"Hearken to the Hermit-Thrush": A Case Study in Interdisciplinary Listening
- Submitting institution
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Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 2822698
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.3389/fpsyg.2020.613510
- Title of journal
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Article number
- 613510
- First page
- -
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- -
- ISSN
- 1664-1078
- Open access status
- Compliant
- Month of publication
- December
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- In this paper, I discuss how my own training as a musician, and in particular as a composer, affects how I listen to and parse birdsong. I identify nine areas of overlap between human music and birdsong, which may serve as starting points for both musical and scientific analysis, as well as for interdisciplinary analysis as practised in the developing field of “zoomusicology” (using the term coined by François-Bernard Mâche and elaborated by Dario Martinelli). I then illustrate these nine starting points with reference to the specific history of how people have heard and understood the song of the hermit thrush (Catharus guttatus) over the past 200 years.
As an interdisciplinary paper, it is a companion to my output ‘Overtone-based pitch selection...’, which is a direct study of the song of the hermit thrush.
I show that people have projected all kinds of culturally-influenced notions onto the hermit thrush, including the idea that it didn’t sing (based on the idea that North American birds were inferior) (1800-1840ish); that it sang western classical music (1880-1920-ish); that is sang so-called “primitive” music (1920-1950ish); that it sang a pentatonic scale (1920-present, in some cases), that the particulars of how pitches are combined is unimportant (1970-2020ish), etc. Through interdisciplinary research, listening for pattern as musicians do, measuring and using statistical analysis as scientists do, and situating our thinking in its cultural context, we can come up with a better understanding of what animals are doing, as well as how we may hear them and fit them into the sonic contexts with which we are familiar.
I draw on my zoomusicological work on the hermit thrush in my composition 'Woodwings' and on birdsong more generally in 'Reedbird' and other works.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -