Giles Swayne

Giles Swayne was born in 1946, and spent his infancy in Singapore & Australia and his later childhood in Merseyside and Yorkshire. He began composing as a boy, inspired by being taken to concerts at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool, where he encountered the music of Bartok, Stravinsky and the Viennese serialists. His cousin Elizabeth Maconchy also gave him help and encouragement. In the 1960s, the music of Britten & Tippett joined his pantheon of musical models.

The years 1959-1970s saw great changes in British music. The dominance of Britten & Tippett had slightly faded. Although Swayne greatly admired the work of Messiaen & Stockhausen, and was dazzled by the brilliance of Boulez & Ligeti, he was worried by some contemporary music, which seemed a narrow backwater. Government funding of music was shrinking. US-style Muzak – the sound-track of vulgar consumerism – was ubiquitous; and some of the brightest ideas were coming from nonclassical artists like David Bowie & Bob Marley. Western “classical” music seemed to have lost its way.

In 1976 Swayne heard recordings of music of Ba-Benzélé pygmies in the Congo region. African musical values began to influence his work, and in 1981 he visited Southern Senegal to record the music of the Jola-speaking people of Casamance. These recordings are in the British Library Sound Archive, and can be heard online. His study of African music quickly influenced his work: CRY contains polyrhythmic structures learned from pygmy choral songs; Magnificat I (1982) quotes a Jola melody recorded in Senegal; and Missa tiburtina (1985) satirises the damage caused by missionary zeal. Several other works of this period show African influence: A song for Haddi (Bath Festival 1983), Riff-raff (St Albans Festival 1983), Symphony for small orchestra (ECO, 1984) and Naaotwa Lalá (BBC Philharmonic & Edward Downes, 1984). These pieces inhabit a modal sound-world. They “washed out the ears of my musical imagination” – as Swayne wrote in a programme-note on Solo for guitar, which was commissioned by Julian Bream in 1986. Solo starts in a blues-based mode appropriate to its subtext of American slavery, gradually relaxing it over the course of the piece, until all twelve semitones are in play.

The 1980s and 1990s were busy. Whilst fulfilling a stream of commissions, Swayne saw his work featured regularly in concert-halls & festivals, both at home & abroad. For example, the Proms put on Orlando’s music in 1982, CRY in 1983, Missa tiburtina in 1986, and Pentecost-music in 1990. In 1994 CRY received its second Proms outing, and in 1999 its long-planned sequel, HAVOC, had its Proms premiere.

Between 1990 and 1996, Swayne and his wife NaaOtwa lived in the Akuapem hills in Ghana. These years produced Circle of silence (King’s Singers, 1991); Zebra music, a set of piano-pieces for children (1992); The song of the Tortoise (1992) for choir, children’s voices and orchestra, commissioned by the Bournemouth Sinfonietta and premiered under Nicholas Cleobury; and String quartet no. 3, premiered at Harewood House in 1993 by the Skampa Quartet. Dodging the temptations of bland minimalism, Swayne slowly re-absorbed a more extended musical language; and by 1995 he was using all the semitones again – but in a more personal & controlled way than before his exposure to African music.

This can be heard clearly in The Silent Land for cello and 40-part choir (1996), written on his return to Britain, and premièred at the 1998 Spitalfields Festival by Raphael Wallfisch with Clare College Choir under Tim Brown. The Times called it "a masterpiece" and described Swayne as "the most accomplished choral composer in Britain". In 1998, HAVOC, Swayne’s long-planned sequel to CRY, was commissioned by the BBC for the 1999 Proms. After its première by the BBC Singers and Endymion under Stephen Cleobury, The Independent declared: "Swayne is a master."

In December 1997, violinist Malu Lin & Giles Swayne gave a recital at the Purcell Room on London’s South Bank which included Swayne’s Duo (1975) and a new piece, Echo, which was written in memory of a friend, composer Paul Reade, who had died earlier that year – as well as the César Franck Sonata and Lutoslawski’s Partita. From 2000 onward, Swayne taught composition at Cambridge University, and from 2001 to 2014 he was Composer-in-residence at Clare College, Cambridge. In July 2001 his guitar concerto Mancanza was premiered at the Bath International Guitar Festival by Tom Kerstens, with the City of London Sinfonia conducted by Nicolae Moldaveanu. In October, his wind quintet The murder of Gonzago was premiered at the Pittville Pump Room, Cheltenham. And in May 2002, Malu Lin & Giles Swayne were married.

