Music and nature are inextricably linked, writes landscape architect Deirdre Black
"I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound, everybody look what's going down . . ." Buffalo Springfield, 1967
My Dad can make music with a blade of grass. Try this one at home - hold the grass lengthwise between your thumbs and blow so the blade vibrates, like the reed in a wind instrument. Handy if you're stuck for a party piece at the next barbeque.
Landscape and music have bounced off one another since a human first struck a rock with a stick. We use trees to make instruments - guitars, violins, flutes - and then use these instruments to produce music about places and landscapes. One Tree Hill, Fields of Barley, Fields of Athenry, Parklife, Octopus's Garden, Echo Beach. Ain't no mountain high enough, but the hills are certainly alive with the sound of it all.
Today, concerts are being held around the world, in a noble call to end world poverty. The audiences in London's Hyde Park and at Cornwall's Eden Project will have that singularly pleasurable experience of listening to live music outdoors, above them only sky.
Live music in the open air is a showcase of man-made creativity, held in an embrace by the beauty of the natural world. In times when people worked outdoors more, singing was a way to get through the monotony of the day - have coffee and internet surfing become the substitute for sea shanties and field-workers' folk songs?
Over the summer months, it's hard to avoid outdoor music - bandstands finally have a purpose, fields transform into festival venues, buskers throng the streets. The open landscapes associated with stately homes around the country seem to have a new role to play - Electric Picnic at Stradbally Estate in Laois could be the musical highlight of the season. There's something very exciting about the juxtaposition of mainly urban generated music performed in leafy green landscapes - it will be interesting to see how Eminem's Detroit angst goes down in the classic bucolic setting of Slane Castle.
When the music ends, these parks and gardens will revert to their usual soundtrack of birdsong, leafy rustles and melodious breezes. In the absence of humanity's dramatic libretto, nature has its own orchestral score; staccato rain, crescendos of thunder, the forte and pianissimo of seas and streams. Bjork is one of the many artists who uses these sounds, recording various natural musical emotions and incorporating them into her songs.
Today, human voices will be heard over the sounds of nature in Hyde Park. Maybe we are witnessing the start of a shift towards a world of shared plenty - maybe we are entering a new Eden, of our own making this time.
Jane Powers returns next week