Songbird and birdsong: Listening to the finches in the Harz region, Germany

ABSTRACT

The present study is chiefly directed to the way in which birders perceive and evaluate birdsong and how they behave towards it, including in certain rituals in which birdsong contests play an important part. The tradition of songbird competitions as a living cultural heritage is well exemplified by the long tradition of the Finkerei in the Harz region, Germany. In the Harz song contests, I argue, birdsongs are far from “naturalistic”. They are “sonic things” that emerge from sophisticated training and experimentation, ritualistic rules, practices of competition, and the judging of birdsongs. In short, they are a deliberately sought outcome. This approach to the Harz contests places the finch song within the concept of a cultural product of an intangible nature. The present paper results from years of participatory observation. From an anthropological perspective, the basic interest behind my research explores how humans, in certain times and places, behave when perceiving music, being exposed to, shaping and evaluating its parameters. In relation to experiences with songbirds the main questions are: what is biological, what is individually learned, what is a social consensus, and what is universal in human musical behaviour?

KEYWORDS:

• Birdsong
• biology of music making
• systematic musicology
• living heritage
• song contest
• finch master
• UNESCO Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage

Introduction

Birdsong¹ has long inspired philosophers, artists, writers, and musicians, and has fascinated listeners and bird lovers from all parts of the world. Nonetheless, the field has been dominated by the environmental and biological sciences; a similarly profound engagement with birds and humans as cultural actors is far less evident.² It is only in recent decades that humanities-based interdisciplinary fields related to the animal world have begun to thrive.³ A growing number of such studies have tended to apply a “nature as culture” simulacrum in which culture as embodied by animals, like human culture, is passed on through social behaviour and individual learning processes. To be sure, the species-typical aspects of cultural diversity in animals, including variations between individuals of a particular species, point to genetic causes. But a study like this one on Finkerei – the activities around the songbird contests in the German Harz region – centring on the ecology of sound, reveals that genetic traits, too, are closely correlated to culture. In this case humans and birds are equally embedded in and brought together by resonance in inner and outer spaces as both subjects and objects.

This paper explores the contemporary and historical contexts of songbird learning. It further examines birdsong as a sonic thing – something made by birds, compatible with the specific talent of the bird, and, simultaneously, determined by humans, since they force the bird to learn according to human aesthetic preferences and long-standing practices of training. The observations made are based on my fieldwork in the Harz region of Saxony-Anhalt, central Germany, on the most popular songbird, the Fink or Buchfink (Fringilla coelebs, chaffinch), together with the birders who raise and train these birds, the Finker (“finchers” or finch masters). The close physical, behavioural, and emotional connection between humans and birds in this setting reveals “nature-cultures” at an intersection between human and animal worlds. The natural environment of the Harz’s highland forests is enriched by ritualised activities during the Pentecost holiday in spring, when people and songbirds come closer together than at any other time of the year – through song competitions and celebrations of the beginning of the new season as it emerges from the cold and dark winter.

In line with the UNESCO concept of intangible cultural heritage (ICH), the recognition of deliberately taught birdsongs and their transmission must be considered as intangible, since these songs come into existence only on the basis of practices, implicit knowledge, and a long oral tradition of knowledge transfer: knowledge about the different types of songs, knowledge of how to train songbirds to sing particular songs, and knowledge of how to raise a young bird in a cage, carefully looked after at home. The transmission of such knowledge from one generation to the next is centred on the sonic skills of the birder, in direct connection with the songbird itself. The bird’s entire existence is also part of the birder’s life. It is shaped by the birder’s goals, while orienting and giving life to the birder’s aspirations and aesthetic and emotional fulfilment.

Despite the wealth of material artefacts associated with the practices to be described (see, for example, Figure 1), this study will mainly focus on one specific context where animals become the key protagonists in a phenomenon of an intangible nature: the Finkenmanöver, or “finch manoeuvre”, which I have regularly attended for a number of years in the Harz. This ritual first aroused my interest when, as a member of the committee of experts for the German UNESCO Commission, I was involved in its inscription into the Federal German Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage (“Bundesweites Verzeichnis des Immateriellen Kulturerbes”) of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2013. For this study, my research consisted of participant observation during the ritual and the preparation for it, at the end of the winter and early spring, when birders are particularly engaged with the training and preparation of their birds for the contest. Methodologically, I am indebted to a systematic musicological approach to sound productions and their appreciation by listeners, something that may also apply to the “biology of music making,” a concept coined by Blacking (1974). Beyond the scope of this particular paper, another focus of my current research goes along with a transcultural approach, where songbirds and birdongs are investigated in their social context as well as in ritual occasions worldwide and in the history of this and of other regions.

Figure 1. A beautifully covered bird cage in the Harz, Saxony-Anhalt. (Photo by the author.)

The Finker

The custom of keeping songbirds in cages for the pleasure of everyday life has existed for thousands of years. In the Harz, birdkeeping has always centred around families, a tradition that seems to have been maintained almost solely by male family members, however. The term Finkenmanöver must have arisen in parallel with the use of the term Manöver in the military domain, therefore at the end of the nineteenth century (Wille and Spormann 2012). In this period the first local associations of Finker where founded. The basic criteria for this kind of association still persists in the “Buchfinkengilde e.V.”, the actual finch keeper’s association in Beneckenstein. This association, which today counts approximately 100 members, is exclusively constituted by bird raisers and singing contest practitioners, the Finker. However, not everyone who keeps songbirds in cages in the Harz must necessarily be a member of the association. In this case she or he will not be termed a Finker. Being a Finker is thus mainly related to the active commitment to the songbird contests in the region as well as to regular meetings and board duties within the association.

The ability to judge birdsong is one of the core skills of these bird enthusiasts, together with a vast ornithological knowledge. When put into practice this entire inherited and practiced knowledge matches perfectly with the concept of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) as defined by the UNESCO Convention from 2003. On one hand, the knowledge and practices of finch birding are passed down within families from generation to generation. These abilities typically develop during the process of intergenerational transmission. Almost the entire group of Finker I came in contact with had experienced this process since childhood. Several of the most well-known Finker in the Harz are practitioners in the third or fourth generation, and even longer. Nowadays, however, most of the younger members of the community do not feel stimulated to continue the traditions of their families in the raising and training of birds. Only a very few are now keeping this knowledge for the next generation.

