nightingale

nightingale
	Nightingale ( Luscinia megarhynchos )
Systematics
Order :	Passerines (Passeriformes)
Subordination :	Songbirds (passeri)
Family :	Flycatcher (Muscicapidae)
Subfamily :	Schmätzer (Saxicolinae)
Genre :	Luscinia
Type :	nightingale
Scientific name
	Luscinia megarhynchos
	Brehm , 1831

The Nachtigall ( Luscinia megarhynchos ) is a bird art from the order of the Sperlingsvögel ( Passeriformes ), subordination songbirds ( Passeres ). According to more recent molecular biological findings on the phylogenesis of songbirds, today it is usually placed in the family of the flycatcher (Muscicapidae). Sometimes they can still be found today among the thrushes (Turdidae). The north-eastern sister species of the nightingale is the sprout .

In Germany the nightingale was bird of the year in 1995 .

etymology

The animal name "Nachtigall", about Middle High German nachtegal (e) from Old High German nahtagala , probably goes back to a West Germanic word nahtagalōn with the meaning "night singer". The second part of the word is related to "gellen" and belongs to Old High German galan ("to sing").

Appearance

A full-grown nightingale measures around 16.5 cm from the beak to the tip of its tail, about the size of a house sparrow ( Passer domesticus ) and weighs 18 to 27 grams . The plumage is relatively inconspicuous and inconspicuous, but fine. The top of the body of the nightingale is a slightly reddish, warm light brown, the tail more clearly reddish brown; the underside (belly, chest) whitish or a very light gray, which is partly, especially on the chest, slightly mottled in a similar light brown as the upper side; the black eyes are outlined in white, the beak pink and yellow, and the legs yellowish pink. In the nightingale, males and females are both of the same color.

The nightingale bears a certain resemblance to the sprout ( Luscinia luscinia ) and can be confused with it. But the sprout is darker in color and has gray-brown spots on the chest.

food

The nightingale feeds on insects and their larvae , worms or caterpillars , and sometimes on spiders or other invertebrates . In autumn and also in summer berries are their main food.

singing

Singing nightingale

Sound example 1: Singing of a nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), in Teign Valley, Devon , England (5:02 min)

Sound example 2: Singing of a male nightingale (2:50 min)

Only the nightingale males sing. The nightingale's song is rich, melodious and loud, and people find it very pleasant and beautiful. The singing is extremely complex, diverse, unpredictable and “imaginative”, and consists of stanzas of closely spaced single or double notes. There are both chirped and fluted sounds, tone repetitions, as well as trill- like formations that are struck in the throat, the range of which can be very different (e.g. third , fourth , etc.). The voice has a large range, high notes or passages alternate with those in a low or middle register. The dynamics are also very variable and change from soft to loud passages, sometimes also in crescendo effects. In addition to fast and fastest coloratura with an apparently cheerful or even witty expressiveness, there are also drawn-out tones with a particularly melodious voice and tone repetitions that appear plaintive or wistful and are considered to be particularly characteristic.

In early spring, unpaired nightingale males sing from eleven o'clock at night until morning; the night singing serves primarily to attract a brood partner and is discontinued after the pair has been formed. From mid-May, therefore, mostly only unpaired males sing at night. Throughout the breeding season until mid-June, male nightingale males also sing during the day, often from cover. The singing during the dawn is mainly used to defend the territory against other males. Nightingale males learn their song during their early youth from neighboring birds and have between 120 and 260 different types of stanzas, most of which are two to four seconds long. The extremely extensive repertoire is almost unique among European songbirds. The nightingale song is the subject of intensive behavioral research , primarily because of its complexity .

In addition to the role in territorial formation, more recent experimental studies focus in particular on the question of how and when species-typical song verses are learned from the young birds, in what form they later reproduce and how sections such as stanzas and their sub-units are recombined. This provides new insights into the function of memory in songbirds.

