Hermit Thrush at Morn

Beyond the accolades of her long career, there is a humanity and indelible connection to the sensitivities and vagaries of nature that attract me to her work. No other work represents this as deeply as her settings of the songs of the Hermit Thrush during her stay at the then MacDowell Colonies (writing in the score, that she has reproduced their calls faithfully). With every note, her pianist sensibilities shine through. She was not the first to be entranced by its song. Walt Whitman has termed the hermit thrush as the symbol of the American spirit, and others have deemed ti the “finest sound in nature.” Science now confirms this intuition of the human ear. Unlike other birds, the hermit thrush songs follow the same mathematical ratios as western traditional harmony. That means, instead of the micro-tones of the other birds, the hermit thrush tends to sing the whole and half tones that make up our major and minor scales.