That Special Place Where Musicology and Mycology Meet

A while back Dixxx (frequent contributor who now resides in Quebec City and alas, contributes less frequently) sent me an interesting article about a possibly insane music professor and his startling discovery. Read on:



Musician 'hears mushrooms singing'
October 1, 2003

A noted Czech orchestral composer has revealed a secret to his success: the ability to hear mushrooms sing.
Composer Vaclav Halek told the Mlada fronta Dnes newspaper that he copies the beautiful music emanating from all sorts of fungal forms that he finds while walking in the woods.
Just as other people carry baskets to gather mushrooms, Mr Halek said he takes a pencil and paper to the forest to collect songs he claims to hear rising from individual or groups of fungi. "I simply record music that a mushroom sings to me," he said.
Mr Halek has composed about 2,000 tunes and one symphony based on the melodies heard while lying beside edible or poisonous mushrooms in the quiet forest. He's been listening to fungi for 20 years, and has used the music for his numerous film and theatre scores.
"Not all of them carry the same tune," Mr Halek said. "There are tones and melodies that only toadstools and mushrooms make, so that together they cannot be used to create a composition."
He also claims to hear music coming from rocks and trees but prefers mushroom melodies.

Composers have long sought disparate sources for inspiration. For Bartok it was folk tunes, Messaien used bird songs, Gustav Mahler famously named individual movements of his 3rd symphony with titles such as "What the rocks tell me" and What the flowers tell me". Even Brahms went outside the musical realm claiming the random disposition of fennel seeds atop a loaf of pumpernickel as the source for the main theme of his 2nd symphony, 1st mvt.

The Czech Halek is a Vaclav come lately in this area as there is already a mushroom-inspired musical subculture. Check out I Portobello Chamber Choir for instance where young singers or "shroomheads" get dressed up as their favorite fungus and sing works of the great renaissance composers (don't ask why just accept).

Indeed the inspirational power of the lowly mushroom has already been immortalized in a little known film (Julie Andrew's 1st actually) that in turn was the inspiration for a similar but more successful work.
Personally I hate the damn things. People shouldn't be eating fungus, they should be treating it with an ointment or salve (jn a pinch I'd even go with an unguent). Well...off to the pharmacy then....