Page:The story of the flute (IA storyofflute1914fitz).djvu/164

 considered it to be a joke on the composer's part. The most remarkable flute passage in the immortal nine is that known as "Langage des Oiseaux," at the conclusion of the andante in the "Pastorale" Symphony, where, amidst the murmurs of the stream, we suddenly hear the voices of the cuckoo (clarinet), quail (oboe), and nightingale, the last-named being reproduced by a trilling passage on the flute. Grove says that these "imitations, or rather caricatures," were intended by Beethoven as a joke of the most open kind, and adds "how completely are the, Pastorale Symphony.