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. |