At the 2004 Bath Festival, Swayne’s Stabat mater was premiered by Bath Camerata under Nigel Perrin. Scored for a cappella SATB voices (soloists & choir) it has been performed many times since then: by the BBC Singers under John Poole in London in 2004; by the Pro Arte Singers under John Poole at Indiana University in 2005; by the Joyful Company of Singers under Peter Broadbent at the Spitalfields Festival in 2006; by Mitteldeutsch Rundfunkchor and Howard Arman in Dessau, Leipzig and Dresden in 2007; and in Cambridge, Norwich and London in March 2008 by the Dmitri Ensemble under Graham Ross, who also recorded it in 2010 on their Naxos CD of Swayne’s choral music. In 2010 Swayne revisited the piece, adding a part for solo cello and giving the new work the title Dolorosa. This was first performed in the Peterskirche, Leipzig in November 2011 by the Mitteldeutsch Rundfunkchor under their conductor Howard Arman, with Anna Carewe (solo cello).

In July 2005 Swayne’s cycle for organ, Stations of the Cross (2004-2005) was premiered in King’s College Chapel by David Titterington, who also played it in Plymouth in August, and at Westminster Cathedral in September. In 2014 it was performed by Clare Innes-Hopkins at Lincoln Cathedral – complete with the linking choral Plainchant tropes (2005) – and in 2020 was recorded for Resonus Records by Simon Nieminski.

In the years 2004-2014, Swayne produced a number of secular choral pieces. His cycle of William Blake settings The human heart appeared in 2009, Uncommon Prayers in 2012, The Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo in 2014, and Everybloom (a setting of excerpts from Joyce’s Ulysses) in 2016. There were instrumental pieces, also: the Sonata for cello & piano (2005) was premièred by Robert Irvine and Fali Pavri at the 2006 Cheltenham Festival, and recorded by them for Delphian Records in 2007 – along with Four lyrical pieces (1970), Canto for cello (1981) and Suite for cello (2007). In January 2008, Leonardo’s Dream for alto sax and piano was premiered at the Purcell Room in London by the late, lamented Hannah Marcinowicz, with Swayne at the piano.

In 2006, Swayne’s Sinfonietta Concertante was premièred at the Bruges Concertgebouw by the Jeune Orchestre Atlantique under Sigiswald Kuijkens; and in 2007 a major work, Symphony – a small world, commissioned by the BBC, was premiered in Cardiff by BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Jac van Steen. In March 2008, Agnes Wisley’s Chillout Fantasy (2007) was premiered at London’s Barbican by the Guildhall Symphonic Wind Ensemble under Peter Gane.

Swayne’s first book of Bagatelles for piano appeared in 2008, and were recorded by Clare Hammond on Prima Facie (Piano Polyptych. String quartet no. 4, was premiered by the Solstice Quartet at the 2009 Cambridge Festival. It was reviewed by Tempo magazine as “a taut and compelling argument whose wise and skilful balance of emotional intensity and intellectual grip was worthy of Maconchy herself.” Zig-zag for organ (2009) was premiered by James McVinney at Westminster Abbey in May, 2010. The second book of Bagatelles for piano followed in 2011, premiered by Swayne himself in August 2011 at the Tout-petit Festival de Musique in St. Germain de Calberte in southern France – along with Complaintes (2010) – four settings of French poems for soprano & piano, performed by soprano Juliette de Massy and the composer. Other song-cycles from this period were: The joys of Travel (2009), commissioned by Benjamin Hulett – a setting for tenor & piano of three pungent poems by Swayne about package holidays; and Chansons devotes et poissonneuses (2014) for soprano and ensemble, commissioned by The Hermes Experiment, who premièred the piece at L’Aura des Arts Festival, in Aubazine in September 2014 and have performed it at St John's, Smith Square in London and at various UK festivals.

Since 2018, Giles Swayne & Malu Lin have lived in Herefordshire. Their recital CD Relationships was issued by Resonus in 2021. In November 2024, The Kiss (1967), Swayne’s cycle of three settings for tenor & piano of war-poems by Siegfried Sassoon, was performed in a Remembrance Day concert at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey by Simon Wall and Matthew Joricz – 57 years after it was written . . .