Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
While staying in the Scottish Highlands last week, I recorded (at dawn) this wonderful song of a (European) Song Thrush singing it's morning serenade (at around 3 AM). Messiaen said of the Song Thrush, "the song thrush is one of the most brilliant birds, and although each individual thrush has its own invention, the song is still quite recognisable. It's an incantatory sort of song with strophes generally repeated three times. But! These strophes are never identical, which is to say, the bird invents a strophe, repeats it three times, then invents another...all repeated thrice. The rhythms are excessively pronounced and varied, and they accompany melodies of timbres...with some extraordinary flights of virtuosity. In these water-drop glissandos one can hear a succession of very delicate, pearllike tones, like beads dropping off a broken string into a fountain basin."
#themusicprofessor #songthrush. #messiaen
While staying in the Scottish Highlands last week, I recorded (at dawn) this wonderful song of a (European) Song Thrush singing it's morning serenade (at around 3 AM). Messiaen said of the Song Thrush, "the song thrush is one of the most brilliant birds, and although each individual thrush has its own invention, the song is still quite recognisable. It's an incantatory sort of song with strophes generally repeated three times. But! These strophes are never identical, which is to say, the bird invents a strophe, repeats it three times, then invents another...all repeated thrice. The rhythms are excessively pronounced and varied, and they accompany melodies of timbres...with some extraordinary flights of virtuosity. In these water-drop glissandos one can hear a succession of very delicate, pearllike tones, like beads dropping off a broken string into a fountain basin."
#themusicprofessor #songthrush. #messiaen
