Song of the Nightingale

Researching content for a short story recently, I came upon a news item about the song of the nightingale. Specifically, a nightingale in Oxted, Surrey, in May 1924. I wanted to share through my blog in the hope that it brings a bit of joy to readers.

Beatrice Harrison

The costar of the piece is a cellist, Beatrice Harrison (9 December 1892 – 10 March 1965). Born in North-West India, Beatrice’s family moved to England when she was a child. The second of four sisters, Beatrice was – like her siblings – a musical prodigy. She studied at the Royal College of Music in London, and later at the High School of Music in Berlin. Aged seventeen, she won the Mendelssohn Prize, awarded to promising young musicians towards continuing their studies.

Although not born into a particularly wealthy family, Beatrice and her sisters enjoyed many social privileges. In their early twenties, Beatrice and her older sister, May, toured Europe and Russia performing the Brahms concerto for violin and cello. They mingled with nobility and royalty. Beatrice and Princess Victoria (King Edward V’s sister) became close friends, and it was Victoria who paid for Beatrice’s Pietro Guarneri cello. Such was Beatrice’s talent, that Sir Edward Elgar chose her as lead cellist for a rerecording of his Cello Concerto. The concerto had premiered disastrously in 1919 with an under-rehearsed Felix Salmond on cello. But the second time, with Elgar conducting and Beatrice leading, the piece was a huge success.

In spite of her high powered social circle, Beatrice saw access to music as a basic human right, not something solely for the elite to enjoy. In their twenties, Beatrice and Margaret, her youngest sister, played a series of sixpenny concerts. Their aim – to share the pleasure of music with miners and mill workers who wouldn’t usually have such access.

Nightingale Song

When Beatrice was in her early 20s, her family were forced to relocate after their landlord needed his house back. They bought Foyle Riding, a property in Oxted, Surrey. Although small for a family of six, the house appealed to Beatrice’s mother, Annie. Described by others as something of a firebrand, if Annie set her mind to something, it would be done. Within a year, they had built a music room on land where cows once grazed, and created a flower garden in the barren area around it.

One evening, as Beatrice sat among bluebells and primroses to play her cello in the moonlight, she heard a voice among the trees answer her notes. She resumed playing, and again the song came from somewhere in the trees around her. It was a nightingale. Having migrated from Sub-Saharan Africa to Surrey, and able to make over a thousand different sounds, the bird now duetted with the leading cellist of the time.

In due course, the nightingale returned to Africa. But it was back the following year, and resumed its connection with Beatrice and her cello. Such was her desire to share the experience, that Beatrice appealed to the BBC to broadcast a live performance of the duet. John Reith, the BBC’s founder and Director General, was far from enamoured with the idea. He felt people would not be interested in such a recording, it would be difficult to set the equipment up, and the bird would likely fail to perform. Beatrice persisted, and eventually Lord Reith gave in and agreed to the broadcast.

The Broadcast

The BBC’s most advanced microphone, the Marconi-Sykes Magnetophone, was installed in the garden, along with a team of engineers and a mass of “paraphernalia” as Beatrice described it. In May 1924, Engineers carried out a successful test and the following night, 19 May 1924, the live broadcast took place.

That evening, Beatrice took her seat by the tree, and waited for the glow of an engineer’s cigarette, which was her cue. When he lit up, she began to play. Just two years after BBC Radio was created, this was their first outside broadcast. Harrison played music of Elgar, Dvorak, and the Londonderry Air. At first, there was nothing. Flies became stuck in the microphone, rabbits nibbled the cables, and the family’s donkey, Gerry, got loose and brayed.

Finally, 15 minutes before the end of the broadcast, the nightingale joined the performance. Not just one nightingale, up to six began to sing with Beatrice.

Reaction

The public reaction was phenomenal and the broadcast was repeated in June 1924. Lord Reith proclaimed: “Already we have broadcast a voice which few have opportunity of hearing for themselves. The song of the nightingale has been heard all over the country, on highland moors and in the tenements of great towns… so in the song of the nightingale we have broadcast something of the silence which all of us in this busy world unconsciously crave and urgently need.”

The live broadcast was repeated every spring for the following 12 years. Harrison and the nightingales became known around the world and she received over 50,000 fan letters. Some addressed simply to The Lady of the Nightingales, England.

Questions

Over the years, the veracity of the first broadcast has been questioned. Some time after the radio programme, Maude Gould, the partner of a German spy based in Britain, boasted to family that she had been employed as a siffleur that evening. Maude claimed that the BBC employed her as a back up, in case the bird failed to show. Owing to the disruption caused to the environment by the BBC crew, the bird would not sing. So in her capacity as professional bird whistler, Maude performed in its place. This version of events was published by a Sunday tabloid in 1992.

However, experts who have studied recordings of Beatrice and the birds agree that what they hear is a genuine nightingale. Added to which, Maude Gould was a colourful character known for embellishing her stories. And here was an opportunity to be linked to one of the cultural phenomena of the time. Not only that, but the account was relayed by one of Maude’s relatives who thought they remembered her telling them she had been at the recording.

The Truth

Evidence supporting claims the original event was faked is tenuous at best. Recordings were not possible until 1927, so the original was streamed live and lost to time. But the memory lives on. Beatrice Harrison, the Nightingale Lady of Oxted, will always be linked to the nightingale broadcasts. Through her initiative, Beatrice helped the BBC to establish radio as a vital part of culture, and paved the way to future outside broadcasting.

Finally

On 19 May 1942, a BBC team returned Beatrice’s garden planning to live broadcast the nightingale song. They hoped the sound would soothe a nation that was terrified after three years of war. But the recording was interrupted by 197 Wellington and Lancaster bombers flying overhead on their way to raids in Mannheim. A live broadcast would break security protocols as German listeners might hear the aircraft and pinpoint their location.

Without live broadcasting, the engineer recorded the nightingales anyway. On the first side of the resultant record, the planes can be heard departing. On the second side, they return. There are 11 fewer in the second recording, and it is considered one of the most poignant recordings ever made.

The sound of the nightingales juxtaposed with the bombers became a symbol of hope. That there will always be the beauty of nature. No matter what happens, the nightingales will sing.