The Silver Swan (madrigal): Difference between revisions

"The Silver Swan" is the most famous madrigal by Orlando Gibbons. It is scored for 5 voices (in most sources, soprano (S), alto (A), tenor (T), baritone (Bar) and bass (B), although some specify SSATB instead) and presents the legend that swans are largely silent in life (or at least unmusical), and sing beautifully only just before their deaths (see swan song).

The English composer Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625) published his First Set of Madrigals and Motets of 5 parts in 1612;^[1] its opening song is The Silver Swan,^[2] printed as The filuer [sic] Swanne, who liuing had no note.^[3] Published in London by Thomas Snodham, the assignee of William Barley, the Madrigals and Motets forms the core of the composer's secular vocal music.^[4] It is among Gibbons's few compositions published within his lifetime, alongside six works in the keyboard set Parthenia; two songs in the The Teares and Lamentatacions of a Sorrowfull Soule vocal collection published by William Leighton in 1614; and a nine keyboard pieces in the solely-Gibbons set: Fantzies of III. Parts.^[5]

The entire Madrigals and Motets collection was dedicated to Gibobons's patron, Sir Christopher Hatton (1581–1619), who financially supported the project.^[6] Although Hatton was a minor court figure, his brother-in-law Henry Fanshawe—himself a patron of the composer John Ward—was in the retinue of their heir apparent Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales.^[7] The origins of Gibbons's association with Hatton is unclear,^[1] but the latter evidently became an important patron;^[8] Gibbons would name his children, including the future composer Christopher Gibbons, after Hatton and his wife Elizabeth.^[7] By Gibbons's own account, he used Hatton's London house as a place to compose.^[9]

The author of The Silver Swan's text is essentially unknown; the poet Carol Rumens noted that "most informed commentators have wisely settled for [an] Anon[ymous writer]".^[10] Gibbons himself is occasionally proposed as the author, but this suggestion has little evidence.^[10] As far is known, none of the texts in the Madrigals and Motets had been set before Gibbons; it as often assumed that Hatton chose all, or at least some, of the texts.^[11] Given his possible textual involvement and supposed proximity to Gibbons during the compositional process, musicologists such as Frederick Bridge has speculated that Hatton wrote some or all of the poems in the set.^[12][10]

The anonymous text is as follows:

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 sung no more:

"Farewell all joys! O death come close mine eyes,

 More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise."^[13]

The entire 1612 set is markedly conservative in its musical language, distinguishing it from the contemporanous works of the English Madrigal School.^[14] Gibbons scholar Paul Vining regards the conservative approach as "well suited to the philosophical tone of the texts".^[14] The Silver Swan in particularly shows a musical affinity to Bryd, Gibbons's esteemed elder contemporary.^[15]

Gibbons's The Silver Swan is a swan song, an artistic trope which depicts the legend of a silver swan singing which, silent throughout its life, performs a despairful song before its death.^[16][17] According to Helen Sword "the swan song, of course, has long served as a favorite metaphor for both the proximity of art to death and for the triumph of art over death."^[18] The tradition dates back to at least Aeschylus's Agamemnon from 458 BCE;^[16] other notable include being two poems entitled "The Dying Swan" by Lord Alfred Tennyson and Thomas Sturge Moore.^[18]

The Silver Swan is Gibbons' best-known song,^[19] with biographer Edmund Fellowes suggesting it is perhaps the most famous English madrigal.^[2] Fellowes described it as "a favourite wherever madrigals have been sung",^[20] and remarked that it is "universally accalimed as the most perfect thing of its kind".^[21] Although Howard Orsmond Anderton (1861–1934) praised its memorable tune, he described it as "somewhat slight" and with little of the typical madrigal imitation".^[22]

The words to this madrigal have been set to music by numerous other musicians:

• Martin Amlin (1984), for soprano and piano, from Four Songs on Texts of Anonymous Poets
• Gary Bachlund (1966), for a cappella SATB chorus.^[23]
• Garth Baxter, from Three Madrigals (for voice and piano, voice and guitar, or SATB).^[17][23]
• John G. Bilotta (1976), Renaissance Songs for tenor and piano^[17]
• William Mac Davis (1985), from 5 Elizabethan Lyrics for soprano and piano^[17]
• Bernard Huges (2006), from 3 Swans for two sopranos and choir^[17]
• Lori Laitman (2007), for voice and piano, or voice, flute and piano^[17]
• John Musto (1987), from Canzonettas for high voice or medium voice and piano.^[24]
• Ned Rorem (1949), for high voice and piano.^[17][23]
• Qntal (2006), on their album Qntal V: Silver Swan.^[25]
• Eric Thiman (date unknown), for tenor and piano^[17]

• Gibbons, Orlando (1612). "The Silver Swan". The First Set of Madrigals and Mottets of 5. Parts: apt for Viols and Voyces (PDF). London: Thomas Snodham. OCLC 1044329199.
• —— (1 April 1851). "The Silver Swan". The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular. 4 (83). London: J. Alfred Novello: 163–164. doi:10.2307/3370265. JSTOR 3370265.
• —— (1914). "The Silver Swan". In Fellowes, Edmund Horace (ed.). Orlando Gibbons: First Set of Madrigals and Motets of Five Parts (PDF). The English Madrigal School. Vol. 5. London: Stainer & Bell. pp. 1–3. OCLC 16451757. Second edition in 1921
  • —— (1964) [1914]. "The Silver Swan". In Fellowes, Edmund Horace; Dart, Thurston (eds.). Orlando Gibbons: First Set of Madrigals and Motets of Five Parts. The English Madrigal School. Vol. 5. London: Stainer & Bell. ISMN 9790220206849.
• —— (1978). "The Silver Swan". The Oxford Book of English Madrigals. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 310–312. ISBN 978-0-19-343664-0. Reprinted in 1987

• The Silver Swan: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores of The Silver Swan in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Sheet music on Musopen