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Mozart's Starling
Meredith J. West
Andrew P. King
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was also the delighted
owner of a pet starling. He recorded the purchase of the
starling in an expense book, noting the date, price and
a musical fragment the bird was whistling. The pleasure
he expressed at hearing the starling's song--"Das war
schon!" (that was beautiful)--is all the more
understandable when one compares the beginning of the
last movement of his Piano Concerto in G major, K.453,
which was written about the same time. Somehow the bird
had learned the theme from Mozart's concerto. It did
however sing G sharp where Mozart had written G natural,
giving its rendition a characteristically off-key
sound.
On 27 May 1784, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart purchased
a starling. Three years later, he buried it with much
ceremony. Heavily veiled mourners marched in a
procession, sang hymns, and listened to a graveside
recitation of a poem Mozart had composed for the
occasion (1). Mozart's performance has received
mixed reviews. Although some see his gestures as those
of a sincere animal lover, others have found it hard to
believe that the object of Mozart's grief was a dead
bird. Another event in the same week has been put forth
as a more likely cause for Mozart's funereal gestures:
the death of his father Leopold (2).
The scholars who have reported and interpreted
this historical incident knew much about Mozart but
little, if anything, about starlings. To put the
incident into better perspective, we will provide here a
profile of the vocal capacities of captive starlings.
Mozart's skills as a musician and composer would have
rendered him especially susceptible to the starling's
vocal charms, and thus we will also propose that the
funeral and the poem are not the end of the story.
Mozart may have left another memorial to his starling,
an offbeat requiem for rebels.
Mozart's starling was a European starling,
Sturnus vulgaris. The species was later
introduced to North America on an artistic note. The
birds were imported from England in the 1890s in an
effort to represent the avian cast of Shakespeare's
plays in this country (3). Fewer than 200 birds
were released in New York's Central Park. Population
estimates in the 1980s hovered around 200,000,000 birds,
a millionfold increase, making starlings one of the most
successful road shows in history.
The vocal talents of starlings have been known
since antiquity (4). The species possesses a rich
repertoire of calls and songs composed of whistles,
dicks, rattles, snarls, and screeches. In addition,
starlings copy the sounds of other birds and animals,
weaving these mimicked themes into long soliloquies
that, in captive birds, can contain fragments of human
speech. Pliny reported individual birds, mimicking Greek
and Latin, that "practiced diligently and spoke new
phrases every day, in still longer sentences."
Shakespeare knew enough about their abilities to have
Hotspur propose teaching a starling to say the name
"Mortimer," an earl distrusted by Henry IV, to disturb
the king's sleep (Henry IV, Part 1, act 1, scene 3). In
the song cycle Die schone Mullerin, Schubert set
to music a poem in which a starling is given a romantic
mission: "I'd teach a starling how to speak and sing, /
Till every word and note with truth should ring, / With
all the skill my lips and tongue impart, / With all the
warmth and passion of my heart" (5).
Despite this wealth of anecdotal information, few
scientists have studied the vocal behavior of starlings
under the conditions necessary to separate fact from
fiction. The problem with starlings is that they
vocalize too much, too often, and in too great numbers,
sometimes in choruses numbering in the thousands (a
flock of starlings is labeled a murmuration). Even the
seemingly elementary step of creating an accurate
catalogue of the vocal repertoires of wild starlings is
an intimidating task because of the variety of their
sounds. Other well-known avian mimics, such as the
mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos), have proved as
challenging, leaving unanswered key questions about the
development and functions of mimetic behavior.
Some of the problems involved in the study of
nonmimetic songbirds arise with mimics as well.
Researchers must be able to find and raise songbirds
from a young age or ideally from the egg under
conditions in which their exposure to social and
acoustic stimulation can be controlled. The birds must
be observed for many months or sometimes years to
capture fully the processes of cultural evolution and
transmission of vocal motifs from generation to
generation. And for all species, researchers must
acquire expertise in the acoustic analysis of sounds to
overcome their inability to hear much of the fine detail
in avian vocalizations.
