Using Music to Communicate Weather and Climate

Paul D. Williams, Professor at Atmospheric Science, University of Reading, UK

Karen Aplin, Sally Brown, Katie Jenkins, Sarah Mander, Claire Walsh

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New York Times, 14 September 1930

“If I were not a physicist,I would probably be amusician. I often thinkin music. I live mydaydreams in music. Isee my life in terms ofmusic.”– Albert Einstein, 1929

Classical Music

• We identified 35 compositions depicting weather, fromVivaldi’s Four Seasons (1723) to Maxwell Davies’Antarctic Symphony (2000)

• The Royal Hunt and Storm from Hector Berlioz’s operaThe Trojans describes a sudden summer rainstorm,during which two lovers who are out hunting takeshelter in a cave, to the accompaniment of pluckedviolins and violas mimicking raindrops

• An Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss describes a daywhen hikers encounter a sudden thunderstorm at thesummit of a mountain

Classical Music

“Bad” weather is a convenient allegory for emotional turbulence

As per the national stereotype, British composers are obsessed by weather!

Popular Music• Weather types are determined using keyword searches

through lyrics in a karaoke database (yielding 759 songs)

• Is there a connection between the incidence of severeweather events and severe weather depictions in songs?

• The 1950s and 1960s contained several severe hurricanes(Betsy, Hazel, Carol, Donna, Carla) whereas the 1970s and1980s were quieter (Changnon & Changnon 1992)

• 1950s/60s: 73% of 33 songs mention storms, wind, rain, orhurricanes

• 1970s/80s: 46% of 26 songs mention these keywords

• Bad weather was significantly more likely to appear in popsongs in the stormy 1950s and 1960s than in the calmer1970s and 1980s

Ten songs inspired by Hurricane Katrina• Where Were You? – Jackson Browne

• All These People – Harry Connick, Jr

• Katrina Klap/Dollar Day – Mos Def (Yasiin Bey)

• O Katrina – Black Lips

• Get U Down – Warren G feat. Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg

• Gov Did Nuthin’ – John Butler Trio

• Any Other Day – Wyclef Jean feat. Norah Jones

• Black Rain – Ben Harper

• Shelter in the Rain – Stevie Wonder

• The Saints Are Coming – Green Day and U2

List presented by Nicolas Bauduceau (Scientific Director, CEPRI, France) at the3rd European Conference on Flood Risk Management, Lyon, France, October 2016

Summary

• Classical and popular musical outputs are linked to contemporary meteorological environments

• Music’s unique ability to emotionally connect listeners to the environment could be exploited to communicate the geosciences to a broader audience (students learn better when environmental concepts are linked to music; Smiley & Post 2014)

• Our work provides a catalogue of cultural responses to weather; climate change may influence musical expression in future, in which case our work will provide a baseline for comparison

Further Information

• Aplin & Williams (2011) Meteorological phenomena inWestern classical orchestral music. Weather, 66(11),pp 300-306.

• Brown, Aplin, Jenkins, Mander, Walsh & Williams(2015) Is there a rhythm of the rain? An analysis ofweather in popular music. Weather, 70(7), pp 198-204.

• Email p.d.williams@reading.ac.uk

• Twitter @DrPaulDWilliams

Introduction

• Depictions of weather and climate are common throughout the arts

– Painting: Monet, Constable, Turner (Baker & Thornes 2006)

– Dance: William Forsythe studied cloud formations and light changes asinspiration for his ballet Three Atmospheric Studies (Siegmund 2005)

• Meteorological influences were the subject of a four-dayconference on The Seasons in Poetry, Music and Art, which was heldin Vienna in the 1980s (Wiesmann 1985)

• Curiously, however, there have been hardly any academic studies ofmeteorological inspiration in music

• Here we analyse the depictions of weather in music over time,covering the period from the seventeenth century to the presentday, and considering separately both classical orchestral music andpop music

Classical Music: Key Analysis

• Almost all the pieces depicting frontal storms are inminor keys, whereas all the pieces depicting fairweather are in major keys

• It has been suggested that each major and minor keyhas a particular unique meaning (Steblin 2005). Forexample, C major is simplicity, C minor is longing,D major is triumph, E flat major is love, and F minor isdepression

• Here we find depictions of frontal storms in a range ofdifferent minor keys, including G minor, E minor, E flatminor, B minor, and F minor

Classical Music: Influence of Weather

• Many composers needed sunshine to produce their best work –Wagner referred to “bad-weather unemployment” – butTchaikovsky was unusual in preferring autumnal weather

• Schweisheimer (1961) studied the influence of weather oncomposers’ creativity, writing: “Musicians who suffer from theoccasional depression, vague pain and nervous tension oftenassociate their condition with a nervous exhaustion or with beingover-worked. A look at the barometer would probably bring themcloser to the truth.”

• The superior tonal qualities of Antonio Stradivari’s violins may havebeen caused by reduced tree-growth rates associated with arelatively cold climatic period known as the Little Ice Age (Burckle &Grissino-Mayer 2003)

Classical Music: Bespoke Instruments

The wind machine is a silk-coveredcylindrical drum, which is rotated by the“musician” to produce a whooshing orhowling sound. It is used by VaughanWilliams in his Sinfonia Antarctica,Strauss in Flight through the Air fromthe tone poem Don Quixote, and Ravelin his ballet suite Daphnis and Chloe.

The thunder sheet is a suspended sheetof metal, up to around five metres long,which is hit with a drum stick toproduce an appropriate rumble.The thunder machine (not shown) is alarge rotating drum with balls inside. Itis used by Strauss in his AlpineSymphony.

Pop Music: Accessible and Popular

Pop Music: Weather Types

• The most popular weather types are sun and

rain

• Again, the categories are not independent

Passing MentionMain Theme

Pop Music: Clustering

References to weather tend tobe clustered: mentioning oneweather type greatly increasesthe probability of mentioninganother one, e.g. Sunshine on aRainy Day by Zoe

Pop Music: Key Analysis

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SUN Major Minor Total

Present 79 7 86

Absent 89 15 104

Total 168 22 190

• Mentioning the sun significantly increases the probability of beingin a major key (from 89/104 = 86% to 79/86 = 92%)

• Mentioning “bad” weather (e.g., rain) increases the probability ofbeing in a minor key (but the number of minor key songs is toosmall to claim significance for this result)

• All songs in the database mentioning rainbows are in a major key

• Some references to “good” weather are, in fact, references to theabsence of it, and consequently they are in a minor key (e.g., themention of the sun in Summer in the City by The Lovin’ Spoonful)

30 artists, lyricists, or singers were found with weather-related names.

Sun and warmth were the most popular themes.