Music of other kinds
By ERWIN CHLANDA
There is music on Irvine Street, Araluen. There is music on Bullen Road, White Gums. There is music on Petrick Road, Connellan. There is music at Trephina Gorge.
The music is audio-recorded and meticulously chronicled in sheet music making up about half of a 293 page book written by Alice Springs local Hollis Taylor and published by the Indiana University Press in Bloomington, USA.
The book is called Music from Another Species because the performers aren’t people. They are butcherbirds.
Dr Taylor says she is following the commendation a century ago by poet and musician Henry Tate, urging Australian composers to explore the artistic potential of their native musical resources, including the sounds of the bush.
“Tate itemized birdsong of great promise,” writes the violinist and music academic in her introduction, “including those of the pied butcherbird … readily combinable with other calls in an artistic ensemble.
“I follow Tate’s lead with over a hundred transcriptions of butcherbird vocalizations — some ‘grave and of gentle measure,’ yes, but many others marked by exuberance, timbral riches, chromatic flourishes abutting large leaps and sharp switchbacks, and much more.”
And: “Considered by many to be the most accomplished songbird in Australia, the pied butcherbird is known for its ability to skilfully craft new and complex melodies.
“Each vocalist sings differently from the next; their nocturnal solo songs can span up to seven hours; and they are superb mimics. With songs that transform annually, these feathered choristers provide a rich bounty of complex musical phrases to celebrate.”
Butcherbirds, with the sharp hook at the end of their beak, can wreak havoc in other birds' nests, while they seem attracted to humans (Billy, at right, was a mate of mine for a while). And their songs are enthralling.
For the past 21 years Dr Taylor has worked on her unusual subject throughout Australia, usually in the middle of the night and – by her choice – usually on her own.
A typical experience, in Myall Lakes National Park, New South Wales, on March 18, 2013, at 3:22 am: “A seven-note pied butcherbird fanfare awakens me.
“I know the drill—get up, grab the gear, and head out—but it’s absolutely quiet again. I also know what the notes were.
“I could sit up and write them down, which is my instinct, but I have trained myself to only notate when I have a backup recording so I can double-check my work.”
Dr Taylor’s rare obsession does have some predecessors: “We know the hand of J. S. Bach. We know Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher’s 1650 representation of a rooster, cuckoo, nightingale, and more. We know the hand of Olivier Messiaen, especially his birdsong transcriptions.”
Dr Taylor and her partner, experimental musician Jon Rose, are a great fit for cosmopolitan Alice Springs and its many unusual people. She is American; Mr Rose is British. They met in Berlin and are now both Australian.
Together they travelled 5000 km through the outback playing the nation’s biggest string instruments, the Rabbit Proof Fence and the Dingo Fence.
Yes, Mr Rose, currently performing in Berlin, Vienna and Rome, when in Australia makes music with his violin bow applied to stock fences.
Don’t believe it? It’s documented in another book by Ms Taylor, Post Impressions.
PHOTO at top by Neil Boucher.