The Concert of Humans and Nightingales: Why Interspecies Music Works

Authors

  • David Rothenberg New Jersey Institute of Technology

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21476/PP.2015.1115

Abstract

The Concert of Humans and Nightingales: Why Interspecies Music Works

Author Biography

David Rothenberg, New Jersey Institute of Technology

[email protected]

David Rothenberg has written and performed on the relationship between humanity and nature for many years. He is the author of Why Birds Sing (Basic Books, 2005), on making music with birds, also published in England, Italy, Spain, Taiwan, China, Korea, and Germany. It was turned into a feature length BBC TV documentary. His following book, Thousand Mile Song (Basic Books, 2008), is on making music with whales. It was turned into a film for French television. David Rothenberg is Professor of Philosophy and Music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, which has encouraged and supported all of his creative projects since 1992. As a composer and jazz clarinetist, Rothenberg has eleven CDs out under his own name, includingOn the Cliffs of the Heart (1995), named one of the top ten CDs by Jazziz Magazine in 1995 and a record on ECM with Marilyn Crispell, One Dark Night I Left My Silent House (2010). Other releases include Why Birds Sing (2005) and Whale Music (2008).

References

Bechstein, Johann Matthias. 1795. The Natural History of Cage Birds: Their Management, Habits, Food, Diseases, Treatment,Breeding, and the Methods of Catching Them. London: Groombridge and Sons. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40055.

Borges, Jose Luis. 1977. ‘To The Nightingale’. The New Yorker. May 9. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1977/05/09/to-the-nightingale.

Brody, Richard. 2013. ‘Thomas Nagel: Thoughts Are Real’. The New Yorker. July 16. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/thomas-nagel-thoughts-are-real.

Harrison, Beatrice. 2005. ‘The Cello and Nightingale Sessions’. Music and Nature. http://musicandnature.publicradio.org/features/.

Hultsch, Henrike, Sarah Kiefer, Philipp Sprau, Constance Scharff, and Christina Sommer. 2007. ‘Behavioural Ecology and Song Characteristics: A Long-Term Field Study on a Berlin Population of Individually Banded Nightingales’. Institute of Biology – Department of Biology, Chemistry, Pharmacy – Freie Universität Berlin. June 17. http://www.bcp.fu-berlin.de/en/biologie/arbeitsgruppen/neurobiologie_verhalten/verhaltensbiologie/forschung/nachtigallenforschung/nachtigallen-projekte/pr-all-behavioral-ecology.html.

Luxemburg, Rosa. 1917. ‘Letters to Sophie Liebknecht (Wronke, End of May 1917)’. Translated by Eden Paul and Cedar Paul. http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1917/undated/01.htm.

Rothenberg, David. 2005. Why Birds Sing: A Journey into the Mystery of Birdsong. New York: Basic Books.

Rothenberg, David. 2008. Thousand Mile Song. New York: Basic Books.

Rothenberg, David. 2012. Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science, and Evolution. London: Bloomsbury.

Rothenberg, David. 2013. Bug Music. New York: St Martin’s Press.

Downloads

Published

10-04-2015

How to Cite

Rothenberg, David. 2015. “The Concert of Humans and Nightingales: Why Interspecies Music Works”. Performance Philosophy 1 (1):214-25. https://doi.org/10.21476/PP.2015.1115.

Issue

Section

Non-human Performance Philosophy