Emily Doolittle, Why the parrot repeats human words (2005)

18’00”; for narrator, clarinet, viola, and percussion; based on a Thai folktale

As a composer and researcher, I have explored the relationship between humans and animals for almost 30 years, looking in particular at the overlap between animal song, communication, and cultural behaviour and our own. I’m interested in animal-related folklore from around the world, because it often demonstrates a more nuanced understanding of relationships between humans and animals than current scientific understanding. I was particularly drawn to the Thai folktale Why the parrot repeats human words because it speaks to the wisdom and multiple kinds of intelligence of non-human species. We make our decisions about how to interact with other species, but they also make their well-considered decisions about how to interact with us. After first encountering this story in “Ride with the Sun” (Harold Courlander, ed., McGraw-Hill, 1955), I adapted it and retold it in my own words. I composed my piece based on this folktale for Meduse, with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts. This performance here is by the Seattle Chamber Players on my chamber music CD All Spring.

Emily Doolittle was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1972, and now lives in Glasgow, Scotland, where she is an Athenaeum Research Fellow and Lecturer in Composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She has written for ensembles such as Symphony Nova Scotia, the Glasgow University Chapel Choir, the Vancouver Symphony, and Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal, and soloists such as pianist Rachel Iwaasa and soprano Patricia Green. She has an ongoing interest in zoomusicology—the relationship between animal songs and music—which she explores in both her composition and through interdisciplinary collaboration with biologists.