Blackbird is a piece in two parts. The first is a prelude. The instrument is built gradually from the movement of a string distended to the point of being barely audible. Tuning the instrument has always been the function of the prelude. The second part makes the instrument sing a melody. This melody is not human. It is created by an animal. It is a blackbird's sing in slow motion so that the size of the animal is that of a human. We hear how a blackbird would sing on a human scale.

As the ...