by Lyanda Lynn Haupt (2017). New York: Little, Brown Spark
“We each touch the seven starlings closest to us in our own murmuration, and the ripple spreads farther than we could have imagined.” (Mozart’s Starling by Lyanda Lynn Haupt, p. 235)
If you enjoy memoir or biography and you’re interested in Mozart or in birds, you’ll enjoy Mozart’s Starling.
I’m not normally a big fan of memoir or biography, but I’m fascinated by bird behavior, and the behavior of the starlings described here often astonished me.
I didn’t realize it before reading Haupt’s book, but I also found Mozart captivating. I’m so glad I took a chance on reading this book!
This blog isn’t really a book review as much as an overview, with lists of many of the jewels I found within. I organized the jewels into “Starlings,” “Birds,” “Mozart,” and “Miscellaneous.”
My personal motto is, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing,” so you may think I included far too many gems. Maybe so. I enjoyed each one, and if you read this book, I think you’ll find many more.
Contents
- Prelude. Plague of Inspiration, 3
- The Starling of Seattle, 15
- Mozart and the Musical Thief, 26
- Uninvited Guest, Unexpected Wonder, 46
- What the Starling Said, 76
- The Starling of Vienna, 97
- How the Starling Knew, 129
- Chomsky’s Starling, 147
Interlude. The Heart of Time for Birds and Mozart, 172 - Birds of a Feather, 177
- Mozart’s Ear and the Music of the Spheres, 213
Finale. Three Funerals and a Flight of Fancy, 237
Coda, 264
Acknowledgments, 265
Bibliography, 267
About the Author, 277
Selected Excerpts
Starlings
pp. 4–5, “Carl Linnaeus had . . . christened it with the Latinized name . . . Sturnus vulgaris. Sturnus for ‘star,’ referring to the shape of the bird in flight, with its pointed wings, bill, and tail; and vulgaris . . . for ‘common.’”
p. 29, “As birds in the mynah family, starlings are among the most capable animal mimics on earth, rivaling parrots in their ability to expertly imitate birds, musical instruments, and any other sounds and noises, including the human voice.”
p. 51, “The structural changes that make starling feathers iridescent also give the feathers added strength, protecting them from extremes of light and weather. Without the reinforcing benefits of coloration, the starling’s white tips wear off in the winter, leaving the birds all glistening black in spring.”
p. 70, “Starlings actually create holes in the earth by poking their closed bills into the ground, then using their extra-strong mandibular abductor muscles—the muscles that open the bill—to excavate a hole in which to search for wormy prey.”
p. 77, “Pliny the Elder raised starlings for study and reported that Julius Caesar, among other early statesmen, also kept them and taught them to ‘parle Greek and Latin.’”
p. 79, Haupt’s starling, Carmen, imitates particular sounds in particular contexts, such as the microwave’s beep when Haupt opened the microwave door, in anticipation of that sound.
p. 83, Like other starlings, Carmen vocalizes in communication with others. “Carmen’s vocalizations are relational, a kind of conversation. They are her way of being with us.”
p. 87, “True mimics like starlings . . . imitate sounds from their environment—novel and improbable sounds that lie far outside of the usual explanation for birdsong.”
p. 92, Both female and male starlings vocalize. Male starlings initiate the vocalizations, “using mimicry to attract a mate. But once the pair bond is secure, mimicry on both sides appears to be a way of maintaining intimacy between mates.”
p. 94, Haupt’s starling, Carmen, greets her humans with “Hi, Carmen!” and the household cat with “Meow!”
p. 148, “In a full-fledged song bout, . . . the bird . . . lets loose for five seconds, or twenty, or up to forty-five, the song is divided into easily recognizable sections that follow a predictable pattern.”
p. 157, “Both male and female starlings created wonderful and idiosyncratic songs by mingling an array of rattles, chirps, and warbles into uniquely patterned motifs and . . . they recognized one another as individuals based on these motifs.”
p. 159, Unlike most other songbirds, “starlings continue to learn new sounds, to bring in more sophisticated motifs and sequences throughout their lives.”
p. 161, When choosing a mate, a female starling will look for just the right balance of novelty and familiarity. Too predictable, and the male’s song is boring; too novel, and it’s unsettling.
p. 232, The word “murmurations,” describing flying flocks of starlings, may refer to the humming sound of their wings murmuring.
