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Mozart's Starling
Meredith J. West
Andrew P.
King
Page 3
Other mimics and songsters
Studies of another mimic, the African gray parrot
(Psit-tacus erithacus), also indicate linkages
between mimicry and social interaction (13). This
species mimics human speech when stimulated to do so by
an "interactive modeling technique" in which a parrot
must compete for the attention of two humans engaged in
conversation. Extrinsic rewards such as food are
avoided. The reinforcement is physical acquisition of
the object being talked about and responses from human
caregivers. Such procedures lead to articulate imitation
and often highly appropriate use of speech sounds.
Pepperberg reports that one bird's earliest "words"
referred to objects he could use: "paper," "wood,"
"hide" (from rawhide chips), "peg wood," "corn," "nut,"
and "pasta" (14). The parrot also employed these
mimicked sounds during exchanges with caregivers in
which he answered questions about the names of objects
and used labels identifying shape and color in
appropriate ways. The parrot's use of "no" and "want"
also suggested the ability to form functional
relationships between speech and context, a capacity
perhaps facilitated by the trainer's explicit attempts
to arrange training sessions meaningful for the student.
Explanations of mimicry of human sounds in this
and other species originate in the idea that hand-reared
birds perceive their human companions in terms of the
social roles that naturally exist among wild birds.
Lorenz and von Uexkull elaborated on the kinds of
relationships between and among avian parents,
offspring, siblings, mates, and rivals (25). In
the case of captive birds, humans become the companion
for all seasons, with the nature of the relationship
shifting with the changing developmental and hormonal
cycles in a bird's life.
Mimics are not the only birds to show clear
evidence of the effects of companions on vocal
capacities, examples from nonmimetic species are
relevant. In white-crowned sparrow (Zonotrichia
leucophrys), the capacity to learn the songs of
other males differs according to the tutoring procedure
used. For example, young males learn songs from tape
recordings until they are 50 days of age but not
afterward. They do acquire songs well after 50 days from
live avian tutors with whom they can interact, copying
the song of another species, even if they can hear
conspecifics in the background. The potency of social
tutors has led to a comprehensive reinterpretation of
the nature of vocal ontogeny in this species
(16). We tried tutoring nine of the starlings using
tapes of the caregiver's voice singing songs and
reciting prose. There was no evidence of mimicry, except
that one bird learned the sound of tape hiss. And thus,
if we had relied on tape tutoring, as has been done with
many species to assess vocal capacity, we would have
vastly underestimated the starlings' skills.
What are the characteristics of live tutors that
make them so effective? The studies of white-crowned
sparrows suggest that it is not the quality of the
tutor's voice, but the opportunity for interaction.
Indeed, we have studied a case where voice could not be
a cue at all because the "tutor" could not sing. In
cowbirds, as in many songbirds, only males sing. Females
are frequently the recipients of songs and display a
finely tuned perceptual sensitivity to con-specific
songs (17). We have documented that acoustically
naive males produce distinct themes when housed with
female cowbirds possessing different song preferences.
We have also identified one important element in the
interaction. When males sang certain themes, females
responded with distinctive wing movements. The males
responded in turn to such behavior by repeating the
songs that elicited the females' wing movements. Such
data show that singers attend to visual, as well as
acoustic, cues and that tutors can be salient influences
even when silent. In this species, the social, as
distinct from the vocal, conduct of a male's audience is
of consequence.
Studies of another avian group, domestic fowl
(Gallus gallus), also direct attention to the
importance of a signaler's audience (18). In this
species, male cockerels produce different calls in the
presence of different social companions. Emitting a food
call in the presence of food is not an obligatory
response but one modulated by the signaler's
observations of his audience. Similar findings with
cockerel alarm calls indicate the need to consider the
multiple determinants of vocal production. Taken as a
whole, the findings reveal that, for many birds,
acoustic communication is as much visual as vocal
experience.
Mozart as birdcatcher
Mozart knew how to look at, as well as listen to,
audiences, especially when one of his compositions was
the object of their attention. After observing several
audiences watching The Magic Flute, he wrote to
his wife, "I have at this moment returned from the
opera, which was as full as ever. . . . But what always
gives me most pleasure is the silent approval!