Singing: historical

A relatively precise description and analysis of the nightingale song was already undertaken by Athanasius Kircher in his Musurgia universalis (Book I, Chapter XIV, § 4 Philomela sive Luscinia , Rome, 1650). He also examined the bird's throat and differentiated between various tone and trill formations , which he - depending on how they are produced - called Pigolism (with a clear, clear voice), Teretism ("murmur") and Glazism (detached, pushed); These can, however, also appear in all possible mixtures, "so that an almost infinite variety of harmonic modulations is created". Kircher also published a small song of a nightingale recorded by him in Musurgia , but also emphasized that every nightingale has its own song.

“In the nightingale, nature rightly made the idea of all music visible, so that the singing masters can learn from her how to perfectly order the song and form the tones in the throat. The nightingale is as ambitious as the peacock the beauty of its tail in presenting the deliciousness of its song to the audience. She is not only φιλόμουσος (music and art loving), but also φιλόδοξος (loves brilliance, splendor, also the strange, comical). "

- Athanasius Kircher : Musurgia universalis , Rome 1650

In the past, the song of the nightingale was thought to relieve pain and should bring the dying a gentle death and the sick a speedy recovery. The name of the nightingale is also derived from its song - ahd . gal means song, so the nightingale is a night singer.

“ … The nightingale has just Italian manners, most of them are trills and runs with her voice, she doesn't complain at all, but sings her proud bravura arias at the top of her throat. "

- Hans Christian Andersen

habitat

Nightingales are migratory birds . They are native to Asia , Europe and North Africa. The Central European nightingales overwinter in Africa. In Australia , the nightingales were introduced by European settlers. Nightingales inhabit dense shrubbery, often on the edge of the forest and in damp terrain, but also in field trees (bush forest).

Reproduction

Luscinia megarhynchos

The breeding season in Central Europe is from mid-April to mid-June. Usually there is only one brood per year. Under favorable climatic conditions, it is incubated twice. The clutch consists of four to six greenish brown eggs. The eggs are laid daily and incubated by the female for 13 to 14 days. The young are fed by both parents. The young leave the nest after 11 to 12 days, but are still looked after for 14 to 15 days.

nest

The nests are often built on the edge of the bush or on the edge of the road in the herb fringe directly on the ground. The ground consists of leaves, inside there are moss and stalks. The female builds the nest on her own.

The nightingale as a symbol

In folk traditions, the nightingale heralds spring, it is the bird of the month of May, but also and especially a symbol of love. In Persian literature, the nightingale, allegedly in love with the rose , is the symbol of the lover, the poet and the seeker par excellence (just as the rose is a symbol of everything beautiful, also as a manifestation of the divine).

poetry

The nightingale is known, among other things, from the lines "It was the nightingale and not the lark / Which just now pierced your anxious ear." From Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet ; also through the Berlin phrase "Nachtigall, ick hear 'dir traps", which comes from Des Knaben Wunderhorn . (Parody of the opening lines of the first and second stanzas: “Nightingale, I hear you singing” and “Nightingale, I see you running”. It denotes a premonition.) “What one person is a nightingale” is one Low German idiom; the song of both birds is different and pleases different people.

In ancient times, in the sixth book of his Metamorphoses , Ovid described the story of Tereus , Prokne and Philomela , at the end of which all three main characters are transformed into birds - depending on the version, one of the two women becomes a nightingale. Therefore, the name Philomele was used metonymically for the nightingale later in poetry .

Around 1200, Walther von der Vogelweide combined the song of the nightingale with the lovers in the poem Under der Linden (“schône sanc diu nahegal”). Hans Sachs praised Martin Luther in his poem of the same name as the " Wittenberg Nightingale". The baroque poet Friedrich Spee wrote a poem Trutznachtigall , after which he named a whole collection of poems Trutznachtigall or spiritual-poetic Lustwäldlein , which appeared in 1649 shortly after the Thirty Years' War.

“But it sounds sweeter / A special bird / So it performs its song / With moon and sunshine. ...

Trutznachtingall mans, / is sore from a sweet arrow, / in love it burns sweetly, / the wounds will never be healed. ... "

- Friedrich von Spee : Trutznachtingall

The nightingale also appears in the fairy tale Jorinde and Joringel . In Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Emperor's Nightingale , the song of the nightingale heals the terminally ill emperor of China. John Keats wrote the ode to a nightingale and Oscar Wilde wrote the story The Nightingale and the Rose .

