Birds, Bees, Electric Fish (2023) for Two Flutes and Two Percussion
New work to be programmed in 2023-2024 concert season.
Birds, Bees, Electric Fish was commissioned by a consortium of 32 flutists and percussionists, led by Tessa Brinckman and Terry Longshore of the flute/percussion duo, Caballito Negro.
Lead Commissioners:
Tessa Brinckman, flute & Terry Longshore, percussion – Caballito Negro
Ensemble Commissioners:
Cathie Apple, flute & Ben Prima, percussion – Citywaterl Christine Erlander Beard, flute & Hannah Weaver, percussion – XY; Rebecca Johnson, flute & Jamie V. Ryan, percussion – Eastern Illinois University; Catherine Winters Boyack, flute & Oliver Xu, percussion – Coriolis Duo; Ayano Kataoka, percussion & Conor Nelson, flute – Conor and Ayano Duo
Individual Commissioners:
Garrett Arney, percussion; Molly Barth, flute; Helen Blackburn, flute; Lisa Bost-Sandberg, flute; Jared Brown, percussion; Lisa Cella, flute; James W. Doyle, percussion; Cobus du Toit, flute; Alexis Eubanks, flute; Ingrid Gordon, percussion; Boyce Jeffries, Jr., percussion; Ji Hye Jung, percussion; Hoi Tong Keung, percussion; Drew Lang, percussion; Meerenai Shim, flute; Alexa Still, flute; Sarah Tiedemann, flute; Lynn Vartan, percussion; Christopher Whyte, percussion
With this new work, the lead commissioners wished to address the relative scarcity of repertoire for the instrumentation and to create an opportunity for flute and percussion duos to mix and match, sharing the process of making music together. The instrumentation also opens doors for collaborative mixed ensemble concerts for music schools with strong flute and percussion programs.
Program Note:
Umwelt, the German word for environment, is used in biology to denote the perceptual world as experienced by a specific organism. I encountered the term in Ed Yong’s recent book An Immense World, but it has been in use since its introduction in 1909 by the German biologist Jakob von Uexküll. While our perception is limited to our own Umwelt, delineated by the limits of human perceptual capacity, we can imagine other animals’ Umwelten by studying their physiology and behaviors. The attempt at this impossible task of exiting the self-centered perception is a deeply human endeavor that may help recontextualize our relationship with other organisms and with the living world.
To compose the work, I began by selecting three organisms I found particularly interesting: birds, bees, and electric fish. How do birds hear their own songs? What goes on in the mind of a bee in a colony? And what does it feel like to be a fish feeling its three-dimensional surrounding via an electrical sensation on its skin?
In the first movement, “Birds,” the audience is invited to listen like a bird and become a bird via music. While it is impossible to reside in two Umwelten simultaneously, the continuum between listening as a bird and listening as a human can be suggested in music. Many experimental data show that birds listen faster, capable of differentiating minute variations that escape the human ear. In the article “What Birds Really Listen for in Birdsong (It’s Not What You Think)” in Scientific American, Adam Fishbein introduces experiments involving Indigo Buntings. The buntings sing in paired syllables, which appears to be the most salient feature of their songs to humans. However, recent experiments show that the buntings are mainly interested in fine detail, more so than the paired nature of their songs. To explore this phenomenon, I began by slowing down a song of Indigo Bunting to ½, ⅓, and ¼ of its original speed and transcribing them. They were modified to fit my musical instincts along the way. The various temporal versions of the song unfold in an imaginary sonic forest, ending with the slowest rendering in an attempt to enter the mind of a bird.
While the birds are often considered individually, the bees are often regarded as a collective organism in a hive. Lars Chittka’s A Mind of a Bee introduces some fascinating views not only on how bees come to collective decisions and learn from each other but also on what might go on in a single bee’s mind. Do they feel optimism, pleasure, or pain? The first part of the second movement, “Bees,” is a sonification of hexagons, laid out in a pitch map derived from Euler’s Tonnetz. The ensemble collectively explores the pitch space, unfolding harmonies in a fractal-like process. Perhaps it’s not too far-fetched to think that the mind of a human filling a chromatic space may be similar to the mind of a bee trying to maximize the space within its hive. The second part of the movement is inspired by the bee dance. (The bees are known to wiggle and rotate to communicate with other bees about the location of potential food sources or a new home.) I composed two contrasting melodies—symbolizing two bees dancing—that gradually form a consensus. Once the process is complete, there is a dance party. (It’s sort of a fugue.) I had to speculate that the bees feel something akin to joy in agreement. The hexagon motif returns at the end while the ensemble scatters for the finale.
Sonically representing the electric fish’s perception of the epidermic electroreceptors proved harder to conceive. The 1988 article “Electric Fish Measure Distance in the Dark” by Gerhard von Der Emde et al. in Nature Magazine shares some interesting findings: objects farther away are perceived on the larger surface area of the skin (opposite of our retinal perception), and the gradients of the edges provide the fish with an idea of the objects’ shapes. I decided to adopt a more intuitive approach and paint five sonic scenes surrounding the audience. The diverse sound waves with distinct timbres originating from various locations activate the eardrums, creating an illusion of epidermic perception. The audience is encouraged to mentally map their surroundings replete with diverse vibrating objects.
The translations of senses become more abstract as the piece unfolds; from birds to bees and to electric fish, various senses—auditory, visual, kinetic, and tactile—are alluded to through sounds only. Ironically, my attempt to enter the minds of other beings necessitated a heightened sense of humanity, as I strove to imagine their diverse non-human senses through a lens of familiarity and empathy. It involved hearing birds slower, imbuing them with lyricism; imagining the serene and joyful minds of bees; and experiencing a sense of touch and sight through the act of listening. (J.S.)