Soprano Jane Sheldon

Birdsong has been a source of inspiration to Western classical composers for hundreds of years, and no doubt to folk musicians for many more. Messiaen took very seriously his teacher’s instruction to listen to the birds around him and his meticulous birdsong transcriptions inspired some of his most beautiful works.

But Messiaen was just one musical ornithologist in a long line. Baroque flautists and singers both spent a fair amount of time imitating birdsong: Handel’sSweet bird from L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato is full of incredibly pretty warbling, as is Rameau’s Rossignols amoureux. From the 20th century avant-garde, John Cage’s Telephones and Birds comes to mind. And Australia’s Elliott Gyger gave me some deliciously wild birdy lines to sing in his 2009 piece The Face of Nature.

As a singer I’m interested not only in the beauty of birdsong but also in its mechanics. Bird vocalisations are much faster than we sopranos can hope for. Messiaen himself noted that “the...