Since the second half of the last century substantial change has occurred in the “beauty song” (Schönheitsgesänge) category. Until about 30 years ago the association had subdivided this category into three sub-genres. This is no longer the case today. In recent years the “Buchfinkengilde e.V.” decided to reduce the beauty songs to one single category containing about twelve different songs. Variety in song patterns has decreased dramatically in nature and this is also reflected in the category of learned songs. Asked about the cause of this dramatic development, the elder Finker, who still memorise a number of songs that no longer exist in nature, refer to the impact of increased urban noise as well as the reduction of the natural environment of birds. Even if these songs can be transmitted to young birds independently of any natural model, the repertory of learned songs parallels that of the outer world, which continues to provide the “basic models” for the more accomplished “cultural” birdsongs that can be heard and judged during the Finkenmanöver. In the Harz nature and culture don’t drift apart in the sense that one domain becomes completely independent from the other. Neither is there a strict dichotomy between the two, such that something can be “emancipated” from nature through culture.

The culture of birdsong

To communicate, birds emit signals that function as acoustic marks. In the case of the German Fink, these are called the Schlag (stroke), or Finkenschlag. But these birds also “sing”. Singing in its deepest sense is mainly an activity of male birds. It serves to satisfy at least two important requirements. One is as a signal directed to females, since an attractive song, so to speak a “healthy song,” indicates a healthy partner.⁴ But energetic singing is also a warning to other males. This is the second main purpose of birdsong, to inform potential intruders that the territory has an owner and that it will be guarded and, if necessary, defended by force. The “territorial song” is believed to substitute for actual fighting, a strategy to conserve the energy that would otherwise be expended in a physical conflict (Wille and Spormann 2012; Robbins 2018). In the singing contest of the Finkenmanöver it is precisely this territorial song that is sung and put to the test. As for a bird’s song being used to attract a mate, female birds make their choice after a few days of attentive listening. The general human interpretation of the female’s choice is that she perceives something of a male’s fitness in his voice. The Harz Finker, in contrast, believe in the captivating power of beauty as such in birdsong, and the “beauty songs” (Schönheitsgesänge) are the longest in the entire call and song repertoire. In fact, there is the assumption among some ornithologists that female birds prefer to mate with males that have a large song repertory, especially songs of a significant duration. This comes across clearly in the singing contests organised in the Harz region, where the length of a winning song must be greater than the average song length, and never too short, not even slightly shortened.

One of the unanswered questions about birdsong is its deeper purpose. Why do birds sing? Is it only about breeding and territory, or are there other motivations? Could there be something akin to pleasure in the songbird’s motivation? Or do birds sing for reasons that cannot be grasped by our understanding (Robbins 2018)? Ornithologists may still not have satisfying answers to these persistent questions, but finch masters in the Harz believe that birds take a great deal of pleasure in their singing, regardless of the need to attract females or defend their territory. The Finker are capable of recognising the unmistakeable joy of the small creatures greeting the new day to come. It is important to mention that for these birders, “songbirds” belong to a very specific and rather small avian category. Therefore, discussing birdsong as a cultural phenomenon among the Harz Finker will always combine songbirds and birding actions, such as raising birds in cages, training them, etc., and any question regarding birdsong, even if unexplained by science, will find strongly-held beliefs among these finch masters in the Harz region. Many listeners find an intrinsic personal pleasure in listening to birdsong. In the contest of 2015 Dieter Spormann, one of the most influential Finker and book author, defined the sensation when a certain sonic output touches his ears and senses: “One gets the feeling of deep joy.”⁵

Birdsong: Biology and learned behaviour

Both birdsong and human language are learned, requiring complex social input, and both have a hierarchical structure, consisting of acoustic elements (words or tones) combined into phrases (expressions or melodies). Through the further combination of these phrases, spoken language or larger musical events result, making them both “combinatorial systems” (Mithen 2006, 16). In birdsong, short typical syllables are repeated to form phrases, which in turn are arranged to form a song. In fact, while getting acquainted with the Finkenmanöver, I was greatly surprised to discover that the competing finches’ birdsongs were previously learned during long training sessions under the guidance of their finch masters throughout the birds’ youth and early maturity. During this learning period, no contact is allowed between the future contestants and the sonic outer world of the wild and free singing finches in the surrounding forests. When they first appear on the “battle stage” (Kampfbühne), the young competitors will have been fed, raised, and trained exclusively in the homes of their respective owners.

Without ever referring to biological theory, a Finker from the Harz is able to immediately recognise a songbird that has immigrated from another region, just by identifying its sung “dialect.” This is simply a basic skill in the Finkerei and is often mentioned in conversation among the finch masters. Both birdsong and language are generated by a species-typical “instinct to learn” that guides without fully determining the final sonic outcome. Birdsong acquisition is the animal’s equivalent of human cultural transmission. If research later proves that there are similarities between birdsong and human speech, that may also provide intriguing hints about the biological mechanisms underlying the language acquisition system in humans.⁶

To sing in a typical species-specific manner, and at the same time, to do so according to the established and pre-defined form of the emitted song, young songbirds require sonic input, which occurs during an early sensitive period preceding adulthood. Therefore songbirds belong to those very rare creatures together with humans that require “cultural” input to obtain skills that do not develop naturally or by themselves.⁷

One could say that this innate biological pre-condition opens the possibility for specific cultural stimuli to flourish. The Harz Finker explain that when the birds are left alone in their natural environment, birdsongs are transmitted and transformed over several generations of learners, forming song “dialects” that vary geographically within a species. By acting as a coach, so to speak, for a specific style of song, a Finker takes on the responsibility of providing learned input into the gap opened by the innate property of songbirds to learn birdsong. Appreciated as art by the Finker, these birdsongs straddle the border between nature and a humanly shaped world. In my opinion this is the reason why a finch master is emotionally much more moved by the learned song than by a song that resonates freely in nature. In the Finkerei tradition a real “indistinction”, as defined by Calarco,⁸ occurs, since identity is not enough to define the specific relationship between birds and their owners in the Finkenmanöver: they play two “indistinct” roles in the flow of one sonic production within the ritual, which is the most proper setting for this mutual achievement in the human and the animal world.

Another issue in finch training is whether birds are able to learn songs that have no relation to the finch’s natural repertoire of approximately fifty calls and songs. Experiments have shown that, deprived of such song examples or even without any sonic input at all, young birds sing only an abnormal song, with fewer syllable types and less structure than normal.⁹ Timothy J. Gardner and his colleagues, discussing experiments with canaries, show that specific patterns of sound occur in the songs of young isolates, “which suggests that innate rules govern canary song development. (…) As the birds matured, imitated songs were reprogrammed to form typical canary song phrasing. Thus, imitation and innate song constraints are separate processes that can be segregated in time, on the principle ‘freedom in youth, rules in adulthood’” (Gardner, Naef, and Nottebohm 2005, 1046). Such experimental approaches have also been integrated into the training of the finches in the Harz. The very young ones, it seems, are open to learning or at least capturing elements of many different songs. In the end, they are able to acquire only about two songs in an optimal, “professional” way, maintaining them across the years and for the Pentecostal contests to come, with all the details of ornamentation, melodic shape, tonal range, and rhythmical patterns.

