Swan song

The swan song (ancient Greek: κύκνειον ᾆσμα; Latin: carmen cygni) 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 sing a beautiful song just before their 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 5th to the 3rd century BC and was reiterated many times in later Western poetry and art.

For other uses, see Swan song (disambiguation).
"The singing swan" (1655) by Reinier van Persijn.

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 and the Goose" incorporates the swan song legend as saving its life when it was caught by mistake instead of the goose but was recognized by its song.[1] There is a subsequent reference in Aeschylus' Agamemnon (verses 1444–5) from 458 BC. In that play, Clytemnestra compares the dead Cassandra to a swan who has "sung her last final lament". Plato's Phaedo (84d) records Socrates saying that, although swans sing in early life, they do not do so as beautifully as before they die. Furthermore, Aristotle noted in his History of Animals (615b) 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" (Metamorphoses, book XIV:320–396): "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 known neither 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 AD 77, 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] Similarly, in Othello, the dying Emilia exclaims, "I will play the swan, / And die in music."[11]

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

The silver Swan, who living had no Note,
when Death approached, unlocked her silent throat.
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
thus sang her first and last, and sang no more:
"Farewell, all joys! O Death, come close mine eyes!
"More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise."

"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.[12] 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.[13] 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.[14]

Danish painter Nicolai Abildgaard painted Ossian synger sin Svanesang, or Ossian sings his swan song, in 1780–1782.[15]

Schwanengesang ("Swan song"), D 957, is a collection of songs written by Franz Schubert at the end of his life and published posthumously.

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

Swans sing before they die— 't were no bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing.

Tennyson's poem "The Dying Swan"[16] 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:

The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy
Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear
The warble was low, and full and clear; ...
But anon her awful jubilant voice,
With a music strange and manifold,
Flow’d forth on a carol free and bold;
As when a mighty people rejoice
With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold...

Tennyson's poem was an inspiration for the ballet The Dying Swan, created for Anna Pavlova in 1905 and danced to the music of Le cygne by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns.[17]

Thomas Sturge Moore (1870-1944) also wrote a poem called "The Dying Swan", starting "O silver-throated Swan / Struck, struck! A golden dart / Clean through thy breast has gone / Home to thy heart". The poet then urges the swan to sing as defiance against "him who smote", and ends by urging the swan to "even teach / O wondrous-gifted Pain, teach Thou / The God of love, let him learn how". Sturge Moore's poem is later quoted in Elizabeth Goudge's existential Christian novel, The Rosemary Tree (1956) as two men discuss their close experences of death during World War II.

The band Led Zeppelin's record label for the second half of their career was Swan Song Records. Their first five releases were on Atlantic records, the next five were on Swan Song Records. In the television show Supernatural, the twenty second episode of the fifth season is given the title "Swan Song".

In the 70s American television series Columbo, the seventh episode of season 3 (with the special appearance of Johnny Cash) is given the title "Swan Song". [18]

Swan Song is one of the last tracks on singer Lana Del Rey's album Honeymoon.

The first track of Canadian band Islands' album, Return to the Sea, is entitled Swans (Life After Death). [19]

In the book series, Keeper of the Lost Cities, by Shannon Messenger, an organization called the Black Swan use the phrase "swan song" to tell group members that they have been captured or are about to die.

During the end credits of the film Alita: Battle Angel, sounds Dua Lipa's song titled Swan Song (song)

In the American tv show Once Upon a Time, in its fifth season, their eleventh episode is titled ″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.[20] For example, an athlete that wins a championship or breaks records in their final season are sometimes said to have had a "swan song season."

Examples:

gollark: Continue.
gollark: It's very useful when I need to debug some mess potatOS does.
gollark: PotatOS actually has global stack tracing built in.
gollark: Like <@!151391317740486657> .
gollark: Well, back when I was advertising it to new users, lots complained that they could not solve such a hard maths problem and stuff.

References
  1. Aesop (1998). The Complete Fables. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-14-044649-4., p.127
  2. Arnott, W. Geoffrey (October 1977). "Swan Songs". Greece & Rome. 24 (2): 149–153. JSTOR 642700.
  3. Brazil, Mark (2003). The Whooper Swan. T & A D Poyser. ISBN 978-0-7136-6570-3. pp. 64–65. (Online version)
  4. Ovid. "Metamorphoses (Kline) 14, the Ovid Collection, Univ. of Virginia E-Text Center; Bk XIV:320–396: The transformation of Picus". University of Virginia.
  5. Arnott, W. Geoffrey (2007). Birds in the Ancient World from A to Z. Routledge. ISBN 0-203-94662-6. pp. 182–184. (Online version)
  6. Peterson, Roger Tory; Guy Mountfort; P. A. D. Hollum; P. A. D. Hollom (2001). A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe. Houghton Mifflin Field Guides. ISBN 0-618-16675-0., p. 49
  7. Johnsgard, Paul A. (January 2013). "The Swans of Nebraska". Prairie Fire. USA. Retrieved 21 January 2013.
  8. Skeat, Walter W. (1896). Chaucer: the Minor Poems. Clarendon Press., p. 86 ( Online version)
  9. Leonardo da Vinci. The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, Complete. Google. ()
  10. The Merchant of Venice, Act 3 Scene 2
  11. Othello, Act 5 Scene 2
  12. James Manheim. "Georg Philipp Telemann: Funeral Music for Garlieb Sillem". AllMusic.
  13. "swan, n." Oxford English Dictionary. June 2011. Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  14. "www.the-highway.com". Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  15. "Sal 217B". Statens Museum for Kunst website. Retrieved 8 February 2016.
  16. Tennyson, "The Dying Swan", The Early poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson (Project Gutenberg text), search on "shawm." This and other sources assert not merely that the swan sings, but that the song is beautiful.
  17. Matthew Naughtin, Ballet Music: A Handbook, p.210
  18. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071351/
  19. islandsmusic.bandcamp.com/track/swans-life-after-death-remaster
  20. "swansong – definition of swansong in English from the Oxford dictionary".
  21. Waldstein, David (25 September 2014). "Night's Hero: Who Else?". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 April 2017.
  22. Marchand, Andrew (29 September 2013). "Andy Pettitte: A day 'I'll never forget'". ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures. Retrieved 12 April 2017.
  23. Benson, Andrew (2 December 2016). "Nico Rosberg retires: World champion quits Formula 1 five days after title win". BBC Sport. Retrieved 12 April 2017.
  • The dictionary definition of swan song at Wiktionary

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