The Great Animal Orchestra

The Great Animal Orchestra is a book about natural sound unlike any other. It’s not about identification, nor does it go into any detail about individual species. Instead, it is about our experience of environmental sound as a whole.

Bernie Krause divides environmental sound into three categories: geophony, which originates from non-living but naturally occurring sources like wind, waves and landslides; biophony, sound produced by living creatures; and anthrophony, or sounds produced by humans and especially their machines. Krause’s key idea is that biophony is a living tissue, in which each creature has its own niche defined by characteristics such as frequency band and rhythm, but also the time of the day and year, and atmospheric conditions.

Any undisturbed ecosystem thus has its own biophonic ‘signature’, changing according to timing and weather, and composed of all the voices of all its sound-producing inhabitants. Krause contends that we can actually hear the ‘health’ of an ecosystem. He gives examples of biophonies recorded before and after a disturbance, such as logging, and shows the impoverishment by means of time-compressed sonograms.
Krause started as a musician, working as a session guitarist before becoming a pioneer of the synthesiser in the late 1960s. This opened him up to a broad definition of music and an interest in weird and wonderful sounds. I particularly appreciate the attention he gives to small sounds and subtleties, such as songs of ants, and the ways a biophony changes before and after rain.

A Hollywood ‘B’ movie director once sent him off to Iowa to record the sound of corn growing, explaining that he didn’t need two sound recordists on the set but couldn’t fire him under union rules. Krause duly recorded the stalks creaking, presumably much to both his own and the director’s surprise.

A key aspect of his interest in natural sound is the human response to it. Krause explores the ways in which native peoples more in touch with nature have taken their music directly from it, and he gives some memorable examples. He contrasts this with the ignorance of natural sound among ‘civilised’ peoples, who often seem to be at war with it. Noise has increased vastly during the 40-year span of his recording career. He explains how harmful noise is, not only for ecosystems, but also for human health.

Krause has been an active campaigner in defence of the natural sound experience for many years, and I have little doubt that this book will further his cause. His writing is colourful and entertaining, so despite having no accompanying audio, his point of view comes across strongly in the paperback edition I read. I understand that there is also an ebook version with sound, and this may be an even better read.