Cantus Arcticus

Cantus Arcticus, also known as Concerto for Birds and Orchestra, is a three-part orchestral work by the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara that incorporates tape recordings of birdsong.
Commissioned by Oulu University for its first doctoral conferment ceremony, Cantus Arcticus was premiered in Oulu on 18 October 1972 by the Oulu Symphony Orchestra conducted by Stephen Portman. The score was published the same year. The work is dedicated to Urho Kekkonen, who was president of Finland at the time.
Cantus Arcticus has enjoyed wide popularity. The reasons cited include the work's resemblance to familiar tonal music; the way it links music with nature by using recorded birdsong; the novelty of combining such recordings with a live orchestra; and its association with an idealised and exoticised version of Finland's culture and landscape. The work's appeal is also shown by its use in other musical contexts, including jazz compositions and film music.
In 1971, Oulu University commissioned Rautavaara to write a cantata for performance at its first doctoral conferment ceremony the following year. However, according to his authorised biographer, the composer failed to find a suitable text, and the choir that was due to take part was "overworked and not in good vocal trim": this led him to use recordings of birdsong instead of human voices.
Rautavaara copied some of the bird sounds heard in Cantus Arcticus from the sound-effects collection of Finnish Radio. He also visited the wetlands of Liminka Bay in northern Finland to record the sounds of cranes and other birds directly. The performance tape was assembled from these sources at the composer's home using two tape-recorders.
The score specifies the following orchestra:
Cantus Arcticus has three movements: The Bog, Melancholy, and Swans Migrating.
The opening bar of the first movement is labelled "Think of autumn and of Tchaikovsky". Evoking an atmosphere in this way, rather than referring to a narrative, is a feature of many of Rautavaara's works.
The movement begins with a solo for two flutes played at a moderate andante tempo. The flutes follow each other in a birdsong-like melody, with the theme based on a chromatic scale. The recorded birdsong forms the leading voice towards the end of the solo, and becomes louder as the woodwinds enter: these also imitate the sound of birds.
For this section, the score states that while the sequence of instruments and the repeated group of notes played "must be as written", the conductor can decide the intervals between them. In addition, the muted trombone, entering just after the woodwinds, is instructed to "Try to imitate the staccato sound of the crane heard later on the tape".
Next, the strings enter with a lyrical, melancholic theme that, according to the composer, "might be interpreted as the voice and mood of a person walking in the wilds". This reaches a crescendo with the full orchestra before taken forward by the cellos. At the very end of the movement, the clarinet plays a variant of the flutes' solo from the opening bars: this creates symmetry in the movement by building a bridge back to its beginning. The conductor can choose when the tape-recording, the clarinet, and the strings stop, and whether the music concludes in B or F.
According to the score at the start of the second movement, "The orchestra pauses, giving the audience time to notice that the birds on channels 1 and 2 are imitating each other". The bird featured is a shore lark, and, states the composer, its song has been slowed to lower the pitch by two octaves and make it a "ghost bird".
After about a minute, the violins lead the strings (all are muted) in a series of ascending, falling, and constantly changing chords centred on A minor. The woodwinds enter soon after, and are joined by the brass in a crescendo before the music dies away.
The use of muted strings, the paucity of expression markings within the score, and the lack of brass and percussion for most of the movement, all contribute to evoking "coldness, or an open location, that channels into a larger expression of melancholy".
In the third movement, the orchestra divides into four groups: I in the score refers to the violins and violas; the woodwinds are II; horns, cellos and double basses, III; and IV contains the harp and celesta. The score states that these groups "are mutually synchronized only when so indicated", giving the movement an aleatory flavour.
The recorded sound of whooper swans begins the movement, and continues till its end. After half a minute or so, the strings (group I) join the swans, playing regular, gradually swelling chords that herald the entry of II's clarinet and flute. These play the same melody that the flute duo opened the first movement with, helping bind the three-part work into a whole.
More woodwinds join the repetitive, birdsong-like figurations, which then combine with a theme performed by III, introduced by the horns. The harp and celesta (IV) join soon after, and the orchestra becomes more synchronised from this point on. The overall effect has been compared to "the fluid motion of one mass ... made up of separate parts, resembling birds in flight", with the four groups "[occupying] the same space, overlapping without colliding – coordinated, but not perfectly in synch".
The theme is repeated five times, with the trombone imitating the swans during the last repetition. A crescendo near the end creates the impression of an ever-increasing number of birds, and the piece concludes with a modified, descending version of the theme as the sounds of swans and orchestra slowly fade away.