Bird Calls Transcribed to Musical Instruments

Environmental & Science Education, STEM, Behavior, Wildlife, Nature, Biodiversity, Art & Environment

Ed Hessler

"Calls of the wild: A composer transcribes bird songs" is the title of CBS correspondent Faith Salie's conversation with composer Alexander Liebermann (Berlin). It was featured on CBS Sunday Morning for April 30, 2023. 

During the pandemic lockdown he turned to nature and listened to recordings of bird songs.  This led him to transcribe their complicated callas and translate them to musical instruments. This work is slow and I wish he had been asked to show us a page of the notations and make some remarks about their use.

You may be surprised by how little of bird songs we hear and how complicated they are. I found the transcriptions to musical instruments to be very pleasing and sometimes surprising.