![]() but the scary thing for me was that I could perfectly well imagine a future in which people might play, for instance, a sound file of a blackbird singing, and think it some kind of electronic dial-up modem sound. ![]() Or rather I should say it's currently an unanswerable question. "That moved the story into science fiction territory, many years in Earth's future – what would those sounds seem like to a listener who didn't have any frame of reference for birdsong, trees in the wind, ocean waves? The logical and emotional implications of this idea took hold and the storyworld just naturally unfolded from that one, big, unanswerable question. Connected to this is the excitingly immersive podcast/radio series Forest 404: comprising an eco-sci-fi-thriller (set in the post-apocalyptic 24th Century, where forests have been erased from existence), interactive nature/environmental discussions, and lush soundscapes.įorest 404 writer Tim X Atack explains his response to producer Becky Ripley's brief: to create a story about what it felt like to listen to recordings of the natural world: "My twisted dramatist's mind immediately wondered what it would be like for someone to listen to such recordings if the natural world itself had completely vanished," says Atack. At the beginning of this year, the BBC launched its Soundscapes for Wellbeing project, with programming across radio channels, access to its nature sounds digital archive, and a Virtual Nature Experiment commissioned with the University of Exeter, assessing listeners' responses to digital nature content. Such realisations have also given rise to excitingly multi-stranded arts, culture and science projects. The 2021 US research article " A synthesis of health benefits of natural sounds and their distribution in national parks" (authored by Rachel T Buxton, Amber L Pearson, Claudia Allou, Kurt Fristrup and George Wittemeyer for US scientific journal PNAS) considered the impact of sounds including water and birdsong in urban green spaces: "Our review showed that natural sounds alone can confer health benefits… Natural acoustic environments provide indications of safety or an ordered world without danger, allowing control over mind states, reduction in stress-related behaviour, and mental recuperation." Now, an increasingly resonant message is that nature revives us. In the wake of the first Covid lockdowns, one of the most prevalent (and much parodied) internet memes was: "nature is healing". In our modern world, it does also feel like there has been a reawakening to the depth and diversity of nature sounds, heightened by environmental concerns, and additionally, the impact of pandemic life, making us conscious of everyday riches that we may have taken for granted. Nature's ingenuity and unpredictability has also been explored in experiments, such as French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's 2010 exhibition, which brought live zebra finches and Les Paul electric guitars to London's Barbican Curve Gallery. US musician and soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause has spent decades recording and archiving natural world sounds, and collaborated on diverse projects including The Great Animal Orchestra, Symphony for Orchestra and Wild Soundscapes (2014, with British composer Richard Blackford). ![]() As recording technologies developed, artists have increasingly sampled the natural world Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara's Cantus Arcticus (1972) incorporated birdlife sounds from the Arctic Circle. Generations of international composers have created nature-inspired work, including Beethoven's 6th Symphony (1808) aka "Pastoral Symphony, or Recollections of Country Life". ![]() The rapport between nature sounds and music taps into an age-old sensation of human wellbeing, yet it continually yields new shoots. Listening back in 2021, these ensemble pieces sound elegant, wistful and serene, and somehow suspended in time. The broadcast proved a public hit, with annual performances for the following 12 years and a record release. It was May 1924, and Harrison played familiar melodies including Londonderry Air (Danny Boy) and Dvořák's Songs My Mother Taught Me, while nightingale birds responded and sang sweetly from the surrounding trees. Nearly a century ago, acclaimed British cellist Beatrice Harrison performed one of the BBC's first live outside broadcasts, from her own garden in Oxted, Surrey.
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