THE CALL OF THE CUCKOO.
[To THE EDITOR Of THE 4. SP EC IA IOR."] SIE,—Your correspondent Mr. J. Rutter (Spectator, June 26th) surely generalises rather incautiously when he says that F natural to D flat is the song of a first-rate cuckoo. The interval he names—which, by the way, is not necessarily in the key of D flat, but may be alternately in that of B flat minor—is a major third, and there can be no doubt, I think, that the normal call of the cuckoo is a minor third. I have heard cuckoos calling in major thirds, and I remember hearing one in early spring in the Isle of Wight whose interval was a fourth, say from F down to C. But these are unusual, and the minor third is the characteristic interval. The question of pitch is different, but is also interesting. Has the call of different cuckoos something like a uniform pitch, and does the pitch remain uniform throughout the season ? In early June of last year I was On a hillside in Strathspey with my eight- year-old son, who has the sense of absolute pitch, and I remember his exclaiming in delight: "Oh, do you hear the cuckoo in D minor ? " The interval in this case was F to D natural, which agrees with the pitch given by Mr. Rutter. I should expect to find, however, that other birds may have a pitch a few semitones higher or lower. The cuckoo is perhaps the only bird whose call suggests a harmonic basis. Most bird-calls are purely melodic, and the difficulty in reducing them to musical notation arises from the fact that our systems of notation, as well as our habits of musical thought, are conditioned by the duodecimal division of the octave. In our pedestrian way, we can but stump along from one determinate note to another, while the birds in their song, as in their flight,
soar freely in "a diviner air."—I am, Sir, &c., J. W.
Previous page