Gardner’s and other scientists’ findings illustrate how the process of teaching and learning birdsong may work. For the teaching period, in which audio devices such as CDs or MP3 players are used, the Harz finch master makes a song choice out of a selection of approximately twelve “beauty songs” (Schönheitsgesänge), taking into account the specific talent of the young singers and also the master’s song preference. There is thus basic sonic material that has been derived from the birds’ “nature-culture” but is afterwards shaped by the Finker as the “perfect” outline of a beauty song.

Among the finch masters, older finches had previously been used to instruct the young birds, who imitated their songs. Since recording devices became accessible, the Finker have used recordings to teach their young pupils. In the Harz, I witnessed song lessonss being given with a CD player.

In other countries, such as in Brazil, cell phone apps are used to stimulate young birds to sing. As of yet there is no written material providing instruction in the transmission of birdsong and the teaching process. For a fincher to determine whether a particular song matches the pre-established criteria requires years of accumulated experience. The knowledge based on this accumulated experience is another feature that places the Finkenmanöver within the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage concept.

The choice of songbird

There are certain qualities that give living animals such as songbirds the characteristic of an object when they are kept, fed, and trained by humans. However, the question about whether or not a bird may be understood as an “object” has a very long philosophical tradition, as do attempts to understand animals by and through anthropormorphic categories (Daston and Mitman 2005). Postmodern philosophers and animal protection advocates, however, clearly oppose the category of objecthood and seek a new understanding of human beings as animals (MacIntyre 1999; Haraway 2003). Against this background, we may even state that in rituals such as the Harz Finkenmanöver, birds and their human companions form a kind of symbiosis.¹⁰ But for this paper, I am less interested in discussing such actor categories than in focusing on the outcome of this symbiosis: the birdsong. I therefore propose comparing the reproduction of songbirds with “experimental systems” in the life sciences. Here, living beings are considered to be part of experimental setups even as they have lives of their own and to make their own contribution to the “epistemic thing” that emerges from the experiments. Likewise, the fact of birds having been chosen to be trained certainly impacts on the songs they sing. Speaking therefore of such birdsong as a “sonic thing” helps us emphasise its character as an experimental product.¹¹ But what guides the human song educators in their choice of this or that bird?

Despite having been specially chosen to produce pleasant sound, the birds are never completely alike. Even being from the same species, having the same place of origin, or being kept and trained in the same master’s home does not prevent a great deal of difference among the competing birds. The birds that sing are individually trained – one could even say “produced” – for the competitions. A competing songbird does not bear an individual name, like an ordinary pet, but is identified by its two most important associative elements: the Finker who owns it and the song that it performs best. Thus, rather than “Hansi” or “Spatzi”, a name such as “Mr Spormann’s ‘Reiterspazier’” is considered to be a proper designation of a songbird in the Harz (“Reiterspazier”, literally “rider’s stroll”, is the name of a specific beauty song).

The appreciation of songbirds goes so far that individual birds with exceptional qualities are even traded or smuggled across national borders. There are countless reports of songbird traders from Germany who transported birds over long distances to other European countries – even to Russia – in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.¹² Vogelfang (bird catching) and Vogelhandel (bird dealing) were common occupations in Germany in those days. The Papageno figure in Mozart’s Magic Flute offers a vivid portrayal of this bygone profession.

More recent reports tell of bird trafficking for competitions in the present day as well. Birds are smuggled, for instance, for Guyanese migrants’ bird-singing competitions in Queens, New York. In an article in the Columbia Journalist, such a bird-singing competition in Queens is described as follows:

One man will quietly challenge another to place their bird cages side by side, remove cloth cage covers and let their finches do what they do best: sing their mating song. There’s not a female finch in sight, but the males vie for her attention anyway. They tweet sweetly and rapidly, sometimes fluttering wildly around their cages. The men watch and listen intently, silently counting to 50, usually the number of tweets a finch must sing before being declared the winner. (Martinez 2012)

It is evident that when the birds sing, the listeners are captivated by their beautiful, much-desired sonic output. If the cage is covered, which is normally the case during the contest, birders will come very close, almost touching the cage with their ear in order to grasp all the sonic details produced behind the bars of the cage (Figure 2). The practice of raising competitive songbirds and pitting them against one another to see which bird sings the best is a globally occurring and apparently almost exclusively male passion.¹³ The differences rest in the transcultural perception and evaluation of the aesthetic details of each of the different birdsongs.

Figure 2. The Finker listening to sonic details during the Kreissingen, power singing in concentric circles. (Photo by the author)

When a contest focuses more on the strength and repetition of calls and songs rather than on pure beauty, a much larger number of birders and birds come together. In Belgium, finch contests are mainly competitions of the birds’ singing power. Even so, the comparison of skills among approximately 13,000 finch birders participating in the springtime vinkensport (finch sport) takes the accuracy of sung syllables very seriously. For example, a “susk-e-wiat” would not be recognised as appropriate, since it is “susk-e-wiet” that corresponds to the correct way of singing.¹⁴ Furthermore, there is a dialectal difference between finches in Dutch-speaking Flanders and those in French-speaking Wallonia. Their singing resonates in one or the other local language. In the televised Belgian national finch singing championships in June 2018, almost two thousand birds competed. The close and personal connection of this huge number of birds to their finchers made it quite clear that a songbird trained for a contest is a creature of a very special nature, belonging to someone who is responsible for its sonic existence. Unlike in the contest in the Harz region, however, the song as such seems to be less important in this Belgian setting than it is in Germany. I suggest that the German birdsong as produced in the Harz region gains a more materialised and therefore differentiated character precisely because its different forms are explicitly defined and perceived as a “sonic thing”.

The Finkenmanöver as a contest of strength and beauty in song

The Finkenmanöver in Beneckenstein in the Harz is the most important of the few bird singing contests still practiced in that region. As it is currently performed, three main categories of sonic elements are judged in the competition: (1) Schönheitssingen – beauty, (2) Distanzsingen – distance, when the birds’ cages are displayed in two parallel rows, and (3) Kreissingen – power, where the cages are displayed in concentric circles (Kreis). Whereas categories 2 and 3 belong to the Kampfklasse (fighting class), the first category is the one with the deepest aesthetic significance. Beauty as such, the basis of the category Schönheitssingen, is expressed in a solo performance by the songbird.