You can see how this opera is becoming more and more
esteemed" (19). Mozart's enjoyment of the less
obvious reactions of his audience suggests that, like a
bird, he too was motivated not only by auditory but by
visual stimuli. The German word he used can be
translated "applause" as well as "approval," suggesting
his search for rewards more meaningful than the expected
clapping of hands. We now turn to the case of Mozart's
starling and to the kinds of social and vocal rewards
offered to him by his choice of an avian audience.
Mozart recorded the purchase of his starling in a
diary of expenses, along with a transcription of a
melody whistled by the bird and a compliment. He had
begun the diary at about the same time that he began a
catalogue of his musical compositions. The latter effort
was more successful, with entries from 1784 to 1791, the
year of his death. His book of expenditures, however,
lapsed within a year, with later entries devoted to
practice writing in English (20). The theme
whistled by the starling must have fascinated Mozart for
several reasons. The tune was certainly familiar, as it
closely resembles a theme that occurs in the final
movement of the Piano Concerto in G Major, K. 453.
Mozart recorded the completion of this work in his
catalogue on 12 April in the same year. As far as we
know, just a few people had heard the concerto by 27
May, perhaps only the pupil for whom it was written, who
performed it in public for the first time at a concert
on 13 June. Mozart had expressed deep concern that the
score of this and three other concertos might be stolen
by unscrupulous copyists in Vienna. Thus, he sent the
music to his father in Salzburg, emphasizing that the
only way it could "fall into other hands is by that kind
of cheating" (21). The letter to his father is
dated 26 May 1784, one day before the entry in his diary
about the starling. Mozart's relationship with the
starling thus begins on a tantalizing note. How did the
bird acquire Mozart's music? Our research suggests that
the melody was certainly within the bird's capabilities,
but how had it been transmitted? Given our observation
that whistled tunes are altered and incorporated into
mixed themes, we assume that the melody was new to the
bird because it was so close a copy of the original.
Thus, we entertain the possibility that Mozart, like
other animal lovers, had already visited the shop and
interacted with the starling before 27 May. Mozart was
known to hum and whistle a good deal. Why should he
refrain in the presence of a bird that seems to elicit
such behavior so easily?
A starling in May would be either quite young,
given typical spring hatching times, or at most a year
old, still young enough to acquire new material but
already an accomplished whistler. Because it seems
unlikely to us that a very young bird could imitate a
melody so precisely, we envision the older bird. The
theme in question from K. 453 has often been likened to
a German folk tune and may have been similar to other
popular tunes already known to the starling, analogous
to the highly familiar tunes our caregivers used. But to
be whistled to by Mozart! Surely the bird would have
adopted its listening posture, thereby rewarding the
potential buyer with "silent applause."
Given that whistles were learned quite rapidly by
the starlings we studied, it is not implausible that the
Vienna starling could have performed the melody shortly
after hearing it for the first time. Of course, we
cannot rule out a role for a shopkeeper, who could have
repeated Mozart's tune from its creator or from the
starling. In any case, we imagine that Mozart returned
to the shop and purchased the bird, recording the
expense out of appreciation for the bird's mimicry. Some
biographers suggest an opposite course of
transmission---from the starling to Mozart to the
concerto---but the completion date of K. 453 on 12 April
makes this an unlikely, although not impossible,
sequence of events.
Given the sociable nature of the captive
starlings we studied, we can imagine that some of the
experiences that followed Mozart's purchase must have
been quite agreeable. Mozart had at least one canary as
a child and another after the death of the starling,
suggesting that it would not be hard for him to become
attached to so inventive a house mate. Moreover, he
shared several behavioral characteristics with captive
starlings. He was fond of mocking the music of others,
often in quite irreverent ways. He also kept late hours,
composing well into the night (22). The
caregivers of the starlings we studied uniformly
reported, and sometimes complained about, the tendency
of their birds to indulge in more than a little night
music.
