“Wie ein Naturlaut”: Reaching Beyond Culture

At the end of the twentieth century, a group of scholars claimed that the search for the “universals of music” is possible only on the level of animal sounds—the sounds of nature. Composers have explored the languages of nature: the bird songs transcribed by Messiaen and the recorded sounds of other animals and natural noises that became an integral part of compositions using pre-recorded tapes. These attempts are reminiscent of the mythic Siegfried, who is miraculously given the ability to make the language of animals his own.

The gesture of the mythic hero, Siegfried, is universalizing, for a mythic mind believes that a single truth is expressed in many different ways. The mythic mind attempts to comprehend the universe in its wholeness and to view the different parts of the universe as congruent, organized in a predictably correspondent manner. In its proud belief of possessing one absolute truth, mythic thought knows no blank spots on the mythic map of the Universe; nor is there a question that remains unanswered, contrary to scientific thought. In its claim for being comprehended in its entirety, the mythic world is virtually devoid of incompatible elements because of the “miraculous” logic of mythic thought. To achieve “wholeness” through myth and ritual also meant to reactivate the notion of unity between humans and nature.

The widely understood framework of multilingualism embraces both culture and nature, culture being represented by different styles, and nature by natural noises and animal sounds. When composers record (that is catch, or transform into a fixed state) these natural sounds, they essentially fulfill the traditional function of a shaman who tames the spirits of nature. Moreover, the act of cultivation of natural, or raw, sounds by including them in cultural contexts reveals the opposition between culture and nature—the cardinal opposition of the mythic mind, according to Lévi-Strauss, whose The Raw and the Cooked specifically addressed this opposition. Earlier in music history, one can discern an opposition of instrumental, or “man-made,” and vocal, from nature, sounds; in the twentieth century, this opposition is superseded by the sound produced by traditional media versus electronics. The recorded sound, which is applicable to both, can be viewed as the “mediator” in this opposition.