By Ranjit Singh, ADVANCE ENVIRONMENTAL COLUMNIST
Kids are taught to keep quiet while fishing. They are told that noise spooks fish, and that the wise angler speaks only in whispers.
Later, the child matures, gains experience, and—in my particular case—acquires two aquariums. They then learn that fish don’t react much, if at all, to the normal human voice. Rather, sudden movements are what makes them dart away in fear. This makes sense since the ambush predators they must avoid to survive often rely on stealth.
Raubvögel singen nicht, as the Germans say: “Birds of prey do not sing.” Quiet can mean danger.
So motion, and not sound, triggers the little fish you tried to catch as a kid. What follows is the realization that the adult who taught you to fish just wanted you to shut up for a while. Chances are you didn’t. Humans struggle to keep quiet.
Men in particular often seem impelled to make as much noise as possible, if not legal. This seems especially so in summer. Noise is one way of taking up space, of establishing one’s place and territory, and possibly attracting a mate. (Although one study found that while many men make music to attract women, those playing the fastest heavy metal rock are really trying to impress other men—a point I enjoy making until my life is in peril).
On the roads crossing Potomac Creek recently, few items are as prized as ear-splitting Harley Davidson motorcycles. Big trucks sporting loud after-market tailpipes are common, too, often complemented by blasting music. Almost by rule, these machines are driven by men. They annihilate the natural soundscape.
Which seems to be the point. As a Hartwood farmer once told me, “People who actually use their truck beds don’t jack them up that high.” We’re hearing and seeing a performance as affected as any wild animal’s.
Maybe I’m missing a critical male gene.
I hate loud noise, and take dark pleasure in studies linking such behaviors to personality disorders like psychopathy and sadism. They filled my mind when our kids were tots and couldn’t enjoy summer evenings downtown due to the endless racket of customized tailpipes, which scared them (and prompted a stillborn request for the enforcement of noise ordinances). My joy is in the songbirds, tree frogs, and katydids that state their intentions in ways my ears can handle.
Nonetheless, we’re all acoustic species. And so, as evolutionary biologists suggest, we animals have long paid careful attention to each other’s voices. Good hunters certainly do. But we also listen in for pleasure and inspiration.
That doesn’t mean we always get it right. Czech composer Antonín Dvořák offers an amusing illustration of the potential for error.
Dvořák famously looked to nature and traditional music for inspiration, especially the folk music of his native Bohemia. In 1893, while on a three-year visit to the United States, he and his family took a summer holiday in Spillville, Iowa (current population 400), which had a Czech community.
Dvořák completed his beloved “New World Symphony” while in Spillville. He then composed a shorter piece, the gorgeous String Quartet no. 12 in F major, known as “The American Quartet.” It remains one of the most popular string quartets ever written. Dvořák held that this composition drew from Native American and other folk traditions in the US.
While composing the quartet, however, Dvořák was frequently irritated (or charmed—the story varies) by the insistent chirping of a small bird. A local resident informed Dvořák that the bird in question was a scarlet tanager. These brightly colored creatures summer in North America after migrating from Peru, Ecuador, and other southern countries.
The composer transcribed the birdsong into musical notation and inserted it into the scherzo of his quartet’s third movement, measures 21 through 24, to be played by a violin. The passage has since affectionately been known as “Dvořák’s tanager.”
Recently, Ted Floyd, longtime editor of Birding magazine, studied the quartet and realized something was amiss.
Bird-like sounds are evident throughout the piece. Yet, after carefully comparing the musical score against the sound spectrogram of the scarlet tanager, Floyd failed to see—or hear—a match. Instead, the notes Dvořák transcribed for his scherzo chimed almost perfectly with another common songbird that sings a very different tune: the prolific red-eyed vireo.
I played those measures on the fiddle myself and concur. Floyd surmises, “At least there’s an American bird in the American Quartet! It’s just not the species the composer thought it was.”
Dvořák was misled.
Hard to blame him, though. The composer lived at a time when some still believed birds flew to the moon for winter.
And for the rest of you: Yes, we see you—and hear—you.
Keep it down out there.
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Ranjit Singh teaches in the Department of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of Mary Washington. He’s also an active environmentalist. His “No Lines in Nature” Substack blends history, science, and philosophy to explore our relationship with the natural world world. You can find it HERE. And you can find an earlier version of this essay HERE.
I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this article, and agree with it! We live in an active adult community, which is lovely and peaceful, except for some weekend evenings when we can hear the roar of motorcycles and really loud cars roaring up and down a few blocks away. Thank you! I love the sounds of nature.