Instrumental Earth Music

Many instrumental compositions feature the Earth, Nature, or the Environment. From classical composers to the most recent “New Age” style of music, Nature and the Environment is a popular theme. It is impossible to list even a fraction of such music, but featured here are a few of the composers or recording studios that feature such music, and which have a web presence. Also included are those which feature nature’s own music. If you know of more notable resources, please let me know!

• Clinton Clark, Creation of Evolution Suite
  The Creation of Evolution Suite is a musical story telling of an intelligently guided creation of our home universe; a miraculous universe based on the divine axioms of energy, matter, space and time. The story progresses from the beginning of time to mankind.
• The CUSCO Website
• James Denali: Alaskan Dreams
• John Harmon, Earth Day Portrait (YouTube) Performed by Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Madison Youth Choirs, Marin Alsop & Royal Scottish National Chorus. – Earth Day Portrait  is a symphonic setting of eco-moral texts of John Muir, Aldo Leopold and Earth Day founder, former Wisconsin Gov. and U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson, all of whom have connections with the State of Wisconsin. Part of  the dual album Earth Day Heritage: A Celebration in Music and Words,  Earth Day Portrait, by composer John Harmon, is a symphonic setting in five parts with spoken part narrated by descendants of these men. These descendants are: William Muir Hanna (John Muir’s great-grandson), Nina Leopold Bradley (Aldo Leopold’s daughter), Gaylord Nelson, Jr. (Gaylord Nelson’s son), and Kiva Nelson (grandchild). Native American Patty Loew, (Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe), narrates connecting texts that paint intimate, personal portraits of Muir, Leopold, and Nelson, while recalling their unique mutual connection to Madison, Wisconsin. The spoken parts appear separately or are effectively woven into the musical fabric, all woven together by the story of the passenger pigeon’s extinction, which all 3 men had written about. Performed by  Madison Youth Choirs; Royal Scottish National Orchestra; Marin Alsop (conductor). In live performances, the piece includes a call-and-response part that is spoken by audience members. John Harmon’s Earth Day Portrait was first performed by the Wisconsin-Madison Symphony in 2001, and repeatedly performed since then from the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol. The CD version on YouTube was released May 1, 2020.
   The second part of the album, Hymn to the Earth by Edward Joseph Collins, is a secular cantata for soloists, choir, and orchestra, praising Mother Earth and the beauty of the four seasons using text set by the composer.  This piece is far less accessible than Earth Day Portrait.
• Robert Hoyt
• Moon Trail Way Music – Digital recordings of animals and environment sounds native to the Rocky Mountain region – listen to their recordings of Elk bugling!
• Frog and Toad Songs – Nature Sound page, with photos and frog voices.
• Living Sound – Bird songs and other pure nature recordings, without voice overs or music.
• Chris Kubie – The Thirteen Moons – inspired by Jean Craighead George stories.
• The Nature of Narada by Various Narada Artists, a 2-CD Collection Inspired by Nature. An outstanding collection of Narada’s best-selling new age catalog, this collection features tracks from Keiko Matsui, Jesse Cook, David Lanz, Mia Jang, Tingstad & Rumbel, and more of Narada’s top contemporary instrumental artists.
• Tobias Picker, Old and Lost Rivers is a hauntingly beautiful orchesrtal piece. The Youtube video shows visually a losing stream, that is, a river that decreases in volume as it flows. It has been recorded several times; by the Houston Symphony, with Christoph Eschenbach as conductor, and in the solo version, with Christoph Eschenbach as pianist, on the Virgin Classics label; by the London Symphony Orchestra, with John Williams as conductor, on the Sony Classical label; and in the version for solo piano, performed by Ursula Oppens, on the Wergo and Music and Arts label, and by David Troy Francis, on the Barbarian Records label.
• Bruce Kurnow – Portraits of Nature
• The Nature Company – Last Great Place on Earth Series – by Dennis Hysom, integrates recordings from nature with Hysom’s music. The series includes Badlands, Bayou, Carribean, Cloud Forest, Glacier Bay, and others. Unfortunately, this series is no longer available —  the Nature Company was bought out by the Discovery Channel and has gone all to hell.
• NorthSound Recordings
• Numinous Records– Featuring “Images From Earth: a history of the planet through music”. It is a musical interpretation of the geologic, biologic, & anthropologic evolution of Earth. From “The First Dawn” to “Tectonics”, from “Dinosaurs” to “Humanity”, each track on the CD portrays a major era or event in Earth’s 4.6 billion years of development.
• John Weider – Ancient’s Weep – A New Age Fusion album. From the liner notes: “Ancient’s Weep” is devoted to a timeless expression and the deep concern for our fragile planet and the beautiful creatures that inhabit it. The “Ancients” are the extinct species, no longer struggling for their own survival, but whose spririts cry out with hope for the present and the future …
• Weapons of Sound – This UK band is a professional team of percussionists who play on nothing other than recycled junk instruments i.e. kitchen sinks, gas pipes, shopping trolleys and much more. since 1993, they have played at a variety of educational, environmental awareness, festival and corporate performances and workshops. This band is best appreciated on their YouTube Video page.
• More Earth Day Music:  Music has always been part of how the world celebrates Earth Day. But lately the trend in music seems to parallel the trends in the global warming crisis and species extinctions.

  So, for example, in British composer Debbie Wiseman’s “Carnival of the Endangered Animals” in 2022 is meant to parallel but update the famous “Carnival of the Animals” by Camille Saint-Saëns. Other titles of works by contemporary composers that reflect current realities about the natural world are: “The Lost Birds” by American composer Christopher Tin (below top); “Mass for the Endangered” by American composer Sarah Kirkland Snider (below middle); “The Rising Sea” Symphony by British composer Kieran Brunt; and “Glaciers in Extinction” by Italian flutist and composer Roberto Fabbriciani.
  Sources:

  • A changing Earth demands changing music to mark Earth Day by The Well Tempered Ear (April 22, 2023)  

  • An ode to the endangered: Classical music you should listen to for Earth Day – Colorado Public Radio (April 12, 2023)