Even Theodor Storm devoted the nightingale a poem, The Nightingale : "This makes it sang the nightingale all night. There are of their sweet sound, there in reverberation and reverberation, the roses jumped open ”.

Harper Lee's novel title To Kill a Mockingbird (about: To kill a mockingbird ) was only changed in the German translation to Who disturbs the nightingale .

The Irish poet Eugene McCabe underlines in his novel Death and Nightingales (original title: Death and Nightingales ) the plot that takes place in 1883 during the Irish national movement with bird calls.

In the poem "OH", a glass of Burgundy called out ... by Joachim Ringelnatz from the cycle Die Schnupftabaksdose, Stumpsinn in Versen (1912), the moon allegedly pours its light "like scorching embers / Hin over the nightingale land -".

music

The nightingale as a particularly "musical" and at the same time poetically connoted bird inspired many musical works. Pieces with singing - especially for high voice (s) - or for different types of flutes stand out, but there are also works for other instruments.

In songs or chansons in the Middle Ages and Renaissance , the bird was primarily characterized by an elegant melody , if at all . This is also the case in Clément Janequin's chanson Va rossignol, amoureux messagier ( 8me Livre ... , Paris, Attaignant, 1540), where the nightingale is sung as a messenger of love and only small allusions in the various voices possibly suggest the song of birds. Janequin is known for some pieces in which he attempted real imitations of the nightingale song : In 1537 Attaignant published his rather melancholy Le rossignol ("The Nightingale"; with the text beginning En escoutant ), and the cheerful Chant des oiseaux ("Song of the Birds") ). In the second piece he imitates a. a. also blackbird ( merle ), lark ( stournelle ) and cuckoo , but the nightingale imitation is particularly extensive and takes place in the middle of the following stanza, on the syllables frian, frian ... :

“ Rossignol du boys ioly, A qui le voix resonne, Pour vous mettre hors d'ennuy Vostre gorge iargonne: Frian, frian, frian ... Fyez regrez, pleurs et souci, Car la Saison l'ordonne.

Nightingale in the pretty forest, whose voice rings out; to banish boredom, babble your throat: Frian, frian, frian ... Flee suffering, tears and worry, as the season dictates ... "

- Clément Janequin : Va rossignol, amoureux messagier ( 8me Livre contenant XIX chansons nouvelles ... , Paris, Attaignant, 1540)

In the madrigal Vaghi boschetti (“Schöne Boskette ”) in the 7th book of madrigals (1581) by Giaches de Wert , the word rossignuoli is the last word of the text (by Ariost ), but the nightingale song can be heard in the music at the beginning. In the Lute Book (1616–1645) by Jane Pickering there is a piece of music imitating the nightingale, La Rossignol for two lutes. Claudio Monteverdi was perhaps inspired by the Madrigal von de Wert when he published his 5-part madrigal Dolcissimo uscignolo ("Sweetest Nightingale") in his 8th Madrigal Book (1638) in 1638, in which he presented the poetic idea of melancholy but sweet singing of the bird with the help of elegant coloratura and an upper part in high register .

Jacob van Eyck's virtuoso variations on the song Engels Nachtegaeltje (“English Nightingale”) for recorder are famous , in which imitations of birdsong can already be heard in places (published 1644–1656 in the Fluyten Lusthof ).

The violin virtuoso Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber imitated the nightingale as realistically as possible alongside other birds ( cuckoo , hen / rooster , quail ) and animals ( frog , cat ) in his humorous and generally rather bizarre Sonata representativa for solo violin (handwritten in Kremsier ). Alessandro Poglietti's so-called Rossignolo , a collection of harpsichord pieces that the composer presented to the Empress Eleonore Magdalena Theresia after her marriage to Leopold I (1676),
is also partly humorous . Poglietti made several attempts to imitate a real bird, u. a. in the Aria bizzara del Rossignolo and the concluding Imitatione del medesimo Uccello . It is very likely that both Poglietti and Biber knew Kircher's above-mentioned examples of the nightingale song in his Musurgia universalis (1650, Rome), especially since the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand III. and Leopold I. also supported Kircher and his publications.

