Sweet Swan

sweet swan

Sweet Swan is a set of variations on a tune I wrote for a production of The Winter’s Tale by John Barton, to whom it is affectionately dedicated. Michael Williams played Autolycus, and one of his songs was set to the melody in question:

But shall I go mourn for that, my dear?
The pale moon shines by night:
And when I wander here and there,
I then do most go right.

Later in the play this tune was transformed into the music for the famous Monument Scene (Act V, scene iii) where Leontes (played by Ian McKellen) witnesses the apparent coming to life of the statue of his much wronged wife, Hermione:

Music; awake her: strike!
‘Tis time; descend; be stone no more;

My conceit in Sweet Swan is to have Shakespeare himself come back to life, and, leaving his lonely monument in the Bancroft Gardens, take a brief look around the town of his birth, before returning to his place as midnight strikes.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 GW