Nature Found in Music
Introduction
During my spring semester of Freshman year, I had a music course that had its students write reviews on music through out history and blog them. I was quite intrigued and grew a fondness to the activity. When the Great Outdoors Course I am taking this year, required us to choose a format for our final project, I could not pass up the opportunity to blog again. This course really had me looking back on my growth and love for the wilderness and to see when it all started. I believe it was my father’s love for Sedona and my trip to visit my grandparents’ cabin in the mountains that my love for it blossomed. I always felt at home no matter where I went, as long as I could see tall trees during the day and a sky full of stars at night. When reading one of our requirements, “The Nature Fix,” creativity and how nature is apart of it was brought up. This immediately sparked my interests as I have always had a love for music since I was a child; I began to notice that many musical pieces were inspired by nature. And not the “we gotta save the planet kind,” but genuine feelings of composers who appreciated and were inspired by nature. When the thoughts began to tumble, I noticed that I too was touched by nature as well. During high school, I began to compose my own music and ever since my time in my grandparents’ cabin, I’ve noticed that nature churns something in me to write something about it. Like it spoke to me, so now I wish to see, did it speak to the composers of the past, as well?
I believe that to first understand the impact, one must understand creativity. After all, every musician is creative. So what is it and where does it come from? Science says that creativity is the ability to generate or recognize ideas and is the active use of imagination from the brain, down to the hands. In other words, creativity is something that we think of to express ourselves or to solve problems and to generate new ideas, then take all of those and make them reality. It is why a jazz musician can play a original solo, or an architect can make an incredible building or a technician can create a smart phone. And for a long time, creativity was only thought to be a right side brain thing like logic was only left. “Research at Harvard University shows that creativity can be found in both hemispheres.” (Jenkins, 2022) As the brain relies on both past experiences and new ones when creating something. Then how does nature play a role?
For thousands of years, humans have thrived in nature and was not until 2008, that we, “officially became an urban species.” (Williams, pg 18) It is no surprise that nature has always been apart of us and has the ability to not only heal us but to enhance us. According to Dul and Ceylan (2011), creativity is greatly impacted on the person, their process and environment. So your attitude can affect your creative performance, your process on whether the choices made were sound or not and of course, environment. It is not secret that many people seek to sit somewhere quietly in order to solve problems and why? Because that is how we are wired. Of course nature didn’t intend roaring jet aircraft to be processed and noise pollution is a real threat to hearing loss. (Williams, pg 89)
So we seek quiteness for creativity and what better place other then nature? Not only was it quite, but inspiring to many through out the ages. Poets and Artists would create great works of art to show their inspiration and gratitude towards nature that helped them. But what about musicians? They were not shy themselves to use nature as a way to help them create music.
Strauss, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, Chopin, Koraskov and Messiaen are only but a few composers and performers that drew from nature to create works of music. One of the greatest of them all was Beethoven. As a child, Beethoven was abused by his father every time he practiced so that he would be perfect. His father would slap him harshly on the ears every time a mistake was made, and this led to Beethoven’s hearing loss later in life. When he became completely deaf, Beethoven thought that while his deafness could never cured, perhaps some time in a cabin out in the woods could make a difference. While science has proof that this cannot be the case, the most important aspect of that was that nature gave Beethoven hope and inspiration. After one of these trips, Beethoven wrote his 6th Symphony “Pastoral.” Named Pastoral Symphony or Recollections of the Country Life, was finished in 1808, Beethoven wrote that he wanted the listener to “feel the journey, not just see the images.” (Beethoven Symphony Basics at ESM) All 5 movements of the symphony are depictions of nature in different ways wtih different titles. From “Awakening of Happy Feelings on Arriving in the Country,” to “Thunder Storm.” Beethoven created a symphony to take people with him on his journey through nature and to express his deep emotional and personal experiences and connection to it. In a letter to Teresa Malfatti, he expressed that no one loves the country side more than he and that he loved to explore every tree, rock and cave. For Beethoven, nature was more then just the outdoors. It was life and it held music beyond compare.
The next composer a couple of hundred years down the line following a different style then Beethoven. While he studied and wrote classical music, Claude Debussy was a 20th century composer and wrote what was called impressionistic music. A piece that greatly captures nature and his style is La Mer. Debussy’s La Mer, translates to “The Sea,” which is supposed to imitate the waters of the Earth. It has been described that this piece has techniques that portray shimmering colors, and vivid sense of motion that creates more of a atmosphere then a structured sonata which was on purpose. The ocean holds no form and is ever changing, so should the piece that is supposed to imitate be the same? “For the sea is always endless and beautiful…music is a free art, boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, and the sea.” (Debussy: La Mer 2017) While Debussy did not sit on the shoreline to draw inspiration,Debussy drew upon old memories of summers spentin the Mediterranean, Cannes, Italy and a painting by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) named The Great Wave. Movement 1, named From Dawn to Midday on the Sea is supposed to capture the dramatic and subtle changes of the atmosphere of morning water; while the 2nd movement, Play of Waves, is supposed to draw on the imagination of light and motion. Audiences are supposed to feel the rocking of the waves while movement 3, named Dialogue of the Wind and Sea is to create a stir of danger in someone deep down as though they are experiencing the great waves first hand. Until the audience is brought back to a calm ocean. These inspirations allowed for such a piece to rock the audiences back then and be appreciated by the audiences of today.
For myself, I only hope to follow in their footsteps. When I returned from my grandparents’ cabin, I was inspired by the surrounding forest. The mountain spoke to me, while the trees danced beautifully, and oddly enough, the place had a heartbeat. It was magical and full of wonder. I created 2 different pieces to capture my connection and emotion towards the place. 1st piece is named, The Mountain’s Call, 2nd is The Dancing Trees, and the next one to come out is called Fire Escape Route. Each piece is meant to imitate a different feeling and part of the national park. The 1st piece has roaring brass and percussion to inspire one to jump up and head towards the mountain. The 2nd has gentle melodies and movements to create a dance feel while the 3rd piece holds mystery and adventure of crazy brass and percussion to make the audience feel like they were the ones driving a four-wheeler on that treacherous road. I hope to reach such level of greatness like the composers of the past and show how truly great nature is and its inspiration, to us all.
Reflection
While it was a lot of work in such a short span of time, I had a great deal of fun, diving back into what I love. History, music and research. Before this project, I actually didn’t know how much nature has inspired humanity. Nearly every painting during the Renaissance and Baroque periods are of nature. Music was not excluded at all and so many more composers and pieces of music were created because of it. I didn’t know much about myself and why I have this great desire to spend time in nature, until I took this course. I didn’t understand my need to write music about the outdoors until now. I cannot wait to see what nature brings me and hopefully one day, what I can give back.
Author links open overlay panelTrinePlambechaPersonEnvelopeCecil C.Konijnendijk van den BoschbcEnvelope, TrinePlambechaPersonEnvelope, a, BoschbcEnvelope, C. C. K. van den, b, c, AbstractThis article investigates the ability of natural environments to enhance creativity. Seventeen qualitative interviews were performed with Danish creative professionals of different age, Ulrich, R. S., Skår, M., Kaplan, S., Grahn, P., Alvarsson, J. J., Amabile, T. M., Andersen, I., Baumann, C. E., Berman, M. G., Bitsch, V., Byron, K., Csikszentmihalyi, M., … Heerwagen, J. H. (2015, February 20). The impact of nature on creativity — a study among Danish Creative Professionals. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1618866715000138
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