[Desktop]
Desktop		 ........ [Peter Greenaway]
Peter Greenaway		 ...... [The Falls]
The Falls		...... [Bird List]
The Bird List Song
Recently, John L***** - a librarian - found an unidentified manuscript containing a list of bird names in a UK public library. I knew Casternarm Fallast had compiled a list of 92 bird names which he hoped would one day serve as the libretto for an opera, and that Vassian Falluger had planned to donate a handwritten copy of these 92 bird names to every public library in the UK. I was also aware the 'Bird-List Song', which was recorded on the second anniversary of the VUE, was based on Fallast's libretto. Intrigued by John's find I spoke to him last week and, for the benefit of the ornithologists, music lovers and admirers of Greenaway's work, I have decided to deposit the transcript of our conversation in the VFI's archives.

The 'Bird-List Song' Interview


PM: In which section of the library did you find the manuscript?

JL: In the boiler passage stuffed into a crack in the brickwork. It was rolled up and tied with twine. No one has any idea how it got there. I am grateful that you drew my attention to 'The Falls' as a means of identifying it.

PM: It sounds as though the manuscript was being used as a some kind of nest! I heard it was one of many documents you discovered concerning the avian element in human culture?

JL: Not exactly, though a colleague suggested it may have been purchased as part of the natural history collection formerly housed at Bowet Library. However, I find this suggestion extremely unlikely as the list must have been written during the seventies and this collection was dispersed in the early sixties.

PM: You told me earlier you needed to reconstruct the manuscript. What state was it in when you found it?

JL: Very poor. Most of the ink has bled so thoroughly in the middle section that it's almost unreadable. Only 14 words, from the beginning and end, can be read with any certainty. It must have been badly damaged by water at some stage. It's clear the text, arranged in a single column down the page, was written in a fine calligraphic hand. However, it's been covered in crude graffiti using a green biro which has survived the immersion in water. I don't recognise the handwriting, but clearly the person responsible was agitated as the manuscript is worn through in places and some words are underlined several times. The only writing I've seen like it is in letters complaining that some perfectly innocuous book in the library is pornographic.

PM: What have you managed to reconstruct so far?

JL: As you may have guessed, the 14 legible words are names of birds. By measuring the height of the lettering and the spaces between the lines, I calculated there must have been between 60 and 65 names in the manuscript. Working on a hunch, I transcribed the various versions of the Bird List Song in 'The Falls' and established that 63 bird names were used. The later additions in green biro are also bird names, and there are 29 of these in all, none of which are used in the film.
Now 63 plus 29 is 92, and we know that there were 92 names in Fallast's list. This either establishes the authenticity of the manuscript or is purely coincidental, though the inversion of 92 as 29 suggests it is not. Of course, the whole document could be a forgery, though if so it seems a particularly pointless exercise.

PM: I don't understand; are you saying that the scroll you found might not be Fallast's original manuscript after all?

JL: It cannot be, or all 92 names would be in the same handwriting.

PM: Of course!

JL: It seems more likely that it's a draft version of the list which Vassian Falluger planned to deposit in every library in the UK (see biography 87 on this). I am reasonably certain Falluger's plan was never carried out as no other librarian I have spoken to has ever seen or heard of such a donation.

PM: So what do you make of the list you found?

JL: I have come up with several ideas which make sense of the original manuscript and the later additions, that is, those made in green biro. Among these are:
  1. Falluger was working from an incomplete list or even a transcription of the bird names from 'The Falls'. The later additions were also by him - the degraded form of writing he used to deface his own handiwork would then need to be seen as an expression of his disillusionment with his project.
  2. Fallast himself got hold of Falluger's draft and was so outraged that he re-inserted the names Falluger omitted.
  3. Another person who knew that the list ought to contain 92 bird names has added any names he thought fit.
  4. The later additions were notations by a performer of the Bird List Song made on the original score - just as orchestral musicians mark their parts. The weakness with this hypothesis is that musicians usually mark their score in pencil, not green biro.
  5. A counterfeit of Fallway's list (or Falluger's version of it) was ironically desecrated by someone who recognised it as a forgery and wished to make plain that it was incomplete.
PM: Fascinating! Whichever of your speculations is correct, your discovery means the definitive Bird List Song, recorded on the second anniversary of the VUE, is not, and never has been, definitive. Do you think we were purposefully misled on this subject by the composer?

JL: It depends what is meant by 'definitive' - definite for whom?! Even the version sung in the film during the biography of Casternarm Fallast does not include all 92 names. Perhaps a performance tradition grew up, that the bird list singer would make his or her own selection from the full list of 92 names to fit whatever musical duration was required? This may have been a compromise permitted by Fallast: he might have regarded any vocal setting of all 92 names, however primitive, as a Bird Opera.

PM: I see.

JL: I believe the version sung by Pollie Fallory in the film (see biography 74) is possibly the least definitive you could imagine. It diverges quite radically from the other versions of the list. I have drawn up a chart to show how the versions in the film compare, and you can see there are 7 names that appear only in this particular version. The version recorded two years later by Fallory and commercially released on LP as 'Bird-List Song' is much closer to the version by Fallast himself, so perhaps this is the 'definitive' version?
I do not wish to be unfair to this valiant singer. I suppose it is possible that the full list with 92 names was recorded in all cases, and what we actually hear in the film and on the record is the result of later editing. At any rate, I don't think the composer of the song can be blamed, whoever he might be.

PM: I see.

JL: I have heard the commercial recording was remade as 'Hands 2 Take' by the British band 'Flying Lizards', although I haven't as yet had a chance to obtain a copy.