Three of the most wellknown birdsongs to be heard in the “beauty song” contest of the Finkenmanöver are:

“Reiterspazier” (play supplementary audio)

“Weizaptier” (play supplementary audio)

“Putzebart” (play supplementary audio)¹⁵

The “beauty song” contest in the Harz is probably the best established of this kind worldwide. Beauty in song is determined in detail by a points system and evaluated by a jury. It is the first category in the sequence of the three-part contest, and the most complex one in terms of knowledge and expertise. There are always only a few finches, about ten to twelve, taking part in this opening contest. It is particularly this category of beauty in birdsong that indicates that birds as sound-producing objects are not just mass-produced by the “conveyor belt of mother nature” to be identical, but are individually shaped and precisely designed for the purpose of fulfiling a very outstanding mission. Here the contestants are very few, compared to the much larger group of birds that participate in the “strength test” of the Kampfklasse, where attention turns to the length of a repeated call sequence and the power of breathing.

Singing performances occur in a set sequence in the early hours of the day in late spring, with each performance evaluated by a jury of experts. Importance is accorded to the exact execution of the syllables, the performance in regular metre and tune, and overall tonality (Tonlage) – that is, the proper pitch of the song. Further significance attaches to a balanced execution among the various musical parameters and an agreeable or euphonious presentation (Wohlklang) as a whole.

Interestingly, this evaluation system starts from the maximum score, which is gradually cut down depending on incorrect passages in the singing or a less “artistic” performance by the bird. Each beauty song that is perfectly performed receives the maximum score of 100. If they occur, the following items will reduce this highest rating:

Switched or missing syllables

Overly slow and gloomy presentation (schwermütiger Vortrag)

Lack of a deep range in the call

Lack of vibrated sounds (Schnarren)

Serious errors, such as missing a sound called the Rolle

Lack of a sound called Schnippe

Beauty in song has been and remains a very important – if not the most important – element in the Finkenmanöver. At the same time, it reveals that sound when treated in its aesthetic dimensions is a category that requires an appropriate amount of precise terminology. It is hard to translate the native acoustic terms Schnarren, Rolle, or Schnippe, and it is even more difficult to describe them within their constitutive role as part of a bird’s song. The Finker know them in details and are able to discuss even different grades of these sounds, especially during the Schönheitssingen. In another context, philosopher and musician David Rothenberg, who interacted with nightingales playing his clarinet, has extensively described “buzz sound, clarion whistles, clicks, ratchets, blue notes, grace notes”, etc. of a nightingale’s song, demonstrating how varied the sonic terminology to describe birdsong may be (2019, 46). The sonic complexity in an environment of woodlands and forests, like the Harz, has proven to be rich in sonic grades and variation. Birdsongs embody this sonic diversity.

The way finch masters perceive and evaluate birdsong comes close to an appreciation of a musical phenomenon. All the main birdsong parameters, such as tone intervals, sound quality, motivic development, and rhythm, can also be regarded as musical qualities. They belong to the traditional mode of appreciating the sound of a birdsong – the sonic thing – in the contest.

Such an approach is quite different from the search for beauty in birdsong found in nature. For the Finker this is seldom comparable to a culturally shaped song, since it has “only” emerged in the environment and is not the result of any systematic training. The natural songbird is much more likely to mix different sounds and even to produce “calls” (Schlag) that may sound unpleasant to the ears of a Finker. For the young birds competing for the first time in the Waldschneise, an open space or glade in the forest, the natural acoustic environment will certainly be overwhelming and must be taken into consideration while examining this event in particular.

The overall ritual structure of the Finkenmanöver follows different sonic lines. The ritual is organised amid three internal natural levels: (1) the songs and calls of the free birds in nature; (2) the songs and calls of the caged birds; and (3) the constant background rustling (Rauschen) of the woodland. Further sonic elements complete this acoustical festival, from the crackling of 15 to 20 Pentecostal fires to the singing of the women and the band. A factual sonic and gender-specific counterpart to the singing contest of the songbirds is the staged presentation of mainly female singers, often family members of the finch masters, who perform the Harzer Jodler, the yodel style of the Harz, accompanied by a folklore band.¹⁶ From 9am on Pentecost Monday, fires start to burn, producing a crackling noise that masks the gentle rustle from the canopy of the forest trees. The award ceremony on the music stage and the collective consumption of Harz sausages, roasted in the embers of the fires, conduct the ritual back from nature to society, and at the end of the morning, the ringing church bells in the village, sounding from afar in the valley, remind the human participants of their duty to God. At this point, an intriguing fraternisation between humans and birds, nature and society, comes to an end (Table 1).

Table 1. Time schedule of the Finkenmanöver and its sonic markers

Time	6	7	8	9	10	11
	-----------------
Birds
Singing/yodel					--------
Pentecostal fires					-----------
Award ceremony					----
Sausages					--------
Bell-ringing/mass						X

The festival as such forms the context and draws attention to what matters most: reaffirming the standardised criteria of beauty in song. It suggests that singing contests with birds offer an opportunity to empirically understand a global anthropological practice: the struggle to extract personal fulfilment from the environment by transforming nature into culture for self-designed goals – in short, a deeply rooted aspiration of humans for aesthetic satisfaction. This can be found across time and place. Let’s have a short look into history.

The beauty of birdsong in historical perspective

Bird singing contests in German and wider European cultural history are documented to a remarkable degree. The history of aurality in European culture, as scrutinised by Erlmann (2010), is also a great inspiration to study birdsongs. The importance of songbirds in European quotidian life from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century – their perception by people; their accommodations in houses, castles or birdhouses; and their interventions in cultural productions – becomes especially clear if we take a closer look at artistic paintings and engravings with a grand variety of different birds depicted, whether in cages or free in nature. Art history alone already corroborates the importance of the songbird’s aurality for all kinds of people across Europe.¹⁷ Written sources and iconography on both songbird and birdsong go back even to the Middle Ages and cover the history of European humanism, religion, and natural sciences until our day. Even so, the cultural history of a songbird’s aurality – that is: the history of the perception of birds by humans – remains to be written, and this relates the act of listening to human music¹⁸ directly to that of listening to music in nature and the natural environment.

Birdsong’s beauty, its symbolism, and its place in the everyday lives of people is a topic that has attracted thinkers and stimulated arguments from a broad range of people. A very early and most significant account is that of Martin Luther, who mentions the finches kept in cages for the benefit of their owners – ordinary and less ordinary as well – who are fond of pleasant sounds in their houses. Luther positions himself against the artificiality of a song that has been trained, since he believes that every bird must have autonomy to sing. Good music is free, Luther says, and the birdcage therefore stands as a metaphor for a despotic system of rule that oppresses the creativity and freedom of artistic expression (1566, 256). Luther’s observation is important because it indicates that in his time, the phenomenon of the bird master and his trained songbird was already widespread.

