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