In baroque organs , positives and claviorgana there is sometimes a nightingale register that tries to imitate the birdsong and that can be added to suitable pieces and at will.

One of the most famous pieces by François Couperin is Le Rossignol-en-amour (“The Nightingale in Love”) with a double , which can be interpreted as a solo harpsichord piece, but also with the transverse flute and basso continuo . It is actually a stylized melodic portrait, but interspersed with imitations of birdsong, and introduces its 14th Ordre (in Book 3 Pièces de clavecin , 1722), in which there are several other bird pieces, including Le Rossignol-vainqueur ( "The victorious nightingale").

Antonio Vivaldi called his Violin Concerto in A major RV 335a Il Rosignuolo ("The Nightingale"), the first movement of which uses a few phrases that are reminiscent of the much more famous Concerto RV 90 Il gardellino ("The Goldfinch "). Il Rosignuolo was printed in a slightly modified version in England in 1720 under the name The Cuckow ("The Cuckoo", RV 335) and was one of Vivaldi's most popular works there; However, several experts have pointed out that the concerto does not contain any typical cuckoo imitations, but instead contains many lively and virtuoso passages, as they go with the nightingale - the handwritten title Il Rosignuolo is therefore likely to be the original.

George Frideric Handel wrote several works on the Nightingale: The best known is probably his Organ Concerto No. 13, "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale" (. The Cuckoo and the Nightingale ). In his oratorio Solomon (1749) there is a so-called “nightingale choir” ( May no rash intruder , end of Act I, 2). The aria Se nel bosco resta solo, rusignolo col suo canto in his opera Arianna (1733) is one of the most melancholy pieces of the nightingale and contains few and very subtle allusions to the real bird; it was originally intended for Handel's favorite singer Anna Strada del Po . In contrast, the soprano aria Sweet Bird in Handel's L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato (HWV 55), where the solo transverse flute in particular has to perform relatively realistic bird imitations, offers a proper description of nature; the text is based on poems by John Milton :

" Sweet bird, that shun'st the noise of Folly, Most musical, most melancholy, Thee, Chantress, of the woods among, I woo to hear your evensong. Or missing thee, I walk unseen, On the dry smooth shaven green, To behold the wand'ring moon, Riding near her highest noon.

Dear bird, who avoid the noise of folly, extremely musical, extremely melancholy, you, sorceress of the woods around, I woo to hear your evening song. If I miss you, I go unseen Over the dry, soft, shorn grass, To see the wandering moon, which glides near its zenith. "

- GF Handel : L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato

Nightingale arias were already quite popular in the Baroque era, Carlo Francesco Pollarolo already imitated the song of the bird in Usignoli che cantate (“Nightingales that you sing”) in his opera Onorio in Roma (1692), as did Alessandro Scarlatti in the aria O sentite quel rossignolo (in Le nozze con l'inimico , 1695). Jean Philippe Rameau's Air Rossignols amoureux, répondez à nos voix (“Nightingales in love, answers our voices”) in his tragédie lyrique Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) has the singing part vie with flutes and solo violin. A highly virtuosic yet poetic bravura piece for the famous soprano castrato Farinelli was Geminiano Giacomelli Arie Quell'usignolo for his opera Merope (1734). The singer himself left behind composed cadences for this aria, where he tried to imitate the singing of the nightingale.
In the second part of Joseph Haydn's The Creation (1797) the Archangel Gabriel (soprano ) sings about the nightingale (next to eagles , larks and doves ) in the aria “Auf stark Fittige” with the following words: “The nightingale resounds from every bush and grove sweet throat, grief did not yet press her breast, nor was her charming song not in tune with the complaint ”.

In the second movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's 6th Symphony Pastorale (1808) there is an imitation of a nightingale.