Other testimonies focus on the beauty of the songs themselves. In the early nineteenth century, an ornithologist from Thuringia, Ernst Wagner, classified finch singing into four categories (cited in Mosengeil 1826). Wagner’s samples stem from Thuringia and the Harz, two regions repeatedly mentioned in historical documents as centres of German birding enthusiasts. Wagner acknowledges beauty as the principal pleasure of listening to songbirds. He refers to other accounts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in which German finch songs are divided into four song classes (see Figure 3):

Figure 3. Finch singing categories in Germany according to Ernst Wagner (Mosengeil 1826, 45)

“Raw bestiality”: in the whole of Germany

“Simple nature”: in Rhön and Thuringia

“Beauty of soul”: in Thuringia and Harz

“Natural genius”: Harz

Each of the four categories can be identified using the song’s proper “linguistic” representation by a sequence of onomatopoeic written syllables.

In England, where birdsong competitions were also described in the nineteenth century, a scoring system of 0 to 20 was fixed in 1825 for each of the following musical parameters of birdsong: “Mellowness of tone”, “Sprightly notes”, “Plaintive notes”, “Compass”, and “Execution” (Bennet 1932, see Figure 4). Again, musical terminology becomes evident for the categorisation of birdsong. Added together, the scores for each of these musical categories reached a maximum of 100. In the calculation cited by Bennet, the nineteenth-century nightingale almost achieved that score, whereas finches could only reach a score of 70 to 80.

Figure 4. William Bennet (1932): “A competitive festival for song-birds one hundred years ago, with the system of marking used.”

The analysis of birdsongs from a musical and artistic point of view has a lengthy pedigree. Charles Darwin, for example, believed that the evolution of the beauty of colour and sound in birds could explain the origins of human art: “On the whole, birds appear to be the most aesthetic of all animals, excepting of course man, and they have nearly the same taste for the beautiful as we have” (Darwin 1871, 2, 39). The notion that human beings and birds have the same “taste for the beautiful” may be debatable. At the very least it is thought-provoking. From the perspectives of songbirds and Finker in the Harz, however, it produces an unexpected resonance. The finch master makes a choice of songs from the birdsong’s natural repertoire, in order to concentrate on them and to teach them in the most perfect and complete way to a young finch. The bird is raised and kept in its master’s house, separated from nature, until the song acquires a mature and proper artistic identity. The taste or preference of a master and the talent of a bird become intertwined.

In his aesthetic writings on music, the rather polemical music aesthetician and musicologist Eduard Hanslick (1825–1904) had no doubt that beauty in sound can arise through the specifically conceived configuration of sound structures alone. Two of his verdicts are that aesthetics in music should never be guided by any specific meaning – “Music doesn’t represent anything, music is”; and that the beauty of a musical work is essentially musical, so that “musical beauty” is inherent to constructed sonic configurations, independently of any extra-musical idea or script (Hanslick 1854, 125).

Almost as if having read Hanslick, the Harz birder relies on the beauty of the sound configuration emitted by the finches. The concept of beauty here is based on a clear “beauty/ugliness” dichotomy that corresponds to the aesthetic criteria of the Schönheitsgesänge, the precisely classified beauty of birdsongs. In contrast to beauty in sound there is the Latscher, an ordinary finch call without any specificity in sonic design, which often enough is experienced as an offence to the ear of a sophisticated finch master. The full dichotomy of beauty and ugliness, as it emerges from my observations of the Harz finchers, is set out in Table 2.

Table 2. The aesthetic beauty/ugliness dichotomy of the Finker

Beauty	Ugliness
Song	Latscher (“offense to the ears“)
Rule system	Without any rule
Highly precise execution	Not precise, incomplete
Agreeable performance	Awkward performance
Complex	Simple
Ordered	Disordered, aleatory
Inspires a sophisticated mind	Insignificant, trivial
Comprehended within a musical concept	Without concept
Songs go beyond nature, acquiring an aesthetic value of their own	Biological alone, without aesthetic relevance

In search of a definition of musical beauty (das Musikalisch-Schöne), Hanslick maintains that real listening must concentrate only on the musical configuration that is presented. This itself is already art, he argues. Behind all art forms we will find natural beauty (das Naturschöne), but art should not only copy (abbilden), it must transform (umbilden) nature. Since birdsongs are not products of the artistic brain of a composer, however, Hanslick cannot regard them as music, although he agrees that they belong to the aesthetic category of the “naturally beautiful”.

If I have summarised key arguments in this long-standing discussion on the aesthetics of birdsong, this is because the finch masters of the Harz, too, envision a universal truth about beauty: that beauty in sound is not simply connected to one or to another concept. It is neither entirely purposeful nor fully random, neither merely a property nor merely related to moods and emotions. Beauty in sound – this is the lesson to be learned from the Harz – occurs in the resonance between the perceived song and the perceiver, both bird and human: each from its own perspective, natural and cultural alike. In listening to the finches, the breeders thus also continue a long tradition of perceiving themselves.

Birdsong in comparative musicology and ornithomusicology

In his pioneering 1910 essay on the psychological groundings of birdsong, Erich Moritz von Hornbostel, often called the “father” of comparative musicology, itemises some basic lines of enquiry in birdsong research: “By what means and how do birds sing? Why (or to what end) do birds sing and what do birds sing?” He ends with an important question: Do birds sing at all? In other words, can their sonic production be considered songs in a musical sense? (von Hornbostel [1910] 1986, 86).

In different ways and under diverse circumstances, birdsong has always posed a fundamental question to cultural studies: Can it be understood as true music? There have been many different and opposing responses to that question.¹⁹ Searching for core values of music and its human perception, field musicologist Hollis Taylor studied the Australian pied butcherbird, identifying its distinct timbre, calls, and songs. Both sexes of this songbird sing in duos, trios, and even larger choirs, transforming their flute-like songs annually (Taylor 2017). Based on these facts, Taylor wonders “how and when music becomes possible, or comes into being. Is it a matter of biology, or culture, or an interaction between the two?” (Taylor 2017, 56). She feels compelled to ask questions about the foundations of music and to confront the remarkably entangled relationship between the domains of humans and animals. This is the starting point of “ornithomusicology”, which must be addressed when working with birding, songbirds, and birdsong in the Harz.

