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Alan D Group: Members Posts: 3670 Joined: Aug. 2004 Posted: Dec. 31 2007, 11:54 Sometimes, I hit on a story that is so enchanting it hardly seems quite real. This is one such: Beatrice Harrison was one of the greatest cellists of her generation, and a particular favourite of Elgar's: every time he conducted his famous cello concerto, he asked Miss Harrison to be the soloist. They even made a recording of it together in 1928, with Elgar conducting. The result is surely one of the greatest of all historical recordings, and you can buy a CD of this great treasure for a measly few pounds here. This is the authentic article. This is how Elgar wanted his cello concerto to sound, and Beatrice Harrison performs it with heart-breaking expressiveness. The sound quality is unbelievably good for a recording made in the 1920s. Because of my interest in Elgar, and my particular love of this concerto, I found myself trying to find a little more about Beatrice Harrison - and this is how I came across this story. Beatrice Harrison was as naturally attuned to the cello as Mike Oldfield is to the guitar, and in the 1920s she was in the habit of playing her cello outdoors. She was playing in her garden late one evening when a nightingale began to sing along with the music. She was enchanted by this (as we all would be, I imagine) and it became a nightly ritual. She contacted the BBC and suggested that they send down a recording team to her garden. Remember this was in 1924, and no live radio broadcast of natural sounds had ever been attempted. The BBC was sceptical, but after much persuasion decided to go along with it. They set up the equipment in her garden and she began to play. For hours nothing happened, but then, suddenly, the nightingale was there, singing along with her cello - the first ever live wildlife radio broadcast. A million people across the world had tuned in to hear it. 50,000 of them wrote letters to her. Beatrice Harrison and her nightingale became a regular weekly radio spot, and the broadcasts continued for twelve years..... I've been trying to locate a recording of her playing with the nightingale, but not with much success. You can hear a couple of short extracts here - just click on 'listen to this item' and leave it running for 5 minutes. As well as the nightingale and the cello, there's also in this audio stream a recording of Beatrice herself talking about it (made much later, I think, when she was much older). Back to top

moonchildhippy Group: Members Posts: 1807 Joined: Dec. 2004 Posted: Jan. 02 2008, 17:51 I'd love to check out some more of Beatrice Harrison's recordings if any more do exist   . -------------- I'm going slightly mad, It finally happened, I'm slightly mad , just very slightly mad If you feel a little glum to Hergest Ridge you should come. I'm challenging  taboos surrounding mental health "Part time hippy" I'M SUPPORTING OUR SOLDIERS BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!! Back to top

bee Group: Members Posts: 1227 Joined: Jan. 2004 Posted: Jan. 02 2008, 18:21 It is a lovely story Alan, and it makes me wonder what was really happening in the bird's mind. Could it's response be considered as musical? We talk of birdsong, we interpret it as such when we hear a robin or a skylark for example. But is it really song, when the sounds are made as a way of calling or communicating in the bird world? So did the nightingale, surely one of the most wonderful bird sounds, believe it was interacting with another creature or was it simply responding instinctively? Interesting to hear a bit of background about Beatrice too. Thankyou for sharing your find. -------------- ....second to the right and straight on till morning.... You heard me before Yet you hear me again Then I die Till I call me again Back to top

Alan D Group: Members Posts: 3670 Joined: Aug. 2004 Posted: Jan. 03 2008, 04:11 Quote (moonchildhippy @ Jan. 02 2008, 22:51) I'd love to check out some more of Beatrice Harrison's recordings if any more do exist   . I discovered yesterday (after a lot of fruitless initial searching) that they do, and I'm hoping to buy a couple of CDs in the near future. I'll let you know more if and when it comes off. @bee: Quote But is it really song, when the sounds are made as a way of calling or communicating in the bird world? So did the nightingale, surely one of the most wonderful bird sounds, believe it was interacting with another creature or was it simply responding instinctively? I wonder if the difference is real? Or is it only a kind of artificially created difference, produced by scientific reductionism? For example, why was Beatrice herself playing her cello in her garden? Whom did she envision as her audience? Are we so sure that her inspiration was purely musical, and the bird's inspiration purely instinctive 'calling'? If a Martian, just landed on Earth, were conducting a secret study of the two, would the Martian see any difference? For thousands of years people have heard birds singing and have associated it with joy. The modern biologist will tell us that the bird is merely sending out a call sign, but why should we believe that? The biologist who studies the bird, like all scientists, excludes the experience of 'joy' from his experiments (he gathers no data about the bird's feelings or possible love of music), so it's hardly surprising that it isn't present in his conclusions! Night after night, year after year, the same nightingale came back to Beatrice's garden to sing along with her playing. It never found a mate by this practice; it served no survival purpose. Why should it not be returning just for the joy of it? Certainly Beatrice herself felt that the exchange between them was musical - not merely 'sounds'. Back to top

