Freda Swain


Freda Swain was a British composer, pianist and music educator.

Biography

Freda Swain was born in Portsmouth, England, the daughter of Thomas and Gertrude Swain. Her first piano lessons were at the Tobias Matthay Piano School in London, given by Matthay's sister Dora. Three years later she went to study composition with Charles Villiers Stanford and piano with Arthur Alexander at the Royal College of Music, earning awards including the Sullivan Prize in 1921.
Swain married Arthur Alexander in 1921, and before World War II the couple toured South Africa and Australia, lecturing, broadcasting and performing recitals. In 1924 she 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. With her husband she was 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. 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. Her first major success was The Harp of Aengus for violin and orchestra, with soloist Achille Rivarde at Queen's Hall in January 1925. The solo Violin Sonata was premiered by May Harrison at Wigmore Hall on 8 December 1933. 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. She composed a one-act opera Second Chance, but left two other operas incomplete.
Her 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, two string quartets, a piano quartet, a sextet with horn and clarinet, a Suite for Six Trumpets and many other chamber and instrumental pieces.
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. Dutton Vocalion issued a CD of her chamber music in 2024 and another of her music for violin and piano in 2025, including her large scale Violin Sonata of 1947. In June 2024 the Henschel Quartet revived her first string quartet, the Norfolk, at the Aldeburgh Festival.

Selected works

Chamber

  • Dance Forms from an Unknown Country, for flute, oboe, clarinet and piano
  • Festival Suite for horn, piano and percussion
  • Lamentations, for 2 cellos and piano
  • Piano Quartet in G minor, The Sea
  • '* Sextet
  • Solemn Salutation for brass ensemble
  • String Quartet No. 1 in E minor Norfolk
  • String Quartet No. 2 in G minor
  • Suite for Six Trumpets
  • Tercet for violin, viola and cello

    Instrumental

  • Ballade for violin and piano
  • Berceuse for violin and piano
  • By the Loch for cello and piano
  • Cello Sonata in C minor
  • Contrasts for clarinet and piano
  • A Country Pastoral for organ
  • Danse Barbare for violin and cello
  • English Reel for viola and piano
  • English Pastoral for organ
  • Fantasy Suite for oboe and piano
  • Highland Hills for violin and piano
  • Hornpipe, Air, Jig and Finale, for violin and piano
  • Imitation and Reversion for violin and piano
  • Laburnum Tree for clarinet and piano
  • Lento con espressione for violin and piano
  • Lento e teneramente for violin and piano
  • Nocturne for violin and piano
  • Pastoral Reflection for violin and piano
  • Pipe Tunes for clarinet and piano
  • Rhapsody for clarinet and piano
  • Sonata for violin in C minor ??
  • Sonata for violin in B minor, The River 1925
  • Sonata for violin in G minor
  • Song at Evening for viola and piano
  • Summer Rhapsody No. 1 for viola and piano
  • Vielle Chanson Triste for violin and piano
  • Waving Grass for clarinet and piano
  • The Willow Tree for clarinet and piano

    Orchestral

  • Clarinet Concerto
  • Concertino for clarinet, horn and strings
  • The Harp of Angus, tone poem for violin and orchestra
  • Miniature Suite for string orchestra
  • A Pastoral Fantasy
  • Piano Concerto 'Airmail'
  • Piano Concerto
  • Walking and Dream Tide for string orchestra

    Opera

  • Second Chance, premiered at Bath in 1955, libretto Swain and M. Rodd
  • The Shadowy Waters
  • ''The Spell''

    Piano

  • The Croon of the Sea
  • Crossbow Castle
  • An English Idyll
  • Humoresque
  • Mountain Ash
  • Prelude and Toccata
  • The Red Flower
  • Scherzo for three pianos
  • Sonata Saga in F minor
  • Sonata No. 1 in A minor, The Skerries
  • Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp minor
  • Sonatina
  • Two South Africa Impressions: 'Mimosa' and 'The Lonely Dove'
  • Spring Mood
  • Waltz Charming
  • ''The Windmill''

    Songs

  • April
  • Blessing
  • The Chevalier's Lament
  • Experience
  • The Green Lad From Donegal
  • The Indwelling, song cycle for voices, strings, piano and drum
  • The Lark on Portsdown Hill
  • Sweet Content
  • Sympathy
  • Three Sonnets by Shakespeare
  • Winter Field
  • over 100 songs, including settings of Bridges, A. E. Housman and Shakespeare

    Choral

  • Bells of Heaven
  • Breathe on Me, Breath of God, anthem
  • Cantata In Memoriam
  • A Gaelic Prayer, anthem
  • Now Rest We All Content
  • Psalm 150
  • Rejoice in the Lord
  • ''Unseen Heralds''