An interesting perspective on ornithomusicology is opened up by the Hungarian biologist and musician Szöke (1994) study of the physiological and psychosocial origin of human music. The path of musical change in history, from nature through the avian world to humans, is at the core of Szöke’s ornithomusicological ideas. He believes in a musical history that moved from inanimate matter to become connected to life, and then to life in relation to society. According to this evolutionary line, human music differs from birds’ singing because the music of humans is a phenomenon shaped and developed in exclusively social ways.²⁰ In Szöke’s view, the most important challenge for his research is to unlock not the physical (acoustical) content of the sensation of tones, but its physiologically conceived and reproducible, underlying basic form. By assuming that birds are music-producing beings and taking their music seriously, Szöke argues that it is possible to approach the foundation and basic conceptual structure of music more generally, its motif-based configurations. In his detailed transcriptions of many different sonic productions of birds, Szöke detects complex and repeated motivic patterns in birdsong. His approach can be exemplified by comparing the singing of the finch (Figure 5) with that of the lark (Figure 6).

Figure 5. The song of the finch, transcribed by Peter Szöke (1994, 89)

Figure 6. The song of the lark, transcribed by Peter Szöke (1994, 93)

Peter Szöke based his transcriptions and findings on a vast quantity of birdsong recordings he mainly made himself before and shortly after World War II. As outlined by Bruyninckx (2018) the recording of birdsong became a practice that formed at the intersection of popular entertainment and field ornithology. This is how recordings in the natural environment turned into objects of investigation and popular fascination. Bruyninckx questions the meaning of listening to animal voices as a scientist. His approach differs from the present research project in that Bruyninckx argues within the history of science, while the research with the Finker in the Harz region comprises both an anthropological interest regarding the specific knowledge and tradition of intangible culture, and another one focusing on a broader perspective that takes universal groundings of human musical perception into account through the shaping of aesthetic principles in the production of sound.

In other words, while Bruyninckx follows technologies such as the musical score, the electric microphone, the portable magnetic tape recorder, and the sound spectrograph through the history of recording and scientific listening, my approach does not stress scientific observations based on the sonic outputs of birds, but tries rather to understand aesthetic principles that guide birding practices within the framework of a living heritage and the very specific tacit knowledge attached to it.

What we learn from comparing ornithological practices, and the praxis of the Finkers, however, is that specific research questions and research tools shape the singing of the birds. Verbal descriptions and onomatopoeic syllables are still the only means used to evaluate and to define birdsong in the Finkerei. This is how the representation of knowledge transferred to the external world is shaped by the group of birdsong experts. No musical notations or spectrographs are used to underscore the finchers’ discourse about their subject of interest and knowledge.

Birdsong as intangible cultural heritage

The present research project on birdsong as a “sonic thing” also takes the UNESCO concept of the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) into account. An intangible cultural heritage is a living practice and at the same time a tradition, a form of knowledge made real and brought to life by creative actions that spring from human spiritual and intellectual activities – speech, performance, handwork, theatre, dance, ritual, marriage customs, festivals, and so on. In this light, music also is an essential phenomenon of ICH, no matter how we understand it and independently of any of music’s local or historical definitions. Regarding music’s closely entangled material and intangible foundations, the musical phenomenon seems to be somehow essentially ambiguous:

“Music is, so to speak, ‘undetectably material’ and, simultaneously and in apparently contradictory terms, ‘substantially intangible’” (de Oliveira Pinto 2018, 50).

Music’s fluidity and evanescence always comes through in performance, depending on the respective action of its producer. Because it benefits from specific social and cultural implications, music becomes a powerful vehicle for symbolic and conceptual contents. This is where ICH becomes prominent.

Some entries in national inventories of ICH that include sound seem rather curious to outsiders. Though they have no obvious associated musical repertory, they include musical patterns in sound and movement; whip-cracking competitions (in Bavaria) and the songbirds’ competitions in Saxony-Anhalt are examples. The strong sonic elements of these traditions may be perceived as musical because of the intrinsic patterned structures that occur during performance. But in the case of the Finkenmanöver, the main ICH aspect lies not primarily in sound, but in the actions of the finchers, which are not sonic. It is the tacit knowledge of the complex learning process, the correct perception of birdsong, the evaluation system in the contest, and so on, that were key to inscribing the Finkenmanöver into the German inventory of ICH in 2015 (Deutsche UNESCO-Kommission 2018).

As a phenomenon, teaching specific songs to birds during long training sessions and taking them to compete in singing contests is a long-standing custom that is well known in other regions as well (for example, Brazil, Thailand, the Caribbean, and China), though the Finkenmanöver is the only one of these traditions to have been included in a national inventory thus far. In addition to being a timeworn skill, the training of finches and canaries in different world regions is linked to broader rituals. This is also the case in the Harz, where birdsong competitions are held as part of spring festivities. The ritual context helps to keep alive the traditional knowledge and skills of practitioners of the “art of teaching birds to sing beautiful songs”, as the finch masters often define their own expertise. The sound that matters is aesthetically prescribed, and carefully acquired skills are needed in order to triumphantly achieve those expectations, the final result being highly appreciated and socially acknowledged with respect. When this occurs, ICH can be preserved as a vivid and sustainable practice.

Songbirds and musical instruments

Music always results from the intersection of material and intangible domains, as mentioned above. Musical instruments are tangible as artefacts – products of knowledge, skills, and mastery in craft – whereas musical compositions and practices of music performance remain immaterial. Unlike musical instruments, songbirds are not visibly shaped by human beings; they appear natural. Yet their intangible output, the song, is profoundly influenced and directed by the finch master.

The tangibility of musical instruments enables musicians to learn and to improve their knowledge, practical skills, and virtuosity. At the same time, the instruments become extensions of the physical human body. Songbirds, in contrast, are traditionally perceived by more than one Finker to whom I have spoken with as “extensions of the human soul” but also as results of the application of human knowledge, acquired through long training by the finch master.

Like instruments that may acquire a singular personality, songbirds are individualised thanks to their combination of two basic elements of the “cultural intangible”: material culture and performance practice. Musical instruments and birds, their rehearsal, and the knowledge attached to them succeed in turning the materiality of an object and the nonmaterial shape of a performance into an integrated, unique whole – and as such, a contribution to the maintenance of intangible cultural heritage.

Of course, musical instruments are built, songbirds are not. Manufactured mechanical birds, aiming to imitate the songbird, took on great importance in the nineteenth century. The small mechanical bird in Figure 7, displayed in a bronze cage 30 cm by 16 cm in size, sings, moves its head to and fro, opens and shuts its beak as it sings, and lifts and drops its tail feathers.²¹ This bird was marketed as a mechanical instrument or a sonic toy bird, classified as a mechanisch singende Vögel in the nineteenth century. Interestingly enough, mechanical songbirds have also played an important part in the Harz birders’ transmission of knowledge. Unlike in the natural environment, birds raised in a human setting traditionally learned to sing from other trained birds, but formerly, finch masters also played instruments such as “bird organs” (Vogelorgel) or serinettes (from French serin, a songbird from the finch family) (Zeraschi 1978, 115) to teach their birds songs. Based on a small pipe organ, moved mechanically, the serinette was similar to the mechanical songbird, only without the moving toy bird on top. Later, electronic devices such as cassette recorders, CD players, and recently smartphones (with appropriate apps) have been used to teach birds to reproduce a certain repertory.

