Swan song

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"The singing swan" (1655) by Reinier van Persijn.

The swan song (in ancient Greek: κύκνειον ᾆσμα) is a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement. The phrase refers to an ancient belief that swans (Cygnus spp.) sing a beautiful song in the moment just before death, having been silent (or alternatively, not so musical) during most of their lifetime. This belief, whose basis in actuality is long-debated, had become proverbial in Ancient Greece by the 3rd century BC, and was reiterated many times in later Western poetry and art.

Origin and description

In Greek mythology, the swan was a bird consecrated to Apollo, and it was therefore considered a symbol of harmony and beauty and its limited capabilities as a singer were sublimated to those of songbirds.

Aesop's fable of "The Swan Mistaken for a Goose" incorporates the swan song legend thus: "The swan, who had been caught by mistake instead of the goose, began to sing as a prelude to its own demise. His voice was recognized and the song saved his life."^[1] There is a subsequent reference in Aeschylus' Agamemnon from 458 BC. In that play, Clytemnestra compares the dead Cassandra to a swan who has "sung her last final lament". Plato's Phaedo records Socrates saying that, although swans sing in early life, they do not do so as beautifully as before they die. Aristotle also noted that swans "are musical, and sing chiefly at the approach of death". By the third century BC the belief had become a proverb.^[2][3]

Ovid mentions it in "The Story of Picus and Canens": "There, she poured out her words of grief, tearfully, in faint tones, in harmony with sadness, just as the swan sings once, in dying, its own funeral song."^[4] The swan was also described as a singer in the works of the poets Virgil and Martial.

Controversy

The most familiar European swan, the Mute Swan (Cygnus olor), although not actually mute, is neither known for musicality nor to vocalize as it dies. This has led some to criticize swan song beliefs since antiquity, one of the earliest^[5] being Pliny the Elder: in 77 AD, Natural History (book 10, chapter xxxii: olorum morte narratur flebilis cantus, falso, ut arbitror, aliquot experimentis), states: "observation shows that the story that the dying swan sings is false." Peterson et al. note that Cygnus olor is "not mute but lacks bugling call, merely honking, grunting, and hissing on occasion."^[6]

However, the Whooper Swan (Cygnus cygnus), a winter visitor to parts of the eastern Mediterranean, does possess a 'bugling' call, and has been noted for issuing a drawn-out series of notes as its lungs collapse upon expiry, both being a consequence of an additional tracheal loop within its sternum. This was proposed by naturalist Peter Pallas as the basis for the legend. Both mute and whooper swans appear to be represented in ancient Greek and Egyptian art.^[3][5]

The Whooper Swan's nearest relatives, the Trumpeter and Tundra Swans, share its musical tracheal loop. Zoologist D.G. Elliot reported in 1898 that a tundra swan he had shot and wounded in flight began a long glide down whilst issuing a series of "plaintive and musical" notes that "sounded at times like the soft running of the notes of an octave".^[7]

Post-classical cultural references

Chaucer wrote of "The Ialous swan, ayens his deth that singeth."^[8] Leonardo da Vinci noted "The swan is white without spot, and it sings sweetly as it dies, that song ending its life."^[9]

In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Portia exclaims "Let music sound while he doth make his choice; Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end, Fading in music."^[10]

The well-known Orlando Gibbons madrigal "The Silver Swan" states the legend thus:

"The Swan Song" ("Schwanengesang") is the nickname of the 1733 Baroque Concerto written by Georg Philipp Telemann: Concerto in D minor for oboe, strings and continuo.^[11] The concerto of Telemann begins with a sad part (adagio) later a glad part (allegro), the singing of the swan itself, another sad part (death), and finally a hopeful end.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English phrase "swan song" or "swan-song" borrows from the German schwanen(ge)sang or schwanenlied.^[12] The Scottish cleric John Willison, in one of his Scripture Sermons, 1747, proposes a verse from Psalm 48 as a "swan-song" for the faithful.^[13]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge made comic use of the legend when he quipped ironically:

Tennyson's poem "The Dying Swan"^[14] is a poetic evocation of the beauty of the supposed song and so full of detail as to imply that he had actually heard it:

Tennyson's poem was an inspiration for the ballet The Dying Swan created for Anna Pavlova in 1905, to the music Le cygne from The Carnival of the Animals by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns.

Finnish composer Jean Sibelius's tone poem The Swan of Tuonela, in a famous solo, uses a cor anglais to play the dying song of the legendary swan of Tuonela.

In Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, there is a tenor solo called Olim Lacus Colueram about a swan who laments his end and looks back at his glorious days by the lake.

In his song '3005' rapper Childish Gambino references it with the line "And when I'm long gone, whole crew sing a swan song"

Idiom

By extension, "swan song" has become an idiom referring to a final theatrical or dramatic appearance, or any final work or accomplishment.^[15] It generally carries the connotation that the performer is aware that this is the last performance of his or her lifetime, and is expending everything in one magnificent final effort.

References