A celebrated figure in myth, song, and story, the nightingale has
captivated the imagination for millennia, its complex song evoking a
prism of human emotions,—from melancholy to joy, from the fear of
death to the immortality of art. But have you ever listened closely to
a nightingale’s song? It’s a strange and unsettling sort of
composition—an eclectic assortment of chirps, whirs, trills, clicks,
whistles, twitters, and gurgles. At times it is mellifluous, at others
downright guttural. It is a rhythmic assault, always eluding capture.
What happens if you decide to join in? As philosopher and musician
David Rothenberg shows in this searching and personal new book, the
nightingale’s song is so peculiar in part because it reflects our
own cacophony back at us. As vocal learners, nightingales acquire
their music through the world around them, singing amidst the sounds
of humanity in all its contradictions of noise and beauty, hard
machinery and soft melody. Rather than try to capture a sound not made
for us to understand, Rothenberg seeks these musical creatures out,
clarinet in tow, and makes a new sound with them. He takes us to the
urban landscape of Berlin—longtime home to nightingale colonies
where the birds sing ever louder in order to be heard—and invites us
to listen in on their remarkable collaboration as birds and
instruments riff off of each other’s sounds. Through dialogue,
travel records, sonograms, tours of Berlin’s city parks, and musings
on the place animal music occupies in our collective imagination,
Rothenberg takes us on a quest for a new sonic alchemy, a music
impossible for any one species to make alone. In the tradition of The
Hidden Life of Trees and The Invention of Nature, Rothenberg has
written a provocative and accessible book to attune us ever closer to
the natural environment around us.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780226467214
Publisert
2023
Utgiver
Vendor
University of Chicago Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter