Swansong

Swansong (pronounced swon-sawng)

(1) The last act or manifestation of someone or something; farewell appearance.

(2) According to legend, the first and last song a dying swan was said to sing.

1831: A compound word, the construct being swan + song and a calque from the original German Schwanenlied (that construct being Schwan + Lied).  Swan dated from before 900 and was from the Middle English & Old English swan, from the Proto-Germanic swanaz (swan, literally “the singing bird”), from the primitive Indo-European swonhz- & swenhz- (to sing, make sound”).  It was cognate with the West Frisian swan, the Low German Swaan, the Dutch zwaan, the German Schwan, the Norwegian svane and the Swedish svan.  It was related also to the Old English ġeswin (melody, song) & swinsian (to make melody), the Latin sonus (sound), the Old Norse svanr, the Middle Low German swōn and the Russian звон (zvon) (ringing) & звук (zvuk) (sound).  Song was from the Middle English & Old English song & sang (noise, song, singing, chanting; poetry; a poem to be sung or recited, psalm, lay), from the Proto-Germanic sangwaz (singing, song), from the primitive Indo-European songwh-o- (singing, song) from sengwh- (to sing). It was cognate with the Scots sang & song (singing, song), the Saterland Frisian Song, the West Frisian sang, the Dutch zang, the Low German sang, the German Sang (singing, song), the Swedish sång (song), the Norwegian Bokmål sang, the Norwegian Nynorsk (song), the Icelandic söngur and the Ancient Greek ὀμφή (omphḗ) (voice, oracle).  It was related to the Gothic saggws and the Old High German sang.  Swansong is a noun; the noun plural is swansongs.  Constructions like "swan-singing" are structurally correct but not used. 

The English swansong (which has always existed also as swan song and swan-song) was a calque of the German Schwanenlied (Schwan (swan) + Lied (song)) (also as Schwanengesang), the term alluding to the old belief that swans normally are mute but burst into beautiful song moments before they die.  Although the idea is much older, swansong appeared first in English translation in 1831 but did not pass into common use until after 1890 which is perhaps surprising given Chaucer mentions the singing of swans as early as the late fourteenth century.  To date, Lindsay Lohan's last single release was Back to Me (2020), released on the Casablanca label.  She has hinted it may be included on a yet to be released third album but thus far, musically, it's her swansong.

The romantic roadster's swansong

Ferrari's Dino 246 F1 on Monza's famous banking, Italian Grand Prix, September 1960.

The swansong for the front-engined open wheel racing cars which had since the early twentieth century dominated top-flight motorsport came in the 1960s.  In 1959, both the driver’s and constructor’s championships were claimed using rear-mid engined machines and as the new decade began, it was obvious to all in the once unpredictable behaviour of the layout had been mastered (at least on race tracks when in the hands of expert drivers) and the opening eight rounds of the season did nothing to change that view, mid-engined cars winning the lot.  Ferrari, still running the front-engined Dino 246 F1, were not happy and that meant most of Italy was similarly grumpy, something which induced the organizers of the Italian Grand Prix to stage their event under conditions designed to suit the Scuderia’s last remaining advantage: straight-line speed.  Accordingly, it was announced the event would be held using the combined road and oval course at the Monza Autodrome, making what was already the championship’s highest speed circuit faster still.  With both the driver's & constructor's titles already decided, other leading teams opted to boycott the event, attracted by neither the prospect of their delicate machines being subjected to the notorious roughness of the concrete banking nor the prospect of a high-speed accident following mechanical damage.  As planned, Scuderia Ferrari enjoyed a 1-2-3 result, delighting the Italian crowd.  It was the last World Championship grand prix won by a front-engined car.

The rebodied 246 F1, Lady Wigram Trophy weekend, RNZAF (Royal New Zealand Air Force) Wigram Air Base, Christchurch, New Zealand, 1964.

