The Great Animal Orchestra
Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places
New York : Little, Brown, [2012]
Format: Book
Edition: First edition.
Description: 278 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Musician and naturalist Bernie Krause is one of the world's leading experts in natural sound, and he's spent his life discovering and recording nature's rich chorus. Searching far beyond our modern world's honking horns and buzzing machinery, he has sought out the truly wild places that remain, where natural soundscapes exist virtually unchanged from when the earliest humans first inhabited the earth.
Krause shares fascinating insight into how deeply animals rely on their aural habitat to survive and the damaging effects of extraneous noise on the delicate balance between predator and prey. But natural soundscapes aren't vital only to the animal kingdom; Krause explores how the myriad voices and rhythms of the natural world formed a basis from which our own musical expression emerged.
From snapping shrimp, popping viruses, and the songs of humpback whales-whose voices, if unimpeded, could circle the earth in hours-to cracking glaciers, bubbling streams, and the roar of intense storms; from melody-singing birds to the organlike drone of wind blowing over reeds, the sounds Krause has experienced and describes are like no others. And from recording jaguars at night in the Amazon rain forest to encountering mountain gorillas in Africa's Virunga Mountains, Krause offers an intense and intensely personal narrative of the planet's deep and connected natural sounds and rhythm.
The Great Animal Orchestra is the story of one man's pursuit of natural music in its purest form, and an impassioned case for the conservation of one of our most overlooked natural resources-the music of the wild.
Krause shares fascinating insight into how deeply animals rely on their aural habitat to survive and the damaging effects of extraneous noise on the delicate balance between predator and prey. But natural soundscapes aren't vital only to the animal kingdom; Krause explores how the myriad voices and rhythms of the natural world formed a basis from which our own musical expression emerged.
From snapping shrimp, popping viruses, and the songs of humpback whales-whose voices, if unimpeded, could circle the earth in hours-to cracking glaciers, bubbling streams, and the roar of intense storms; from melody-singing birds to the organlike drone of wind blowing over reeds, the sounds Krause has experienced and describes are like no others. And from recording jaguars at night in the Amazon rain forest to encountering mountain gorillas in Africa's Virunga Mountains, Krause offers an intense and intensely personal narrative of the planet's deep and connected natural sounds and rhythm.
The Great Animal Orchestra is the story of one man's pursuit of natural music in its purest form, and an impassioned case for the conservation of one of our most overlooked natural resources-the music of the wild.
Contents:
Prelude : echoes of the past -- Sound as my mentor -- Voices from the land -- The organized sound of life itself -- Biophony : the proto-orchestra -- First notes -- Different croaks for different folks -- The fog of noise -- Noise and biophony/oil and water -- The coda of hope.
Subjects:
Krause, Bernie, 1938- -- Travel.
Nature sounds.
Animal sounds.
Music -- Historiography.
Sounds -- Psychological aspects.
Noise -- Psychological aspects.
Aural history.
Field recordings.
Musicians -- United States.
Krause, Bernie, 1938- -- Travel.
Nature sounds.
Animal sounds.
Music -- Historiography.
Sounds -- Psychological aspects.
Noise -- Psychological aspects.
Aural history.
Field recordings.
Musicians -- United States.
ISBN:
9780316086875
Availability | |||
---|---|---|---|
Call Number | Location | Shelf Location | Status |
PERFORMING ARTS Music Kra | Main (Downtown) | Second Level, Nonfiction | In |
PERFORMING ARTS Music Kra | Ballentine Indoors | Nonfiction | In |
"First edition, March 2012"--Title page verso.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-265) and index.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-265) and index.