The well-known romance Solowei (also French: Le Rossignol ("The Nightingale")) by the Russian composer Alexander Alexandrowitsch Aljabjew is part of the repertoire of many coloratura sopranos , such as Edita Gruberova or Natalie Dessay ; the piece was arranged for piano solo by Franz Liszt . There is a chamber music work Le Rossignol by Léo Delibes for soprano, flute and piano.

Igor Stravinsky wrote an opera Le rossignol (1914) and based on it a symphonic poem Le chant du rossignol (“The Song of the Nightingale”, 1917). The latter was also performed as a ballet , the world premiere taking place on February 2, 1920 at the Opéra in Paris , with a choreography by Leonid Massine and sets by Henri Matisse ; later George Balanchine made a new choreography for it.

In his symphonic poem Pini di Roma (1924), Ottorino Respighi uses I Pini del Gianicolo in the 3rd movement , a real recording of the nightingale song. For the 4th movement L'usignuolo ("The Nightingale") of Respighi's work Gli Uccelli ("The Birds") van Eyck's above-mentioned Engels Nachtegaeltje served as a model.

Korean Court Dance ( Chunaengjeon )

There is a Korean court dance ( jeongjae ) called Chunaengjeon or "Dance of the Spring Nightingale" (춘앵전), which is said to have existed as early as the 17th century, but was not mentioned until 1848 in the Jinchan Uigwe ("Manual of Court Banquet"). The first traditional choreography for this comes from 1893 (in: Jeongjae Mudo Holgi = Manual of Court Dance ); it is the only solo dance within the Korean court dances. The Korean court music pyeongjo hoesang serves as accompanying music .
According to Jinchan Uigwe (1848), the Korean nightingale dance was based on a much older Chinese model: In the Chinese encyclopedia Yuanchien Leihan from 1701 it is mentioned that the Tang emperor Tang Gaozong (d. 683), after listening to the nightingale singing, commissioned his court musician Po Ming Chien to compose a piece of music about it, to which dancers also performed.

In the history of music, several singers have been identified with the nightingale, the castrato Matteuccio was called "the nightingale of Naples " ( il rosignuolo di Napoli ), and Jenny Lind , one of the most famous sopranos of the 19th century, is known as " Swedish Nightingale".
The author Christine Wunnicke called her book about the castrato Filippo Balatri The Tsar's Nightingale . In general, light coloratura sopranos or soubrettes in particular were / are sometimes referred to as “nightingales”, in more modern times (20th and 21st centuries) sometimes derogatory.
Nightingale Classics is a CD label that is best known for recordings of bel canto operas by Gioachino Rossini , Vincenzo Bellini and Gaetano Donizetti with the coloratura soprano Edita Gruberova .

Individual evidence

↑ Bird of the Year (Germany): 1995

^ Friedrich Kluge , Alfred Götze : Etymological dictionary of the German language . 20th edition. Edited by Walther Mitzka . De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1967; Reprint (“21st unchanged edition”) ibid 1975, ISBN 3-11-005709-3 , p. 500.

↑ Elke Brüser: Singing in cover * flapping wings and kicking quietly. In: flapping wings and quiet step. May 21, 2020, accessed on May 27, 2020 (German).

^ Sarah Kiefer, C. Scharff, H. Hultsch & S. Kipper: Learn it now, sing it later? Field at laboratory studies on song repertoire acquisition and song use in nightingales . In: Natural Sciences . tape 101 , no. 11 . Springer, 2014, ISSN 0028-1042 , p. 955-963 .

^ Henrike Hultsch: Tracing the memory mechanisms in the song acquisition of nightingales . In: Netherlands Journal of Zoology . tape 43 , no. 1-2 , 1992, pp. 155-171 .

↑ Athanasius Kircher: "Musurgia universalis", first complete translation into German by Günter Scheibel (revision: Jacob Langeloh with the assistance of Frank Böhling, ed. By Markus Engelhardt and Christoph Hust), on the Internet: digitized on the website of the Leipzig University of Music , page 51–54, (quote: page 54 above). Last accessed on April 22, 2018.

↑ Athanasius Kircher: "Musurgia universalis", first complete translation into German by Günter Scheibel, ..., on the Internet: digitized version on the website of the Leipzig University of Music , notes on page 56 of the digitized version. Last accessed on April 22, 2018.

