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The swan song (; ) is a phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement. The phrase refers to an ancient belief that sing a beautiful song just before their death while they have been silent (or alternatively not so musical) for most of their lifetime.
The belief, whose basis has been long debated, had become proverbial in ancient Greece by the 3rd century BCE and was reiterated many times in later Western culture poetry and art. In reality, swans learn a variety of sounds throughout their lifetime; their sounds are more distinguishable during courting rituals and not correlated with death.
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. There is a subsequent reference in Aeschylus' Agamemnon from 458 BCE. In that play, Clytemnestra compares the dead Cassandra to a swan who has "sung her last lament".
In Plato's Phaedo, the character of Socrates says that, although swans sing in early life, they do not do so as beautifully as before they die. He adds that there is a popular belief that the swans' song is sorrowful, but Socrates prefers to think that they sing for joy, having "foreknowledge of the blessings in the other world". Aristotle noted in his History of Animals that swans "are musical, and sing chiefly at the approach of death". By the third century BC the belief had become a proverb.
Ovid mentions the legend in "The Story of Picus and Canens": It is also possible that the swan song has some connection to the lament of Cycnus of Liguria at the death of his lover, Phaethon, the ambitious and headstrong son of Helios and Clymene. The name Cycnus is the Latinised form of the Greek, which means "swan". Hyginus proposes in his Fabulae that the mournful Cycnus, who is transformed into a swan by the gods, joins the dirge of the amber-crying poplars, the Heliades, the half-sisters of the dead Phaethon, who also experienced a metamorphosis at the death of the reckless Phaethon.
However, the whooper swan ( Cygnus cygnus), a winter visitor to parts of the eastern Mediterranean, possesses 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.
The whooper swan's nearest relatives, the trumpeter swan and , 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".
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." The Merchant of Venice, Act 3 Scene 2 . Hosted at Open Source Shakespeare. Similarly, in Othello, the dying Emilia exclaims, "I will play the swan, / And die in music." Othello, Act 5 Scene 2 . Hosted at Open Source Shakespeare.
A well-known madrigal by Orlando Gibbons, "The Silver Swan", states the legend thus:
Other poets who have taken inspiration from the legend include Alfred, Lord Tennyson, whose poem "The Dying Swan" is a poetic evocation of the "wild swan's death-hymn"; Thomas Sturge Moore's poem of the same name; and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who quipped: "Swans sing before they die— 't were no bad thing / Should certain persons die before they sing."
A dramatic or notable achievement by an athlete just prior to their retirement, such as baseball player Derek Jeter's walk-off hit in his final game at Yankee Stadium, might also be referred to as their "swan song". An example, in the film industry, is represented by "The Last Movie Star", Rolling Stone referred to the film as Burt Reynolds "swan song". The film was one of Reynolds's last film projects, and he died several months after the film's release.
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