The winning Dino 246 F1 therefore became a machine of some historical significance but even though Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) may have suspected the success would not again be repeated, he was not sentimental about yesterday’s car, happy usually to sell anything obsolete to gain funds so he might build something with which to win tomorrow.  The 246 F1 victorious at Monza winner was thus sold to a private racer in New Zealand who, with a similar pragmatism, removed the 2.5 litre V6 in favour of the greater power and torque offered by a 3.0 litre V12 Testa Rossa engine in sports car trim.  In that form, he campaigned the hybrid Ferrari for two quite successful years but found no buyers when he tried to sell it, most agreeing with Il Commendatore that, big engine and all, it was just another, uncompetitive relic with the engine in the wrong place.  Thinking laterally, the owner took a very modern approach, having a coachbuilder fabricate in sixteen gauge aluminium a body strikingly similar to the factory’s own 250 GTOs, creating a very fast road car and one of the few on the road with the underpinnings of the machine which won an Italian Grand Prix.  The rules were rather more relaxed in those days.  In that form it was run until 1967 when it was sold, along with its original body, to an English collector who restored it to it with its V6 engine to the configuration in which it ran at Monza in 1960.  It’s still seen as an entry in historic events on the European calendar.

Ran just before crashed, nicely patinaed, one headlamp believed matching numbers and many parts still original: 1954 Ferrari 500 Mondial, as sold (left & centre) and in period (right).

To Enzo Ferrari for whom old race cars were usually just assets to be sold, it would in 1960 have amused him had anyone suggested decades later, people would pay millions of dollars for old, battered Ferraris, some of which never came close to winning anything.  Improbable as it would have sounded, he might have conceded such things could one day happen if the vehicles had four wheels and were drivable but for that to be achieved by wrecked 1954 Ferrari 500 Mondial which in August 2023 sold at auction for US$1.875 million would have been beyond comprehension.  The second Mondial built and one of 13 examples with Pininfarina spider coachwork, it was one of the rare “customer” race cars which used 2.0 litre , four cylinder engines and was campaigned extensively in Italy and the US where, sometime between 1963-1965 (the stories vary) it crashed and was incinerated, apparently while fitted with a Chevrolet V8, the swap at the time a common path to cheap, reliable power.

Some assembly required.

The provenance was solid if not illustrious.  It was raced by a one-time Scuderia Ferrari team driver and its many appearances included starts in the Mille Miglia, Targa Florio, and Imola Grand Prix.  Although the original engine was long gone, the sale included a comparable 3.0 liter Tipo 119 Lampredi four while the transmission was original and thus the prized “matching numbers”.  Belying the (usually undeserved reputation) Italian corporations have for chaotic record keeping, the supplied documentation was an impressive wad, including the precious factory build sheets and homologation papers.  In the hands of experts, such a thing can be restored although without the original engine, it hard to predict if it will realise the same value as the US$4.15 million a fully-restored Mondial (chassis# 0448 MD and all “matching numbers”) achieved in 2019.

The Offenhauser-powered Watson Special, winner of the 1964 Indianapolis 500.

In the US, the swansong of the front-engined roadsters at the Indianapolis 500 came a little later, the last victory coming in 1964.  As in so many things however, the end came quickly and the next year a solitary roadster completed the full race distance, finishing a creditable fifth.  The last roadster to appear in the event in 1968 qualified on the second to last row of the grid and completed only nine laps of the 200, retiring with a collapsed piston.  That run was at the time little noted but it’s now remembered as the swansong of the front-engined roadsters in top flight racing.

LP (long playing) album label for Led Zeppelin’s Presence (1976), issued by Atlantic Recording Corporation on the Swan Song label.

The English graphic art production house Hipgnosis (best known for album covers which were (in the pre-CD (compact disc) era) for a quarter century-odd a vibrant part of the pop-art world) used William Rimmer’s Evening as a model for the logo of Swan Song Records, set up in 1974 by the English band Led Zeppelin (1968-1974) after the expiration of their distribution contract with Atlantic Records (which anyway handled the distribution of Swan Song’s release).  The idea was to combine the imagery of Rimmer with the wings of a white swan and the notion of “songs”.  At the time, the popular music business substantially was controlled by the major labels and Swan Song was one of a number of (usually short-lived) labels created in an attempt to give musicians who could not secure a recording contract a way of having their output reach audiences.  Although the label remains active for the purposes of re-issuing older material, after the surviving members of Led Zeppelin disbanded in 1980, there were only spasmodic releases until in 1983 it was announced active operations would cease and no new contracts would be executed.

Evening (The Fall of Day) (1869–1870), charcoal, crayon), oil & graphite on canvas by English-born US artist William Rimmer (1816–1879), Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Massachusetts.

Winged humans have been in imagination at least since the tale of Ικαρος (Icarus) was told in the mythology of Antiquity.  In the best-known version, Icarus was the son of Daedalus and one of Minos' slaves called Naucrate and it was when Daedalus explained to Ariadne how Theseus could find a way to escape the Labyrinth, so enraged was Minos he imprisoned Daedalus and his son in the structure.  Undeterred, Daedalus took fallen feathers and fashioned wings for them both, applying wax to fix them to their shoulders; a cautious parent, Daedalus warned Icarus to fly neither too close to the ground nor too near the sun.  Icarus however was headstrong and, finding the power of flight intoxicating, soared higher and higher until he was so close to the sun the heat melted the wax, disintegrating his wings; denied flight by hubris, he fell into the sea around the island of Samos and drowned.  As a tribute, the sun god Helios called the body of water the Ικάριο Πέλαγος (Ikario Pelagos) (Icarian Sea), the name still used of the stretches of the Aegean between the Cyclades and Asia Minor (the modern-day Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (Republic of Türkiye, still often referred to as Turkey)).  Other versions from Antiquity have him drowning in nautical accidents but generally his name is used as a cautionary tale about the consequences of not heeding the advice of those who know better although, curiously, there’s also the odd reference to him having invented woodwork and carpentry.  In Rimmer’s evocative drawing, the model has always been presumed to be the doomed Icarus but the artist may also have had in mind the fallen angel Lucifer, the imagery of a prideful descent perhaps influenced by John Milton’s (1608–1674) Paradise Lost (1667) or Dante Alighieri’s (circa 1265–1321) Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy (circa 1310-1321)). 

Richard Strauss, Vier Letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs)

Richard Strauss (1864-1949), was the last great German composer in the Romantic tradition and Vier Letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) was his swansong, his final work.  Inspired by the poetry of Nobel Laureate Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) and Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788-1857), all four are pieces of exquisite beauty but Strauss didn’t live to hear them performed, the premiere delivered posthumously in London in 1950, sung by Kirsten Flagstad (1895–1962), accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886–1954).

Many notable sopranos have sung the songs but the definitive performance remains the 1965 recording by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (1915-2006) with the Radio-Symphonieorchester Berlin under György Széll (1897–1970).  (CD: EMI Classics Cat: 0724356696020[9]).

Four Last Songs Since their collaboration, the need again to record the songs vanished; it's simply not possible to improve on  Schwarzkoph's achievement in 1965.  Re-mastered versions from the original tapes have been released and they're of interest to audiophiles but add nothing to the atmospherics so well captured in the Berlin sessions. 

Spring (Hermann Hesse)

Wandering in darkness under your high
vaulting branches, I have dreamed so long
of your green leaves and breezy blue sky,
the vibrant fragrances–and the bird song!
 
Now, as you open your robe of winter night,
your brilliance staggers every sense.
The world sparkles in the light
of a Miracle, your recurring presence.
 
I feel the healing touch
of softer days, warm and tender.
My limbs tremble–happily, too much–
as I stand inside your splendor.

September (Hermann Hesse)

The garden mourns.
The flowers fill with cold rain.
Summer shivers
in the chill of its dying domain.
 
Yet summer smiles, enraptured
by the garden’s dreamy aphasia
as gold, drop by drop, falls
from the tall acacia.
 
With a final glance at the roses–
too weak to care, it longs for peace–
then, with darkness wherever it gazes,
summer slips into sleep.

When I Go to Sleep (Hermann Hesse)

Now that day has exhausted me
I give myself over, a tired child,
to the night and to my old friends, the stars–
my watchful guardians, quiet and mild.
 
Hands–let everything go.
Head–stop thinking.
I am content to follow
where my senses are sinking.
 
Into the darkness, I swim out free:
Soul, released from all your defenses,
enter the magic, sidereal circle
where the gathering of souls commences.

 At Sunset (Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff)

We have passed through sorrow and joy,
walking hand in hand.
Now we need not seek the way:
we have settled in a peaceful land.
 
The dark comes early to our valley,
and the night mist rises.
Two dreamy larks sally
forth–our souls’ disguises.
 
We let their soaring flight delight
us, then, overcome by sleep
at close of day, we must alight
before we fly too far, or dive too deep.
 
The great peace here is wide and still
and rich with glowing sunsets:
If this is death, having had our fill
of getting lost, we find beauty, –No regrets.