Alan D Group: Members Posts: 3670 Joined: Aug. 2004 Posted: Jan. 11 2008, 16:32 Well, I can now add more. Beatrice was one of several sisters, all immensely talented musicians, and there still exists a Trust (The Harrison Sisters Trust) which exists to preserve their memory. There are in fact several CDs available from the Trust, price £12 each (I doubt if they've sold many), and I've bought two: The Harrison Sisters. An English Musical Heritage; and Beatrice Harrison Cello Pieces. Both of these CDs include recordings of Beatrice and the nightingale (3 in total). The nightingale music, first. It does require an 'ear of faith' to interpret what the nightingale is doing as 'music' (Beatrice maintained that the bird sang 'in thirds' in response to her playing), but the recordings are fascinating to listen to just because of the story; and they are enchanting sounds, to be sure. I doubt, though, that at £12 the CDs would offer good value for anyone just wanting to hear the nightingale - at least, unless they're completely besotted, like myself. However, there are some wonderful treasures on these CDs, bearing in mind that the recordings were made mainly in the 1920s and are pretty hissy and scratchy - they haven't been given the painstaking cleanup treatment that's been used on commercial CDs of Beatrice's performance of Elgar's Cello concerto. But they're still very listenable, and the real shock, for me, has been to find a few pieces of traditional music played by Beatrice with the most incredible verve. There are two Irish reels that are played with such wild, exciting vigour that really, Mike Oldfield himself, or even Steeleye Span, would gasp in admiration, I think - wholly unexpected from such a sensitive classical virtuoso. So I'm enjoying these albums very much - a very different kind of listening to my usual habits. Incidentally, Beatrice wrote an autobiography whose manuscript only came to light in the 1980s (and published posthumously). It's called The Cello and the Nightingales, and is a captivating read about a musician utterly dedicated to and in love with the cello, and about a style of living long, long gone. See here. There's a wonderful photo of her serenading some doves on her cello here. Back to top

The Big BellEnd Group: Members Posts: 971 Joined: Jan. 2004 Posted: Jan. 11 2008, 18:55 not really surprising that a bird would try to compete with a musical instrument, after all bird's are phenomenal mimic's, You know minah bird's parrot's etc, but the most unusual thing I ever heard was a Raven that could talk a number of word's, being a large bird it had a deeper voice and was so close to sounding like a human voice it was astounding, my personal favourite is the sound of the Skylark, summer in England never sound's better. By the way Alan great story and smashin black and whites as well. -------------- I, ON THE OTHER HAND. AM A VICTIM OF YOUR CARNIVOUROUS LUNAR ACTIVITY. Back to top

Sir Mustapha Group: Musicians Posts: 2802 Joined: April 2003 Posted: Jan. 11 2008, 21:30 Some time ago, I read something about birds imitating the sounds of car alarms. That's pretty much the nightmare equivalent of the nightingale music... -------------- Check out http://ferniecanto.com.br for all my music, including my latest albums: Don't Stay in the City, Making Amends and Builders of Worlds. Also check my Bandcamp page: http://ferniecanto.bandcamp.com Back to top

Alan D Group: Members Posts: 3670 Joined: Aug. 2004 Posted: Jan. 22 2008, 10:38 I've now finished reading Beatrice's autobiography, and can't resist telling this little tale: Some time after the beginning of the nightingale radio broadcasts on the BBC, Beatrice went off on a concert tour of America. By this time (mid-late 1920s) she was regarded not only as one of the finest cellists of her time, but also was famous because of the nightingale stuff, and she was invited to do a radio broadcast in the US while she was there. She played her cello on air of course, and was then asked to talk about her nightingales - which she did. Then she concluded by inviting all her American listeners to call in and hear the nightingales themselves if they were in Britain! She read out her address, on air, twice, spelling out the tricky bits. The following summer, 2000 American visitors came knocking at her door, requesting to hear the nightingales. As far as I know, every one of them was shown round the garden, and presumably was given a private cello performance too..... Back to top

Holger Group: Members Posts: 1506 Joined: Feb. 2003 Posted: May 31 2008, 18:54 What a great story. I missed this initially, but I'm glad I've found it now. Back to top

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