PM: I can see that last recording might complicate matters further! Do you have a theory of how the bird-names were chosen? I've heard it was on the basis of a bird's exploits, physical appearance, or symbolism.

JL: That theory cannot hold water if we accept that Casternarm Fallast was the person responsible for compiling the list. While working as a professional indexer he would, quite rightly, not have allowed any knowledge of mere subject matter to interfere with the purity of his craft. And by the time he felt compelled to compile his libretto, the bird names would have already taken on an almost abstract quality. Further support for this assumption can be found in the way he lists bird names according to the number of syllables they have.

PM: Does one need to be a VUE victim to fully appreciate the libretto?

JL: I would say that only someone in the advanced stages of pernicious petagium fellitis would even attempt to wade through it.

PM: How does the VUE Anthem relate to the Bird-List Song?

JL: It is tempting to identify the VUE Anthem with the repeated 'refrain' of the 3 four-syllable bird names in the Bird-List Song, especially in its choral rendition played over the closing credits of the film. Another version of this music can be found on the same record as 'Bird List Song', where it is described as 'Bird Anthem'. But I believe the VUE Anthem must be something completely different, as it supposedly celebrates pioneers of flight and includes Musicus Gallantly's adaptation of Leonardo da Vinci's notes on human flight. I have heard a composition for soprano and orchestra by Gavin Bryars called 'Pico's Flight' which sets texts by da Vinci and others, and I suspect this might be a VUE cantata at least, if not the actual Anthem itself.

PM: Would you explain the notation used in your chart as I intend to pass on your findings?

JL: Yes, I think it is fairly easy to follow. I have tried to combine the different versions of the bird list in 'The Falls' into a single list - The Bird List Song List. These 63 bird names are, in effect, a conjectural reconstruction of the calligraphed part of the manuscript. The 29 additions in green biro have been interpolated where they seem to fit. Any version of the list in 'The Falls' can be followed on my chart by looking at the sequences of numbers in the column which relates to that version in the film. However, as the version in Astra Fallcas's biography - number 46 - omits the whole of the second verse, I have numbered each of the three verses separately - indicated by A, B or C in the first column. The additions in green biro are preceded by an asterix to make them easier to distinguish - or ignore. Other columns in my chart - 'bio 24', 'bio 74', etc. - show the sources used to reconstruct the unreadable parts of the manuscript. Should I say more on this point?

PM: Yes, why not!

JL: Okay.
  1. Bio 24, Casternarm Fallast's version. This is probably the original, and may even be sung by him in the film. The additional notation, an asterix - '*' - next to bird name, indicates those which can be seen on the cards which Falluger / the singer turns over as he chants.
  2. Column 'Bio 46': this is the unaccompanied version which may have signalled Astra Fallcas's presence in the caves at Tualito.
  3. Column 'Bio 74': the so-called 'definitive' version, sung by Pollie Fallory. This not only includes some unique names in its second section, but also follows a different order from the others. My list can only be used to follow this version if one jumps ahead then back at various points. 77 and 79, names which cannot be checked against any other version, are the result of an educated guess on my part.
  4. Bio 91: in the film, Leasting Fallve reads part of the list over the 'phone to some unknown person. There is a suggestion that Fallve has gained access to Falluger's list in some unscrupulous manner. Perhaps he is attempting to pass the list off as his own work?
PM: What about the other two columns?

JL: They relate to sources outside the film which I used to check the reconstruction of the full, original list of 92 names.
  1. The column named 'BLS' refers to the later version of 'The Bird-List Song' recorded by Pollie Fallorie which at one time was available through Piano Records (SHEET 1), though the artists are listed incorrectly on the record's sleeve as Lucy Skeaping with the Michael Nyman Band.
  2. The column marked 'HEN' refers to the hand entered names found on the recently discovered manuscript, written by an unknown person using a green biro.
Perhaps I might add that the readable parts of the original list correspond to numbers 1-5, 81-85, 87, 89, 90 and 92 in my list of lists.

PM: Some of the names on the list are very odd. Why is 'yolk' included?

JL: Remember that they are supposed to be the most unfamiliar names Fallast could find. I looked up all names in A. Landsborough Thomson's "A New Dictionary of Birds" (Nelson, 1964) and only three are not included. 'Twitcher' sounds as though it should be the name of a bird but, according to Chambers Dictionary, it is actually a 'bird watcher whose main interest is in the spotting of as many rare species as possible'. I have looked for 'Peeter' in many reference books and can find no connection with birds. Perhaps it is the name of something - or someone - else? I think most people will see the point of 'yolk', even if it does not strictly belong in a bird list.

PM: Thank you for dealing with my questions so patiently. Before we end this conversation may I would like to ask you two general questions. Firstly, do you believe it was Haberlein who discovered Archaeopteryx? Secondly, what is your opinion concerning the Theory of the Responsibility of Birds?

JL: I think it is generally accepted that Archaeopteryx was the fossilised skeleton of a reptile, not a bird. My only knowledge of the responsibility of birds comes from the film, and on that basis I feel that birds have a lot to answer for.

PM: Thank you.


Eleven other works about birds
  1. Telemann's Canary Cantata
  2. Vivaldi's Cuckoo Concerto
  3. Haydn's Hen Symphony
  4. Vaughan Williams's Lark Ascending
  5. Delius's On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring
  6. Sibelius's Swan of Tuonela
  7. Respighi's The Birds
  8. Granados's The Nightingale
  9. Saint-Saens's The Swan
  10. Rossini's Thieving Magpie
  11. Harry von Tilzer's A Bird in a Gilded Cage.