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The Essay

The Scientist and the Romantic

Episode 4: The Songbird and the Sol-Fa

Duration: 15 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC Radio 3Latest broadcast: on BBC Radio 3

Available for over a year

Nature writer Richard Mabey reflects on his lifelong relationship with science and the natural world.

He presents his own thoughts on why birds sing and recounts how writers through the ages have had wildly different interpretations on the meaning of birdsong. Including discussion on areas such as 13th-century ideas that it represented free will and individualism to musical computer analyses of birdsong which reveal the complex chords in a bird's voicebox. Show less

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