Okay, but did birds invent music?
E31. If a bird sings a phrase worthy of Beethoven, is that music, or just biology in a nice outfit? Dr. Hollis Taylor, a violinist, composer, and ornithologist, has spent more than two decades recording and transcribing the songs of the Pied Butcherbird, an Australian songbird whose vocal life keeps blurring that line.
In this episode:
How a single pied butcherbird can sing for seven hours through the night, almost never repeating itself, then return the next spring with a brand new repertoire
What a violin can and can't reproduce when it tries to follow a butcherbird, from steep glissandos…
The skinny
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