Backyard Bird Sings Beethoven

16 December 2018

Today is Beethoven’s 248th birthday.

To celebrate, here’s the soundtrack of a backyard bird singing the first notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.  (Song begins at 8 seconds; bird is not visible.)

Here’s an orchestra playing the same four notes.

Beethoven would not have known the song sparrow, whose range is limited to North America, but this song sparrow knows Beethoven.

(drawing and audio from Wikimedia Commons; video by Christina M. Rau on YouTube)

5 thoughts on “Backyard Bird Sings Beethoven

    1. In the video, it is a song sparrow. I’m sure there are other birds that use the same cadence though I can’t think of them at the moment.

  1. I had a “Beethoven bird” in my yard for years. I could never see it to identify it. Mine sang those notes much faster, and the pitch was more on key and a bit deeper than the one in the video, but I’m so happy to hear this sound again. Thank you for this great post. Now I’m going to look up photos of Song Sparrows so that I know what to look for if my little friend comes back again.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *