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Information about Swan Song

Swan Song may refer to:
  • Swan song, a reference to an ancient belief that the Mute Swan sings before it dies
  • Swan song (console game catagory), a catagory of games released by the console's creator towards the end of a console's lifespan.
  • Swan Song Records, a record label founded by Led Zeppelin
  • Schwanengesang (Swan song), a collection of songs by Franz Schubert
  • Swan Song (novel), a novel by Robert R. McCammon
  • Swansong, an album by the band Carcass
  • "Swan Song", a song by the band Showaddywaddy
  • "Swan Song", a song by the band Down
  • "Swan Song," a B-Side by the band Giant Drag, off their single Kevin Is Gay
  • Swan Song (film), a Chinese film released in 1985 (Chinese title: Jue Xiang)
  • Swan Song (Gilmore Girls), an episode of the television series Gilmore Girls
  • Swan Song, a short subject film adaptation of a one-act play by Anton Chekhov, directed by Kenneth Branagh. Branagh was Oscar-nominated for his direction.
For other uses, see Swan Song.


"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.

It has been thought since antiquity that this belief is false. "Mute" swans are not actually mute during life – they produce snorts, shrill noises, grunts, and hisses – and they do not sing as they die. However, it is also contested by many that the swan in which this legend refers to is in fact, an extinct species that did exist in classical times. The "Mute" swan of today may only be a related descendent bearing the same name.

The legend has remained so appealing that over the centuries it has appeared in various artistic works. Aesop's fable of "The Swan Mistaken for a Goose" alludes to it.[1] Ovid mentions it in "The Story of Picus and Canens."[2]

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 upon 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."


Led Zeppelin's "Swan Song".

Chaucer wrote of "The Ialous swan, ayens his deth that singeth".[3] 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."[4]

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 " Hello Everyone" 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. Anton Chekhov's one-act play, The Swan Song (1887), describes an ageing actor who, while sitting alone in a darkened theatre, ruminates on his past.

In the book And Then There Were None, a record accuses the houseguests and servants of murders that, for various reasons, they were not punished for. The record is labeled "Swan Song", as the killer intends to punish the wicked as a final act.

In sailing, and on the sea, many yachts carry the name of Swan Song. When used in this fashion it usually refers to the last of many of the owner's yachts.

References

1. ^ Aesop (1998). The Complete Fables. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-14-044649-4.  p. 127: "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." Annotation by Robert and Olivia Temple: "The premise of this fable is the odd tradition of 'the swan song.'" [1]
2. ^ Ovid. Metamorphoses (Kline) 14, the Ovid Collection, Univ. of Virginia E-Text Center; Bk XIV:320-396: The transformation of Picus. University of Virginia. "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."
3. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1896). Chaucer: the Minor Poems. Clarendon Press. , p. 86[2]
4. ^ ''The Merchant of Venice," Act 3 Scene 2[3]
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Schwanengesang ("Swan song") is the title of a posthumous collection of songs by Franz Schubert. Unlike the earlier Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, it uses poems by two poets, Ludwig Rellstab (1799 - 1860) and Heinrich Heine (1797 - 1856).
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Swan Song (ISBN 0-671-74103-9) is a 1987 science fiction novel by American novelist Robert R. McCammon. It is a work of post-apocalyptic fiction describing the aftermath of a nuclear war that has provoked a nuclear winter.
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Swansong
(1996)

Swansong was the final studio album by Carcass. This was supposed to be their major label debut having been signed by Columbia records following the success of Heartwork, but disputes with this record company left them to return to
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Showaddywaddy are a 1970s pop group from Leicester, UK. They specialised in revivals of hit songs from the 1950s, and dressed as Teddy Boys.

History

The band was formed in 1973 by the amalgamation of two groups, Choise and The Golden Hammers.
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Down may refer to:
  • Relative direction, where down is the opposite of up
  • Railroad directions, where down and up have locally significant meanings
  • Down feathers
  • Downland, a type of hill
  • Down syndrome, a genetic disorder

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Gilmore Girls is an American television drama/comedy created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and starring Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel. The series premiered on The WB on October 5, 2000 and ended on May 15, 2007, with its seventh season, which aired on The CW Television Network.
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Short subject is a format description originally coined in the North American film industry in the early period of cinema. The description is now used almost interchangeably with short film; either term is often abbreviated to short (as a noun, e.g. 'a short').
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Антон Павлович Чехов Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Anton Chekhov, by Osip Braz, 1898
Born: 29 January [O.S.
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Kenneth Branagh

Birth name Kenneth Charles Branagh
Born November 10 1960 (1960--) (age 48)
Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Spouse(s)
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Please see the discussion on the .


Mute Swan

A pair

Conservation status

Least Concern

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Aesop (also spelled Æsop, from the Greek Αἴσωπος—Aisōpos), known only for the genre of fables ascribed to him, was by tradition a slave (
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Ovid

Ovid as imagined in the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493.
Born: March 20, 43 BC
Sulmo
Died: 17 AD
Tomis
Occupation: Poet
Influences: Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton, William Shakespeare

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Orlando Gibbons (baptised December 25 1583 – June 5 1625) was an English composer and organist of the late Tudor and early Jacobean periods. He was a leading composer in the England of his day.

Gibbons was born in Oxford.
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A madrigal is a setting for two or more voices of a secular text, often in Italian. The madrigal has its origins in the frottola, and was also influenced by the motet and the French chanson of the Renaissance.
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The silver swan is probably the most famous madrigal by Orlando Gibbons, and is scored for 5 voices (SATBarB) (in most sources, though some give SSATB). It is based on the legend that mute swans sing only just before death (see Swan song).
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William Shakespeare

The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed. National Portrait Gallery, London.
Born: April 1564 (exact date unknown)
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 March 1616
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
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The Merchant of Venice is one of William Shakespeare's best-known plays, written sometime between 1596 and 1598. Although it is sometimes classified as a comedy ("comedy" had a very different meaning at the time; see Shakespearean comedies) and shares certain aspects with
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The Lord Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Born: 6 July 1809(1809--)
Somersby, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 September 1892 (aged 83)
Westminster Abbey
Occupation: poet


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The Dying Swan is a ballet dance choreographed to the music Le Cygne composed in 1866 by Camille Saint-Saëns.

The Dying Swan, after a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson.
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The shawm was a medieval and Renaissance musical instrument of the woodwind family made in Europe from the late 13th century until the 17th century. It was developed from the oriental zurna and is the predecessor of the modern oboe.
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Franz Peter Schubert (January 31, 1797 – November 19, 1828) was an Austrian composer. He wrote some 600 Lieder, eight completed symphonies, the famous "Unfinished Symphony", liturgical music, operas, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music.
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18th century - 19th century - 20th century
1790s  1800s  1810s  - 1820s -  1830s  1840s  1850s
1825 1826 1827 - 1828 - 1829 1830 1831

:
Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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Schwanengesang ("Swan song") is the title of a posthumous collection of songs by Franz Schubert. Unlike the earlier Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, it uses poems by two poets, Ludwig Rellstab (1799 - 1860) and Heinrich Heine (1797 - 1856).
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And Then There Were None

Cover of HarperCollins edition (2003) with present-day title. See Publication History section below for image of first edition with former title.
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