Many composers (Saint-Saëns, Grieg and Chopin among them) have tried to capture the delicate flutter of butterfly flight in music. In my opinion, Florence Price came closest to echoing their true motion in her short piano piece, "Butterflies."
Price composed it around 1930 as a teaching piece for young pianists. And this was long before high-speed videography allowed scientists to truly observe the mechanics of butterfly flight.
Back then, we imagined their motion as light and lovely. Now, we know it’s also quite powerful.
In "Secrets of Animal Flight," author and photographer Nic Bishop describes how a butterfly begins with its wings pressed together above its back. When it opens them, they don’t just flap downward.
The wings peel apart like the pages of a book with the front edges separating first. Air rushes in between, helping to generate lift.
Butterflies don’t flap up and down in a simple rhythm. They move their wings in a figure eight pattern. On the downstroke, they push against the air. On the upstroke, they curve their wings inward — almost like a spoon — so they continue to gain lift.
Sometimes, they tug themselves forward using their wings like oars. Other times, they clap their wings together behind their bodies and then fling them apart, launching themselves forward. And when conditions are right, they glide.
Their flight looks erratic. But that fluttering path is part of their survival strategy. The unpredictable motion makes it harder for birds to track and catch them.
What looks like fragility is actually agility.
So you might wake up some mornin’, hoping to catch a butterfly—or perhaps capture its dance in music. But more often than not, it will dart away just out of reach. Butterflies are elusive.
