The Origins of Music: Preface - Preface

copies the sounds of many other species,on average seventy-seven,

including those that they hear in Africa as well as in Europe.Many of

the incorporated sounds are call notes,and the major limitation to what

is copied seems to be whether the syrinx of a small bird such as a marsh

warbler can cope with the sound.The absence of deep sounds is not sur-

prising.The song may well be built up entirely by mimicry but this is

uncertain:in such a widely traveled species,some sounds included of

unknown origin may well be derived from other species that have not

been identified.

Mimicry thus enables a male marsh warbler to build up a wonderfully

elaborate song before it hears any members of its own species singing.

It might be imagined that this would lead to some confusion as far as

species identity is concerned.However,apart from the fact that many of

the birds imitated do not nest in Europe,the patterning of the song also

has a distinctive marsh warbler stamp on it.

Choruses and Duets

Communal singing is especially prevalent among humans,with groups

of people often singing or chanting in synchrony with one another (see

Merker,Richman,Nettl,and Mâche,this volume).Similar phenomena

in birds may therefore give some insight into the origins and functions

of human music;however,such similarities as exist are not particularly

close.Some birds,such as the Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen;

Brown,Farabaugh,and Veltman 1988) sing in choruses,but the sounds

of different birds within the chorus have no clear and organized rela-

tions.The same is true of the dawn chorus,in which individuals of many

different species join together to produce a tremendous burst of sound

(Staicer,Spector,and Horn 1996).There is no doubt that these choruses

are partly due to the fact that animals stimulate each other into sound

production,but the sounds are not clearly synchronized with each other.

Tightly coordinated,simultaneous singing of the same song,so frequent

in human music,is not a phenomenon that appears to occur elsewhere

in nature.

Duetting is a different matter:here two birds contribute to a song,

often in a tightly coordinated fashion.Some duets have phenomenal

precision of timing.Indeed,whereas bouts may overlap,the sounds

themselves may not do so,the birds fitting their sounds together so

precisely that it is hard to believe that more than one individual is

involved.This form of duetting,in which male and female use different

notes and sing alternately,is known as antiphonal singing (Hooker and

Hooker 1969) and has been documented in a wide variety of species

57 Birdsong Repertoires

MUS4 9/14/99 11:59 AM Page 57