Sigma Alpha Iota

Winter 2019 20 PAN PIPES THOREAU'S SYMPHONIES "instrumentation" of both symphonies are similar, in his first symphony, there are more higher bird sounds "written in" and in the second more varied lower sounds "written in." oreau also incorporated the sounds of traditional instruments into his symphonies. He wrote that "the sonorous note of bullfrogs is heard a mile off in the river, the loudest sound this evening. Ever and anon the sound of his trombone comes over the meadows and fields, a lulling all Concord to sleep." (June 16, 1852) e bullfrog was also compared to a bassoon. (May 11, 1853). "I hear a man playing a clarinet far off…How cultivated, now sweet and glorious, is music! Men have brought this art to great perfection, the art of modulating sound, by long practice since the world began…It is perhaps the most admirable accomplishment of man." (June 18, 1852). Twice he heard the sound of the horn played by a farmer as he called his workers to aernoon tea. (May 10 and June 1, 1853) By hearing the sounds of nature in counterpoint with the sounds produced by man on classical instruments, oreau found a complementary transcendence: Man and nature at one in musical sounds. oreau played the flute, sometimes taking his flute into his little boat on Walden Pond, serenading the fish and birds and hearing the echo of his flute resonate off the lake and throughout the forest. (Walden, 151, 169) "I hear a cricket creak in the shade; also the sound of a distant piano…A thrumming of piano-strings beyond the gardens and through the elms. At length the melody steals into my being…I am attuned to the universe. I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree" (August 3, 1852) Just prior to working on his two symphonies in 1852 and 1853, oreau related a dream he had that suggests he was prepared and ready to write his symphonies: I was a musical instrument from which I heard a strain die out – a bugle or a clarinet or a flute. My body was the organ and channel of melody, as a flute is the magic that is breathed though it. My flesh sounded and vibrated still to the strain, and my nerves were the chords of the lyre. I awoke, therefore, to an infinite regret – to find myself not the thoroughfare of glorious and world stirring inspirations, but a scuttle full of dirt, such a thoroughfare only as a street and the kennel, where, perchance, the wind may sometimes draw forth a strain of music from a straw…I heard the last strain or flourish, as I woke, played on my body as the instrument. Such I knew I had been and might be again, and my regret arose from the consciousness how little like a musical instrument my body was now. (October 26, 1851) As he composed his two transcendental symphonies during 1852 and 1853 he was fully attending to the musical sounds around him and shaping his journal notes into musical compositions. He had become the instrument for making musical sounds. To reconstruct oreau's two symphonies I created a score/spreadsheet with the 60 different "instruments" (birds, insects, animal, environmental, and human sounds listed by oreau in his journal entries from the highest to the lowest as one would do on a musical score) and then each measure was a date (January 1=measure; January 2=measure, etc…). e sample at le shows the opening page of the "score" for Symphony 1. When a sound appeared in an entry on a date I noted that sound in the "measure" for that date. So, on some dates there were many different sounds listed by oreau creating a complex sonority for that date/measure. I put the name of the producer of the sound into the measure (i.e. robin, cricket, horn, etc.). I had a "measure" for each date entry in the year, though when oreau did not write a journal entry on a specific date I did not include that measure in the score. e sample on page 21 is the score for measures June 15-July 9. ere are many observations about oreau's music that cannot be included in this brief paper and it is not possible to "hear" oreau's transcendental symphonies unless one takes the time to read through his extensive journal entries from 1852 and 1853. It is in the

• Cover