The text of Mozart's poem on the bird's death
suggests other perceptions shared with the caregivers.
Mozart dubbed his pet a "fool", the German word could
also be translated as "clown" or "jester", an
attribution in keeping with the modern starlings' vocal
productions of "crazy bird," "rascal," "silly bird," and
"nutty bird" and the even more frequent use of such
terms in the written description of life with starlings.
Mozart gets to the heart of the starling's character
when he states that the bird was "not naughty quite, /
But gay and bright, / And under all his brag, / A
foolish wag." And thus, when we contemplate Mozart's
emotions at the bird's death, we see no reason to invoke
attributions of displaced grief. We regard Mozart's
sense of loss as genuine, his epitaph as an apt
gesture.
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Hier ruht ein lieber
Narr,
Ein Vogel Staar.
Noch in den besten
]ahren
Musst er erfahren
Des Todes bittern
Schmerz.
Mir blut't das Herz,
Wenn ich daran
gedenke.
O Leser! schenke
Auch du ein
Thranchen ihm.
Er war nicht schlimm;
Nur war
er etwas munter,
Doch auch mitunter
Ein
lieber loser Schalk,
Und drum kein Dalk.
Ich
wett', er ist schon oben,
Um mich zu
loben
Fiir diesen Freundschaftsdienst
Ohne
Gewinnst.
Denn wie er unvermuthet
Sich hat
verblutet,
Dacht er nicht an den Mann,
Der
so schon reimen kann.
Den 4ten ]uni 1787. |
A little fool lies here
Whom I held
dear—
A starling in the prime
Of his brief
time
Whose doom it was to drain
Death's
bitter pain.
Thinking of this, my heart
Is
riven apart.
Oh reader! Shed a tear,
You
also, here.
He was not naughty, quite,
But
gay and bright,
And under all his brag
A
foolish wag.
This no one can gainsay
And I
will lay
That he is now on high,
And from
the sky,
Praises me without pay
In his
friendly way.
Yet unaware that death
Has
choked his breath,
And thoughtless of the
one
Whose rime is thus well
done. |
No other written records of Mozart's relationship
with his pet are known. He may have said more, given his
prolific letter writing, but much of his correspondence
during this period has been lost. The lack of other
accounts, however, cannot be considered to indicate a
lack of interest in his starling. We are inclined to
believe that other observations by Mozart on the
starling do exist but have not been recognized as such.
Our case rests in part on recent technical analyses of
the original (autograph) scores of Mozart's
compositions, investigations describing changes in
handwriting, inks, and paper. Employing new techniques
to date paper by analyzing the watermarks pressed into
it at the time of its manufacture, Tyson (23) has
established that the dates and places assigned to some
of Mozart's compositions can be questioned, reaching the
general conclusion that many pieces were written over an
extended period of time and not recorded in his
catalogue until the time of completion. The
establishment of an accurate chronology of Mozart's
compositions is obviously essential to those attempting
to understand the development of his musical genius. It
also serves our purposes in reconstructing events after
the starling's funeral.
One composition examined by Tyson is a score
entered in Mozart's catalogue on 12 June 1787, the first
to appear after the deaths of his father and the
starling. The piece is entitled A Musical Joke
(K. 522). Consider the following description of it from
a record jacket: "In the first movement we hear the
awkward, unproportioned, and illogical piecing together
of uninspired material. . . [later] the andante
cantabile contains a grotesque cadenza which goes on far
too long and pretentiously and ends with a comical deep
pizzicato note . . . and by the concluding presto, our
'amateur composer' has lost all control of his
incongruous mixture" (24). Is the piece a musical
joke? Perhaps. Does it bear the vocal autograph of a
starling? To our ears, yes. The "illogical piecing
together" is in keeping with the starlings' intertwining
of whistled tunes. The "awkwardness" could be due to the
starlings' tendencies to whistle off-key or to fracture
musical phrases at unexpected points. The presence of
drawn-out, wandering phrases of uncertain structure also
is characteristic of starling soliloquies. Finally, the
abrupt end, as if the instruments had simply ceased to
work, has the signature of starlings written all over
it.
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