Figure 7. A small Oiseau chanteur mécanique by Bontems, Paris, ca. 1890, from the author’s collection. (Photo by the author)

In the end, human beings turn natural sounds into cultural soundscapes, which is why the narratives of birdsong among the Harz birders reveal much more about humans than about the songbird itself: specific songs come to be judged by clear and predefined aesthetic principles defined by human beings. All the values and emotions that are attached to birdsong are recognised by birders in specifically taught songs. Similarly, both real and mechanical birds act as sounding objects for entertainment and aesthetic pleasure. The better a refined training of the home-kept bird functions, and the more a mechanical bird-like toy has been brought to perfection by sophisticated manufacturing, the more satisfaction will be obtained – at least to all who are able to listen to and admire great sounds from small objects, whether mechanical or alive.

If we think of songbirds not just as individuals and subjects but also as culturally conceived and constructed objects of musical sound, comparable to sound-producing machines, a final question emerges: Is this a living organism or an animate object? Not only do mechanical birds reproduce many of the functions of home-kept birds by mimicking their shape and vocal capacities, but birds themselves become something similar to mechanical sounding objects when trained and prepared for a singing contest. Both are expected to match a most-desired human aesthetic ideal.

Concluding remarks

This paper has focused on two complementary angles. The first is that of transcultural aesthetics in which birdsongs are studied, evaluated, classified, analysed, and also transmitted by bird masters to young finches in the Harz. Within this approach, a comparative view on worldwide songbird contests and the aesthetic appreciation of birdsong would be a desideratum, requiring further research. The second emphasis is directed towards those who appreciate and deal with songbirds. This may be seen as an older subject, since early comparative musicologists hypothesised about the origins of music in birdsong,²² but, simultaneously, the field is also a new one, since natural sounds, the notion of sonic concepts, and musical patterns of humans and birds belong to contemporary sound studies, as part of the core of a broad and truly borderless musicology.

The present study has also shown that we are facing a substantial change in the old birding tradition in the Harz. In a recent visit to a Finkenmanöver in Sankt Andreasberg, close to the border between Saxony-Anhalt and Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), I witnessed the decay of finch birding in the Harz. Some of my friends and collaborators from Beneckenstein and elsewhere had come together on this fresh morning in June. Unlike at the “Waldschneise” ritual in Beneckenstein, however, no single interested person other than the Finker themselves was at this venue. The contest was to take place at a sports field. Just two dozen elderly gentlemen, each one carrying a covered cage with a finch, arrived to take part in the three-fold competition of bird singing. The participants themselves commented that in this area the Finkenmanöver would not even last a decade more, since there was no interest in it among the younger generation.

Particularly telling was the fact that the circular contest with the cages on the ground (Kreissingen) was replaced by the covered cages displayed on tables in a row. The justification for this evident change in the ritual’s outline was the average advanced age of the finch masters. Most of them have difficulty stooping down to the ground to place their ears on the cages (Figure 2). This is necessary when the finalist cages reach the smallest final circle. In this situation it is of the utmost importance to capture the very final singing of one of the few birds that remain engaged in the sonic “battle”.

While other birding traditions in Asia or in South America still flourish and are even increasing in popularity, the tradition in Harz villages such as Sankt Andreasberg is clearly declining. Even compared to neighbouring Belgium, the weakening of the old tradition in the Harz becomes evident. As mentioned before, in Flanders some thousands of enthusiasts of the vinkensport still reunite every year in late spring to bring their canaries to the competition.

There are some remaining accounts of the Finkerei in Sankt Andreasberg from decades ago, displayed in a small local museum. A few photos from the 1930s to the 1950s depict a large number of interested people around the bird cages on the same sports field. It seems that in those days the entire village of Sankt Andreasberg would attend the Finkenmanöver, which must have been an event of great social relevance. The Finch Association of this village has just completed 75 years of existence. On the other hand, no direct comparison can be made between the Finkenmanöver and birding contests around the globe. I remember when in 2016 an enthusiast of songbirds during a contest in the Harz – not himself a Finker – reported on his frequent travels to China, where he always goes after birdsong contests and songbird exhibitions. For him it was clear that he could not appreciate birdsong in China the same way that he does in the Harz, because the beauty criteria are different, “as strange to us as the Chinese language is also strange and not understandable”. In fact, there is hardly anything comparable in other countries’ contests, for instance in Brazil or Thailand, with the complex and thoroughly defined aesthetic criteria of the beauty songs in the Harz.

The lessons learned from the Finkenmanöver might help in formulating a transcultural approach with regard to the beauty standards of a constructed sonic production that gains meaning in the context of ritual and specific social occasions. This is why studying the Finkenmanöver goes much beyond the tradition in the Harz alone. It embraces a basic quest for aesthetic knowledge and natural values, that tell much about a very intimate and fundamental human relation to music. In this respect it seems most likely that the listening and judging of birdsong according to definite criteria and a concrete aesthetic common sense of the prerequisites for beauty in song is more developed in the Finkenmanöver than in any other public songbird contests known around the world.

Taken as a whole, the world’s variety of birdsong has always resembled an overwhelming “natural concert” of an unlimited number of melodies, rhythms, and timbres.²³ In a recent account, ornithologist Jim Robbins recognises that there is a global treasure of bird tunes, “each one the product of millions of years of evolution, each telling a complex story about that bird and its relationship to others and to its home” (2018, 179). Robbins’s view reveals that science is far from having unpacked those stories. But tragically enough, the present-day world is responsible for the most rapid disappearance ever of birdsongs. And this is due foremost to the endangered natural landscapes, their modification and destruction, while humanity grows increasingly noisier and far more invasive (Romberg 2018, 65). Taken together, the actual and manifold voices of the world, whether primarily natural or technological, are a complex cacophony, as outlined by Dominic Pettman in his recent book on Sonic Intimacy (2017). Pettman argues that the contemporary “cacophony” is desperately trying to tell us something about the rapidly failing health of the planet and its inhabitants. As Pettman cautions, we would do well to listen to it (2017, 7). My experience with regard to birdsong is that there is a direct relation between the threatened state of the environment and the silencing of songbirds.

