“The melody, taken down on the spot by a first-rate musician, Auguste Bertini, was as follows:—
[[MIDI]]
The Abbé Arnaud has written some interesting remarks upon the voice of the swan.[115] He says:—
“The swan, with his wings expanded, his neck outstretched, and his head erect, places himself opposite his mate, uttering a cry to which the female replies by another half a note lower. The voice of the male rises from A (la), to B flat (si bemol); that of the female from G sharp (sol dièse), to A.[116] The first note is short and transient, and has the effect which our musicians term sensible; so that it is not separated from the second, but seems to glide into it. Observe that, fortunately for the ear, they do not both sing at once; in fact, if, while the male sounded B flat, the female gave A, or if the male
uttered A while the female gave G sharp, there would result the harshest and most insupportable of discords. We may add that this dialogue is subjected to a constant and regular rhythm, with the measure of two times (?). The keeper assured me that during their amours, these birds have a cry still sharper, but much more agreeable.”
The late Charles Waterton once had an opportunity, which rarely occurs, of seeing a swan die from natural causes. “Although I gave no credence,” he says,[117] “to the extravagant notion which antiquity had entertained of melody from the mouth of the dying swan, still I felt anxious to hear some plaintive sound or other, some soft inflection of the voice, which might tend to justify that notion in a small degree. But I was disappointed. He nodded, and then tried to recover himself, and then nodded again, and again held up his head; till, at last, quite enfeebled and worn out, his head fell gently on the grass, his wings became expanded a trifle or so, and he died whilst I was looking on. He never even uttered his wonted cry, nor so much as a sound to indicate what he felt within.
“The silence which this bird maintained to the last tends to show that the dying song of the swan is nothing but a fable, the origin of which is lost in the shades of antiquity. Its repetition can be of no manner of use, save as a warning to ornithologists not to indulge in the
extravagancies of romance—a propensity not altogether unknown in these our latter times.”
HABITS OF THE SWAN.