Freda Swain

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. 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. 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.

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 (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. 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. A recording of her Concertino for clarinet was issued in 2026. Suite for Six Trumpets (1952) Tercet for violin, viola and cello

Instrumental Ballade for violin and piano (1956) Miniature Suite for string orchestra (1952) A Pastoral Fantasy (1936–37) Piano Concerto 'Airmail' (1939) Piano Concerto Walking and Dream Tide for string orchestra (or cello and piano)

Opera Second Chance, premiered at Bath in 1955, libretto Swain and M. Rodd The Shadowy Waters (operatic setting, based on Yeats) The Spell (incomplete)

Piano The Croon of the Sea (1920) The Lark on Portsdown Hill (text: composer) Sweet Content (text: Robert Greene) Sympathy (text: Emily Brontë) Three Sonnets by Shakespeare (1936) (with non-vocal prelude, Summer Rhapsody) Winter Field over 100 songs, including settings of Bridges, A. E. Housman and Shakespeare

Choral Bells of Heaven (Christmas carol, text: Mary Brandon) Breathe on Me, Breath of God, anthem Cantata In Memoriam A Gaelic Prayer, anthem Now Rest We All Content (wedding anthem, text: Mary Brandon) Psalm 150 (1973) Rejoice in the Lord (1961) Unseen Heralds (text: Mary Brandon)