A Composers' Aviary

+ Olivier MESSIAEN (1908-1992): Le merle noir (The Blackbird) for flute and piano (1951) – 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth

+ Pēteris VASKS (b 1946): Music of Fleeting Birds (Mūzika aizlidojušajiem putniem) for wind quintet (1977)

+ Franz Joseph HAYDN (1732-1809): String Quartet in C (The Bird), Opus 33 No 3 (1781)

Wolfgang MOZART (1756-1791): A double helping

Trio in E major K542 for piano, violin and cello (1788)

Serenade in E flat K375 for two clarinets, two horns, two bassoons (1781)

Human beings have probably echoed birdsong since the beginnings of human time; composers have certainly imitated the calls of birds in developed Western compositions since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. We offer a few, more recent examples. Haydn’s C major string quartet, the third of his Opus 33 set, has been called The Bird because some of its themes make listeners think of birdsong; and, in any case, it is a delightful piece of music. The Estonian composer Pēteris Vasks has made a whole wind quintet out of sounds suggesting the life of birds; and Olivier Messiaen, who was happy to describe himself as an ornithologue, so intense and consistent was his study of birds and their songs, has paid tribute to one of his favourite and most inventive singers, the blackbird, in Le merle noir. Mozart was fond of birdsong, teaching tunes to a pet starling and then quoting the bird in his music; but in this program we invoke him simply as one of the supreme singers of all music. In fact we invoke him twice: sublimely in a work that has claims to be the finest of his trios for piano, violin and cello and convivially in one of his lively and tuneful wind serenades.