Category: Choral Music
Instrumentation: a cappella voices
Duration: 2.5 minutes
Text / Source: Poem by Christopher Hatton
Publisher: North Star Music

The Silver Swan is a difficult a cappella setting of the poem by Christopher Hatton. Written in ternary form with a coda, the piece offers a new musical response to a text long associated with Renaissance song and the image of beauty, silence, and death.

The setting is challenging because of its chromaticism and vocal leaps, yet it remains within the realm of tonality. Baxter’s treatment balances expressive intensity with formal control, using harmonic color and melodic movement to deepen the poem’s atmosphere without losing clarity of line.

The Silver Swan is especially appropriate for advanced chamber choirs and collegiate ensembles seeking a contemporary a cappella work with historical resonance. It also connects well with literary or thematic programs on silence, mortality, Renaissance poetry, and musical reinterpretation. See Maureen Buja’s article, From Silence to Death: The Silver Swan, for related commentary on the poem’s wider musical history.