Birds
p. 168, Researchers have “found fifty overlapping genes in humans and birds that correlate with vocal learning. In birds that were more adept at learning new songs, these genes were more often expressed.” p. 169, The similarities in bird brains and human brains are more probably due to convergent evolution than to common ancestry.
p. 181, “The structure of the syrinx . . . allows many songbirds, including starlings, to sing two and sometimes even more notes or tones at the same time.”
p. 184, “Like all birds that do a lot of flying, starlings poop [often]. It’s adaptive, essential in keeping their weight down for optimal aerodynamics.” On the other hand, diving birds (e.g., cormorants, loons) “accumulate great stores of waste, which they eventually eliminate.”
p. 231, “Flocking has many benefits—through force of numbers, birds find and share food, roosts, and warmth, and in flight, they foil aerial predators.”
p. 234, Parisi, a researcher, noticed that “the change in the movement of one bird [in a flying flock] will affect the seven birds closest to it. Those seven birds will each affect seven more birds, and their movements will ripple, scaling rapidly, through the flock.”
Mozart
p. 44, “Mozart’s starling died just two months [after Mozart’s father died], and in honor of the bird, Mozart organized a formal funeral, donned his most elegant finery, recruited friends as velvet-caped mourners, and penned an affectionate elegy.”
p. 108, In the Mozart museum in Vienna, there were small statues of all the people and of Gauckerl (the dog) and Star (his starling).
p. 123, Mozart’s household, including his wife, children, dog, and bird, “was a loud and restless one, . . . pupils, house concerts, and rehearsals—and . . . Mozart’s own need for constant commotion: conversation, laughter, visitors who were often houseguests.”
Throughout the book, Haupt shows how Mozart’s starling was an integral part of his daily life and his musical composition.
p. 189, The Mozarts were “a family that was intelligent and hardworking and concerned with status and success, yes, but also one that was comfortable together, that was jolly, silly, fun, and a bit raucous. . . . [a family] that made fart jokes.”
p. 195, Mozart wrote to earn a living, but “he also wrote for fun, for art, and for love. . . . He wrote silly songs for the entertainment of friends.”
p. 202, Mozart “was interested in recent scientific discoveries, and he paid attention to animals, weather, and the workings of the natural world. He accumulated a small gallery of fine bird prints. . . . He loved . . . to picnic with [his wife] Constanze in wooded places, to wander with her in . . . the tree-lined, bird-filled park.”
pp. 248–252, Mozart’s last composition was his Requiem, written from his deathbed.
pp. 258–265, No one knows where Mozart’s actual bones are buried, and the burial site of his starling has been converted to “a wasteland of industry as far as the eye could see” (p. 262).
Miscellaneous
p. 118, During Mozart’s time, people who owned pets began asserting that animals had feelings and sensibilities and deserved humane treatment. Charles Darwin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were instrumental in the movement for treating animals humanely, eventually leading to the founding of the Humane Society (United Kingdom, founded in 1774; United States, founded in 1866).
p. 165, My kind of people: The Pirahã, who live at the mouth of the Amazon River, “recognize only one, two, and many, and attempts to teach them to count [higher] have failed.”
p. 173, “Animals with smaller bodies and higher metabolisms (like houseflies or birds) perceive and process more information in a unit of time than larger animals with slower metabolisms (like elephants or humans).”
p. 222, “Joel Welty and Luis Baptista listed the usual reproductive, social, and individual functions of birdsong but added that . . . birds [may] sing ‘from a sense of well-being’ or simply ‘for the joy of it.’”
pp. 227–228, Haupt briefly described how “Pythagoreans explored music and musical instruments,” noting how mathematical ratios affect the sounds produced by instruments.
pp. 262–263, Haupt quotes Rachel Carson from her article “Undersea” (Atlantic Monthly, 1937) “Individual elements are lost to view, only to reappear again and again in different incarnations in a kind of material immortality. . . . Against this cosmic background the life span of a particular plant or animal appears . . . only as a brief interlude in a panorama of endless change.”
p. 264, For Haupt, “Carmen is a member of my household, and I will look after as long as she lives.”
Bird Brain 
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