4. Autumn Cricket Song

The Essay celebrates the musicality of Earth’s insect singers. 4-Autumn Cricket Song. A beautiful song of stridulation that begins in summer & edges into the melancholy of autumn. The crickets' chirp & trill has sadly been mostly stilled on much of our island, numbering only in the few thousands. But elsewhere they sing from trees and amid the long grass with careless abandon. Their song borne on the heat & penetrating the dusk like sweet magic. So this is an ode to the cricket - there’s so much to say and so little time. There are 5525 species of Grylloidea (True Crickets And Allies), and 331 of those still exist in China. Mr Fung a.k.a. Lars Fredriksson fell in love with their beautiful music as a student there where, for centuries, they have been caged and kept both for fighting prowess & soothing song. Ancient manuals of instruction detail the care & feeding of crickets - even how to change their pitch with a tiny drop of resin. He has hunted for them in the Yellow Mountains, has created cricket orchestras & understands their melancholy appeal. "There is also the melancholy of the lone male who is singing to court a female that is not around or wants to attract a female. This is also at the end of your life, at autumn, is actually an euphemism for enjoying crickets". Wil Hershberger returns to his first insect love affair. "These beautiful, pure, toned trills of tree crickets, & broad winged tree crickets and Davis's tree crickets. Just a delight. Their songs are so pure and clear that really got me hooked into the insect world, and I've been recording them ever since."
Cricket Recordings courtesy of Lars Fredrikksen & his album Ting Qui & Wil Hershberger & Lisa Rainsong - Songs of Insects.

As told to producer Mark Burman

A Storyscape Production for Radio 3