In the Harz, finch masters are very conscious about this most recent ecological decline. As noted, the natural selection of beauty songs has decreased dramatically within the past two to three decades, leaving only one category of Schönheitsgesänge with fewer songs than in the past. In fact, the Finker face an unprecedented loss of songs as a result of the rapid decline in the natural bird population in their region. They believe that modern mass and industrial agriculture, environmental pollution, as well as a general increase in noise on the ground and in the air, are mainly responsible for this development.

There are certainly few other people whom this twofold loss in our contemporary world – songbird and birdsong – touches so deeply, coming so close to their inner feelings, even putting at risk the main purpose of their being-in-the-world, as the Finker in the Harz region of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.

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Notes on contributors

Tiago de Oliveira Pinto

Tiago de Oliveira Pinto; a native of São Paulo, Brazil, received a PhD in Musicology from the Free University of Berlin in 1989. In 1990 he joined the International Institute for Traditional Music as a researcher and from 1996 to 2002 he worked for the Brazilian Foreign Ministry as director of the Brazilian Cultural Institute in Germany. In 2001 he was appointed full professor of Social Anthropology at the University of São Paulo (USP).

Currently he is the Head of the Transcultural Music Studies Chair at the University of Music Franz Liszt, Weimar and also Head of its joint Musicology Department with Friedrich Schiller University, Jena. He serves as an expert on the Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee of the German UNESCO Commission. In 2017 the Chair he holds was promoted to a UNESCO Chair on Transcultural Music Studies, the first musicological UNESCO Chair worldwide.

Tiago de Oliveira Pinto has carried out fieldwork in Brazil, Portugal, Turkey, South-East Asia, Mozambique, Tanzania, and South Africa. In addition to having published books, book chapters, and articles in international journals he has also curated art and anthropological exhibitions, as well as produced records and organised music festivals and cultural events.

Notes

1. I’m indebted to the guest-editors of this Special Issue, Viktoria Tkaczyk and Leendert van der Miesen, for their encouraging support from the first version of this paper on. Thanks are also due to Kate Sturge and Penelope Krumm for their careful final editing of the text.

2. Steven Feld’s study on birdsong still remains as a milestone, bringing together humans and birds closely. Even if I do not reference Feld explicitly, his work constantly resonates in the upcoming pages (Feld 1982). More recently Jeff Todd Titon has brought musicology closer together with ecology, where also birdsong is studied (Titon 2014). A recent research project based account on birdsong and environment can be found in Whitehose 2016. Direct artistic interactions between musicians and birds have been experienced by David Rothenberg with nightingales (Rothenberg 2019), among others.

3. See the bibliography on animals in the humanities at http://www.animalstudies.msu.edu/bibliography.php.

4. Addresssing aesthetic criteria for mate choice, Richard Prum discusses the “taste for the beautiful” among songbirds, referring to the oposite assumptions of Darwin and A. R. Wallace on the “aesthetic faculty” of male birds to attract females (Prum 2012, 2254).

5. “Man bekommt ein großes Glücksgefühl”: I witnessed this exclamation several times from different Finker in the context of the preparation for the “Finkenmanöver” as well. Also one of the outstanding birdsong specialists puts it similarly: “Birdsong makes me happy” (Kroodsma 2005).

6. Konishi (1965) is still among the most important works on this topic.

7. In his The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex Charles Darwin (1871) had already asserted that birdsong is neither an instinct present at birth, nor an arbitrary cultural construction: it rests on biological foundations, but also requires specific inputs to develop properly. Konishi (1965) matures this questions further.

8. In this philosophical work on animals and the environment, Matthew Calarco aims to establish continuity among human beings and animals so as to grant animals equal access to a concept of global environmental ethics. While the difference framework views the animal world as containing its own richly complex and differentiated modes of existence, the indistinction approach argues that the notion of humans as unique must be abandoned in order for other ways of conceiving human–animal relations to be explored. This could be an ethical viewpoint that matches the very special relation between Finker and finches in the Harz (Calarco 2015).

9. Biologists have discovered that birdsongs are normalised by birds’ culture, because even birds “seeded” with odd song input transform this to normal song within a few generations. Addressing these issues will allow us to uncover the biology of songbirds’ instinct to learn a song when taught by a finch master. See, among several studies, Derryberry (2010).

10. For an understanding of ritual agencies as animalistic agencies see Macho (2004).

11. For this understanding of “sonic things” as derived from the definition of epistemic things in the life sciences see the Introduction to this Special Issue by Viktoria Tkaczyk and Leendert van der Miesen.

12. See among others Wille and Spormann (2012).

13. This is my observation in different contexts. I have been unable to locate any academic sources for this phenomenon that examine it across a transcultural range.

14. On the Belgian finch contest and the evaluation of the sonic output of the songbirds see: https://dodona.ugent.be/en/activities/1735052653/.

15. Copyright of the recordings: Lutz Wille and Dieter Spormann (2012).

16. On the Harzer Jodel, see Hahmann (2018).

17. Among a vast number of painters who included birds in different contexts in their art seeJanuaryBrueghel “The Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Ark” from 1615, François Boucher “Le petit oiselière” from 1760, Thomas Wuck “Man studying” from 1670, or Louise Guyot “Scène d’intérieur populaire en Normandie” from 1862. These few paintings, taken just as examples, belong to the collections of the Fine Arts Museum of Orléans and that of Alençon, France.

18. “For the past three hundred years, resonance has figured as one of the key elements in modern concepts of personhood (…). Musical listening, too, during the same period, has been understood to be fundamentally about ourselves (…)” (Erlmann 2010, 321).

19. Among others see Leach (2007).

20. Slovak musicologist Oskár Elschek has characterised Peter Szöke (1910–1994) as the “father of ornithomusicology” (Elschek 1994, 109–110).

21. Mechanical songbirds started to be produced on a larger scale in the second half of the nineteenth century. An example of this development is the French company Bontems, which manufactured singing birds, oiseaux chanteurs mécaniques, with enormous success. Mechanical birds of this type were presented in world exhibitions and industrial fairs as a special attraction. They often won prizes at fairs and public events. Highly appreciated, the precious mechanical devices could most frequently be found in wealthy, urban private homes (see https://www.automates-boites-musique.com/automates-musicaux-et-non-musicaux/oiseaux-chanteurs-automates-mecaniques/oiseaux-chanteurs-mecaniques-reuge—oiseaux-chanteurs-automates-en-cage-details-116.html).

22. See, for instance, Stumpf (1911). More recently Matthew Head (1997) has discussed this hypothesis.

23. Ein echtes Konzert (a true concert) is a term used by birders and songbird lovers from the Harz and also from the Bayrischer Wald, for instance the 80-year-old Sepp Schoirer from Hinterhaunried in an interview in summer 2017. Mention is also made of the abundant sound production of songbirds in the past.