Singing Sculpture

Last week this tune, a pretty hot riff in four-four time, key of C, purled and bubbled from the beak of a little silver-colored bird in the lobby of the Time & Life Building in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center. Every hour, on the hour, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., the little bird sashayed from side to side, opened its beak and sang its song. The little bird's perch was in a wooden tree which overhung the head of a startled-looking horseman (see cut), also carved of wood. The whole thing formed the central figure of famed Swedish Sculptor Carl Milles's latest piece of sculpture, Man and Nature.

On Man and Nature, commissioned by Rockefeller Center, Inc., as part of their program for sculptural and fresco decorations in Rockefeller Center's slab-sided skyscrapers, stocky, bob-haired Sculptor Milles had worked for three years. Milles got the idea for his singing statue from a line by German Poet Johann Gottfried Seume: "Where song is, pause and listen; evil people have no song." Taking three huge blocks of north Michigan pine, each made by pressing planks together like a gigantic piece of plywood, Carl Milles carved the biggest one into his medieval-looking horseman and tree. From the other blocks he carved two flanking figures: a bristly, annoyed-looking faun and a pleased, curious-eyed nymph. When he had finished, Sculptor Milles claimed he had produced the largest piece of wood carving ever seen in the U. S., one of the three largest in the Occidental world. But that was not enough. Sculptor Milles wanted the bird in his statue to move and sing. With the help of engineers from Rockefeller Center's Museum of Science and Industry, he contrived a clockwork mechanism to make the bird flap its wings, sashay back & forth, and open its beak, and a phonograph mechanism to play a record of bird-like music.

To find something appropriate for this gigantic cuckoo clock to sing, experts combed zoos and aviaries. At the home of Fairfield Osborn, president of the New York Zoological Society, they thought they had found what they wanted: an East Indian bulbul named Greenie, who had been adopted by the bird-loving Osborns as a pet. Greenie was a magnificent singer, with a voice of extraordinary range. But he was so temperamental (he did his best singing in the bathroom while the water was running) that the idea had to be dropped. Engineers compromised on another Osborn pet: a Mexican nightingale (Myadestes unicolor) who was a better trouper. Myadestes obligingly warbled, and NBC's engineers recorded the song over the telephone.*

One afternoon last week, Milles's singing sculpture was unveiled. In bristly English Sculptor Milles explained his statue, wiped his forehead when he had finished. Said he afterward: "A sculptor likes to vork, you know. But dis making speeches iss much harder. Yust as soon as I open my mouth I tink I am saying vot iss wrong. I feel much better now dis iss ofer."

Myadestes, less embarrassed, opened its beak and began to warble to a whir of clockwork which sounded like distant thunder. All day, weekdays and Sundays, with an audience or without, the obliging bird repeated its performance every hour on the hour.

* Recording engineers could not work on the spot because R. C. A. recording equipment is on alternating current. Fairfield Osborn's house, like many in Manhattan, has direct current.

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