Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Do you know some cool music about birds?

I recently found this video really beguiling (Emil Gilels playing La rappel des oiseaux)

I was thinking how cool it would be to find an assortment of piano music that is about birds thematically. Like I thought of "La Colombe" (dove) by Messiaen and there must be a lots of others. Do you know any interesting bird-inspired piano pieces? If you want to kill some time on the internet, this is a cool article about Messiaen's bird fascination http://cburrell.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/messiaen-and-bird-song/

I sort of want someone to give a concert based around this theme.

These happen to be by my old teacher....(sorry, can't resist the plug)





....and recently he added this extra thing to honor Ethan Hawke who's making a documentary about him (how could he resist, after having done two volumes of other birds).

Daquin The Cockoo
and Ravel oiseaux tristes and noctuelles

Tchaikovsky: Song of the Lark (March, from The Seasons)

Rameau: The Hen

Ravel: Sad Birds (Oiseaux tristes)

Glinka: The Lark

Henselt: Si oiseau j'étais, à toi je volerais! (If I were a bird I would fly to you!)

Grieg : "Vöglein" (Lyric Pieces, Op 43 No 4)
Griffes : The White Peacock
Granados : The Maiden and the Nightingale

Regards,

Mussorgsky, Dance of the Newborn Chicks, Pictures at an Exhibition

The Cuckoo, old English/Appalacian folk song (one I learned as a child) The Cuckoo

Liszt Legende No. 1: St. François d'Assise - La Prédication aux oiseaux
Schumann Waldszenen: Vogel als Prophet

Nickos Harizanos composed a little while back his Monographs I for solo piano. The 4th movement is called 'The cuckoo' and I think fits the bill perfectly.

Here's a bad quality recording of the work, in a live concert in NYC:
CLICK HERE

and following is the illustration, made by William Chajin, for the score to be released in about a months time from Editions Musica Ferrum.



I wish I could share that movement with you, but I'm not allowed to do right now... Sorry about that!

Good morning.



Bird fascination, indeed! Messian's wife's last name Loriod is the name of a bird, in English the oriole.

By the way, there's Hoagy Carmichael's "Baltimore Oriole", not quite what your thinking of I think but not for the less a swell tune.

And don't forget Peter and the Wolf. The chat between the bird (friend of Peter) and the duck (unhappy) is brillant.

[video:youtube]F81LROhEd40[/video]

Then there's this - funny Hitchcock Birds

Piano version of Saint Saens' The Swan from Carnival of the Animals

Blackbird Blues. The band jams with a recording of a Blackbird.

Isao Tomita did a fantastic electronic version of this back in the 70s!

If you like Ragtime, there's plenty of music in that genre on the theme of bird. The most famous is probably "Ragtime Nightingale" by Joseph Lamb, and his posthumously published "Ragtime Bobolink". And of course, there's "Ragtime Oriole" by James Scott.

Oh yea love me some ragtime! Its what my dad used to play

Rameau: La Poule

recording

Top it off with an arrangement of the Carmen Habanera: "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle que nul ne peut apprivoiser!"