Category: Vocal Music / Art Song
Instrumentation: voice, piano
Duration: 2.5 minutes
Text / Source: Anonymous poem
Publisher: North Star Music

The Silver Swan is a dramatic and deeply emotional art song for voice and piano, setting the well-known anonymous poem associated with the enduring image of the swan singing at the moment of death. Baxter’s setting is the middle song in Three Madrigals, where its intensity provides a striking contrast to the lighter and more humorous character of the two surrounding songs.

The work developed through several versions. Originally conceived for a cappella voices, it was subsequently arranged for voice and guitar before reaching its final form for voice and piano. This final version is highly chromatic, using expressive harmonic movement and an intense vocal line to heighten the poem’s atmosphere of beauty, silence, mortality, and loss.

As one of Baxter’s most dramatic and emotional songs, The Silver Swan offers performers substantial opportunities for expressive interpretation while retaining a strong sense of musical structure and tonal direction. It is especially well suited to vocal recitals and programs exploring poetry, mortality, historical texts, and contemporary reinterpretations of older literary traditions.

The Silver Swan serves as the emotional centerpiece of Three Madrigals. For additional context on the poem, Baxter’s setting, and the text’s wider musical history, see Maureen Buja’s article, From Silence to Death: The Silver Swan