Swan song

Swan Song is also:

• the name of a novel by Robert R. McCammon; see Swan Song (novel)
• the name of a recording label, Swan Song Records, founded by Led Zeppelin

A swan song is a reference to an ancient belief that the Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) is completely mute during its lifespan, but may sing one heartbreakingly beautiful song just before it dies. However, it has also been known since antiquity that this belief is false; swans are not mute during life – they produce snorts, shrill noises, grunts, and hisses – and they do not do sing as they die. In particular, Pliny the Elder refuted the belief in A.D. 77 in his Natural History (book 10, chapter xxxii: olorum morte narratur flebilis cantus, falso, ut arbitror, aliquot experimentis, "observation shows that the story that the dying swan sings is false").

Nevertheless, the legend has remained so appealing that over the centures it has appeared in various artistic works. An Orlando Gibbons madrigal states the legend thus:

The silver swan, which, living, had no note,

when Death approached, unlocked her silent throat.

Leaning her breast upon the reedy shore,

thus sung her first and last and sung no more.

Chaucer wrote of "The Ialous swan, ayens his deth that singeth". In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Portia declaims "Let music sound while he doth make his choice;/Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,/Fading in music.".

Tennyson's poem "The Dying Swan" 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...

By extension, swan song has become an idiom referring to a final theatrical or dramatic appearance, or any final work or accomplishment. For example, Franz Schubert's collection of songs, published in his year of death, 1828, is known as the Schwanengesang (German for "swan song"). It generally carries the connotation that the performer is aware of his or her imminent demise (or retirement) and is expending his or her last breath on one magnificent final effort. An example of this is Freddie Mercury's song "The Show Must Go On", written and performed while he was dying of AIDS.

External links

• Recording of a "mute" swan's call