A01=David Rothenberg
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
analysis
art
artistic
audio
Author_David Rothenberg
automatic-update
avian
bird
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AV
Category=PSVJ
Category=PSVW6
Category=WNCB
chirp
city life
composer
composition
COP=United States
critical
critique
death
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
emotions
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
fear
germany
humanity
imagery
interdisciplinary
joy
Language_English
melancholy
metaphor
music
musical
musician
myth
natural world
nature
PA=Available
philosophical
philosophy
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
rhythm
rhythmic
sadness
singing
softlaunch
song
sonic
sound
urban
vocal
Product details
- ISBN 9780226467184
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 19 Apr 2019
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
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, whirrs, 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.