Because of these difficulties, many "definitive"
pieces of work have been based on small sample sizes,
often fewer than ten individuals, sometimes fewer than
five. Larger samples are possible only with avicultural
favorites, such as canaries (Serinus canaria) or
zebra finches (Poephila guttata). Even with these
subjects, re search schedules must be accommodated to
seasonal cycles. The kinds of vocalizations produced by
a species can differ considerably throughout the year,
with the most "interesting" sounds in the form of
territorial or mating signals occurring for only a few
months each year. In sum, songbirds are a
handful.
Mimetic species add another layer of difficulty
by including sounds made by other birds, other animals,
and even machines. Thus, in addition to exploring how
members of a mimetic species develop species-typical
calls and songs---that is, vocalizations with many
shared acoustic properties within a
population---investigators routinely encounter
individual idiosyncracies. Why does one starling mimic a
goat and another a cat? Given the abundance of sounds in
the world, what processes account for the selection of
models?
Baylis (6) advocated studying just part of
the mimic's repertoire as a first step, suggesting the
example of mockingbirds frequently mimicking cardinals
(Cardinalis cardinalis). Although mockingbirds
mimic many species, cardinals are a favorite. Why? What
consequences accrue for mimic or model? By focusing on
one model-mimic system, scientists might answer a number
of questions surrounding the nature and function of
mimicry. Further control of the model-mimic system can
be gained by exposing birds to human speech, a vocal
code with a more favorable "signal-to-noise" ratio. This
heightens the probability that investigators can detect
mimicry and makes it easier to identify the origin of
mimicked sounds and the environmental conditions
facilitating or inhibiting interspecific mimicry
(7). Here, the use of human language is not
comparable to efforts with apes or dolphins aimed at
uncovering possible analogues to human language. Rather,
the use of speech sounds is more properly compared to
the use of a radioactive isotope to trace physiological
pathways. Thus, when a captive starling utters, "Does
Hammacher Schlemmer have a toll-free number?" it is
easier to trace the phrase's origin and how often it has
been said than to trace the history of the bird's
production of "breep, beezus, breep, beeten,
beesix."
Over the past decade, we have studied nine
starlings, each hand-reared from a few days of age
(8). We have also collected information on the
behavior of five other starlings, raised under similar
conditions by individuals unaware of our work and
unaware of starlings' mimicking abilities when their
relationship with the birds began (see Kuro)
(9). Although many questions remain about the
species's vocal capacities, the findings shed light on
Mozart's response to his starling's death.
The 14 starlings experienced different social
relationships with humans. Eight birds lived
individually in what is called interactive contact with
the humans who hand-reared them. Their cages were placed
in busy parts of the home, and the birds had
considerable freedom to associate with their caregivers
in diverse ways: feeding from hands; perching on
fingers, shoulders, or heads; exploring caregivers'
possessions; and inserting themselves into activities
such as meal preparation, piano lessons, baths, showers,
and telephone conversations. The humans spontaneously
talked to the birds, whistled to them, and gestured by
kissing, snapping fingers, and waving
good-bye.
Explicit procedures to teach human words using
methods prescribed for other mimicking species were not
used. Six of the eight caregivers did not know that such
training would have an effect until the birds themselves
demonstrated their mimicking ability, and two refrained
because they were instructed by us to do so. The birds
could obtain food and water (and avian companionship in
five of eight cases) without interacting with
humans.
Three other starlings lived under conditions of
limited contact with humans. After 30 days of hand
rearing by us, they were individually placed in new
homes, along with a cowbird (Molothrus ater).
They lived in cages, rarely flew free, and were
passively exposed to humans. They heard speech but were
not "spoken to" because they did not engage in the kinds
of social interactions described for the first group.
The final three starlings lived together in auditory
contact with humans. They were housed in an aviary on a
screened porch of the caregivers raising one of the
freely interacting birds. As a result, their auditory
environment was loosely yoked to that of the other
bird.
The information gathered on the starling's
mimicry differed by setting and caregiver. Extensive
audio taping was carried out for the nine subjects
studied under our supervision. For three of the
remaining birds involved in interactive contact, we used
repertoires available in published works, supplemented
by personal inquiries. For the last two we obtained
verbal reports from caregivers.
The music you are hearing is from
Mozart's "A Musical Joke" K.522 Second Movement:
Menuetto
It is believed to be based on the song of
his beloved pet starling.
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