing music to birds and jamming their singing with the sound from different wind instruments. Surey lots of fun. However, it is from this perspective that he attemps to understand why birds sing. To be true, he does review some scientific papers and provides a not too bad coverage of the findings of the scientific literature. But Rothenberg enjoys exposing the shortcomings of this research (rather pretentiously by the way) and coming up with unscientific ideas of his own based on his feelings about why birds should spend so much time singing. He seriously believes that his empathic method of blowing desceding fifths and chromatic scales with his clarinet to singing birds can take him a long way into understanding the misteries of bird song. Good luck to him.