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Sweet Swan is a
set of variations on a tune written for a production of The
Winter’s Tale by John Barton, to whom it is affectionately
dedicated. One of Autolycus’s songs (But shall I go mourn?)
was set to the melody in question and this tune was transformed into
the music for the famous Monument Scene where Leontes witnesses the
apparent coming to life of the statue of his much wronged wife,
Hermione.
In Sweet Swan
the composer imagines Shakespeare himself coming back to life, and,
leaving his lonely monument in the Bancroft Gardens, takes a brief look
around the town of his birth, before returning to his place as midnight
strikes.
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