This is Bird Note.

16 swans in flight.

Immaculate white on glistening wings.

Magnificate birds of such size that their wing strokes seemed to flow in slow motion.

Finnish composer Jean Sibelius wrote about this scene in his diary in April 1915.

These were whooper swans, migrating north to Finland.

The composer was entranced by both the sight and the sound of the swans. He watched the swans depart, like a gleaming silver ribbon, he wrote,

and declared the image one of the great experiences of my life.

Sebelius transformed the breathtaking natural moment into music.

The swans undulating wings and tremulous voices carried the central theme of his acclaimed Fifth Symphony,

a theme written just after the swans flew over.

Swans have charged composers' imaginations again and again.

There's Chikovsky's Swan Lake.

And 20 years earlier, Sibelius himself had written the Swan of Tuanola,

a tone poem that captures the quiet grace of a resting swan.

It was nature's simple elegance that inspired Sibelius,

a flight of swans.

For Bird Note, I'm Michael Stein.