Earth Song: How Music Can Serve as a Response to the Climate Crisis

This story was written by Thomas May for the May-June 2024 issue of Strings magazine and is read by editor Megan Westberg.
Nature sings in the work of countless composers in the Western classical tradition. The calls and flutterings of birds, spine-tingling thunder, falling raindrops: Vivaldi transformed a repertoire of found sounds from the natural world into some of the most memorable moments in The Four Seasons. But growing awareness that humanity’s relationship with nature has gone astray in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and modern capitalism could already be discerned long before we started becoming accustomed to unrelenting news of environmental catastrophe.

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