↑ Athanasius Kircher: "Musurgia universalis", first complete translation into German by Günter Scheibel, ..., on the Internet: digitized on the website of the Leipzig University of Music , page 51. Last viewed on April 22, 2018.

^ Hans Christian Andersen: The early travel pictures , Kiepenheuer Verlag, 1984, p. 205

↑ Alexandra Lavizzari : Notes. In: Ayyuqi: Warqa and Gulschah. Translated from Persian and afterword by Alexandra Lavizzari. Unionsverlag, Zurich 2001, pp. 158–160; here: p. 158

↑ Nachtigall ick listen to you trapsen on Wissen.de

^ Text “Trutznachtigall” online , last seen on April 22, 2018

↑ Friedrich von Spee: Trutz-Nachtigall (Cologne 1649), ed. v. Theo GM van Oorschot. Bern: Francke 1985 (Ndr. D. Edition Cologne 1649) Digitized version of the Leipzig 1879 edition ( Memento of the original from January 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.

↑ Friedrich von Spee: Trutz-Nachtigall (Cologne 1649), ed. v. Theo GM van Oorschot. Bern: Francke 1985

↑ The piece is sometimes called Le chant du rossignol ("The song of the nightingale").

↑ Original edition with both pieces from 1537: on IMSLP , viewed April 22, 2018

↑ Modern sheet music from the Chant des oiseaux on: IMSLP , viewed April 22, 2018

↑ Text book for the CD: Clément Janequin: La Chasse et autres chansons. Harmonia mundi 1988. p. 16

↑ Frederick Noad: The Renaissance Guitar (= . The Frederick Noad Guitar Anthology Part 1) Ariel Publications, New York, 1974; Reprint: Amsco Publications, New York / London / Sydney, UK ISBN 0.7119.0958.X, US ISBN 0.8256.9950.9, p. 46 f.

↑ Monuments of Tonkunst in Austria , Vol. 27, Volume XIII / 2 ( A. Poglietti, FT Richter, G. Reutter the Elder - piano and organ works ). Edited by Guido Adler and Hugo Botstiber. Akademische Druck und Verlagsanstalt Graz, Graz 1906/1959, p. XVI (foreword) and p. 27–31.

^ François Couperin: Troisième Livre de Pièces de Clavecin. 1722. Ed. By Jos. Gát. Schott, Mainz 1970–1971, pp. 23 ff, 30 f.

↑ The English version has a different, simpler second movement and an organ part instead of an occasional second solo violin.

^ Giorgio Fava: Text on the CD: Vivaldi - Concerti della natura. With Giuliano Carmignola, Sonatori della Gioiosa Marca. Erato, Paris 2000, pp. 7–8 (Italian original) and pp. 24–25 (German translation). This is a recording of the handwritten version entitled Il Rosignuolo in the Biblioteca Benincasa in Ancona.

↑ Michael Talbot, text on the CD: Vivaldi - Violin Concertos, op. 6 + Concerto “The Cuckoo”. With Andrew Manze, The Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood. Decca, London 2000, p. 17. This is a recording of the version popularized in England as The Cuckoo ; nevertheless, Talbot points out the inconsistency of the title in his text.

↑ "When she stays alone in the forest, the nightingale with her song"

^ Rodolfo Celletti: History of Belcanto. Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel u. a. 1989, p. 101 f.

↑ Text book for CD: Handel: L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. The King's Consort , Robert King. Hyperion. P. 19

^ Rodolfo Celletti: History of Belcanto. Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel u. a. 1989, p. 59.

↑ Arias for Farinelli. Vivicagenaux , Academy for Early Music Berlin, René Jacobs . Harmonia mundi, 2002/2003. See also the textbook, p. 50.

↑ The Gianiculo is one of the hills of Rome.

↑ Il-ji, Moon: Ch'unaengjŏn (Nightingale Dance), a Korean Court Dance. In: Yearbook for Traditional East Asian Musics (15 ed.), (1983), pp. 71-88.