Songs Without Words 



the intervals of the major and minor scales that we 

 can write, as well as some too elusive to record, are 

 used by birds in perfection of tone. They employ 

 very effectively repetitions of notes and phrases, 

 sometimes so combined as to produce a formal 

 theme, some birds of quite limited powers thus pro- 

 ducing the most pleasing results. They trill on two 

 notes or more, introducing a finer tremolo than a 

 pipe-organ's. Antiphonals are indulged in by sev- 

 eral of the tuneful sparrows, chewinks and meadow- 

 larks; in short, they make unconscious use of musi- 

 cal intervals and methods that men have formulated 

 into laws. Because they are laws, we are just be- 

 ginning to realize that they may be of wide enough 

 application to include the birds' music. Above all, 

 there is a purity, an exquisite quality of a bird's 

 song, with which no other on earth is to be com- 

 pared. That music such as theirs can be written 

 at all in the set forms that we use for ours would 

 seem to indicate that the lines of development of 

 both are not so divergent as one at first might 

 suppose. Foremost critics declare that the opera 

 and oratorio of the future will be sung, like bird 

 music, without words. 



