JA
Jan Swafford
Jan Swafford (born September 10, 1946) is an American author and composer. He earned his Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude from Harvard College and his M.M.A. and D.M.A. from the Yale School of Music.
Jan Swafford (born September 10, 1946) is an American author and composer. He earned his Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude from Harvard College and his M.M.A. and D.M.A. from the Yale School of Music. His teachers included Earl Kim at Harvard, Jacob Druckman at Yale, and Betsy Jolas at Tanglewood. He has written respected musical biographies of Charles Ives, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as well as the Vintage Guide to Classical Music and the introduction to music “Language of the Spirit.” His books are widely translated, including editions in Spanish, Chinese, Italian, and Portuguese. He appeared in the award-winning 2018 German documentary The Unanswered Ives. Works Swafford has written columns on music and other subjects in Slate, and is heard as a commentator on NPR and the BBC. He is a regular program annotator for orchestras and venues including the Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, the Metropolitan Opera, and Carnegie Hall. He provided liner notes for two DGG collections of the complete Beethoven symphonies. His writing honors include a 2012 Deems Taylor Award for internet writing, a Mellon Fel
- Era
- Post-War
- Lived
- 1946–present
- From
- United States
- Born in
- Chattanooga
- Known as
- composer, musicologist, biographer, music critic, journalist, musicographer