Freda Swain Explained

Freda Swain (31 October 190229 January 1985) was a British composer, pianist and music educator.

Biography

Freda Swain was born in Portsmouth, England, the daughter of Thomas and Gertrude (née Allen) Swain. Her first piano lessons (from age 11) were at the Tobias Matthay Piano School in London, given by Matthay's sister Dora.[1] Three years later she went to study composition with Charles Villiers Stanford and piano with Arthur Alexander at the Royal College of Music,[2] earning awards including the Sullivan Prize in 1921.[3]

In 1924 Swain began teaching at the Royal College and in 1936 she founded the British Music Movement to help promote the efforts of young composers and artists. Swain married Arthur Alexander in 1921, and before World War II the couple toured South Africa and Australia, lecturing, broadcasting and performing recitals.[4] They were both on the founding board of the Surrey College of Music from the mid-1940s. From 1942 they lived in a bungalow on Chinnor Hill in Oxfordshire.[1] Alexander died in 1969. Freda Swain died on 29 January 1985.

Composition

Swain wrote some 450 pieces, piano and chamber music as well as many songs, but also opera and orchestral works, including two piano concertos and a clarinet concerto. Few were performed aside from a series featured in the NEMO Series of concerts that Swain herself founded after the war.[1] Her first major success was The Harp of Aengus for violin and orchestra (after the Yeats poem), with soloist Achille Rivarde at the Queen's Hall in January 1925.[5] The solo Violin Sonata was premiered by May Harrison at the Wigmore Hall on 8 December 1933.[6] Her ‘Airmail’ Piano Concerto, mailed in instalments to her husband Arthur Alexander while he was stuck in South Africa during World War II, was performed by Alexander in Cape Town.[2] She composed a one-act opera Second Chance, but left two other operas incomplete.[7]

Piano compositions include three large scale piano sonatas and 40 or so other works for solo piano, including many educational pieces. There is also a substantial cello sonata, two violin sonatas (one with piano, the other unaccompanied), two string quartets, a piano quartet, a sextet with horn and clarinet, a Suite for Six Trumpets and many other chamber and instrumental pieces.[1]

Swain's surviving manuscripts were handed down to her pupil and friend David Stevens, founder of the Swain-Alexander Trust. In turn they were passed on to Swiss pianist Timon Altwegg in 2005, who has begun recording the piano works for Toccata Classics.[1] A CD of her chamber music was issued by Dutton in 2024.[8]

Selected works

Chamber

Instrumental

Orchestral

Opera

Piano

Songs

Choral

External links

Notes and References

  1. Altwegg, Timon. Freda Swain: an Introduction (notes to Toccata CD TOCC0579 (2022)
  2. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000045979 Blom, Eric, revised Foreman, Lewis. 'Swain, Freda (Mary)' in Grove Music Online, 2001
  3. Web site: The Distaff Side: Some British Women Composers. 21 September 2010.
  4. Web site: British Composer Profiles:Freda Swain (1902-1985). Leach, Gerald. British Music Society. 2012.
  5. Blom, Eric. ‘The Younger English Composers, 8: Freda Swain’, Monthly Musical Record No 59 (1929), p 257-8
  6. 'Freda Swain's New Violin Sonata', Daily Telegraph, 9 December 1933, p. 8
  7. D. Francke: Obituary, The Times (4 Feb 1985)
  8. https://musicwebinternational.com/2024/05/swain-chamber-works-dutton/ 'Freda Swain: Chamber Works'
  9. 'New Quartet by Woman Composer', Daily Telegraph, 12 May 1949, p. 6
  10. 'Young Singers' Spirit of Man', Daily Telegraph, 7 June 1961, p. 17

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