Jan Swafford
Jan Swafford (born September 10, 1946) is an American author and composer. He earned his
Works
Swafford has written columns on music and other subjects in
His writing honors include a 2012 Deems Taylor Award for internet writing and a Mellon Fellowship at Harvard. His Brahms and Ives biographies were end-of-year Critics' Choices in The New York Times. The Ives biography was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award in biography and won the Pen-Winship prize for a book on a New England subject. His biography Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph in its first week appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.
He has taught at schools including
Swafford's music, which is highly lyrical and moves freely between tonality and atonality, has been called New Romantic in style.[by whom?] There are equal if less overt contributions from world music, especially Indian and Balinese, and from jazz and blues. The titles of his works reveal a steady inspiration from nature and landscape. The composer views his own work as a kind of classicism: a concern with clarity, directness, and expression, or as he puts it, "music that sounds familiar though it is new, works that sound like they wrote themselves."[This quote needs a citation]
Notable are his
Awards and honors
- 1997 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award, Charles Ives: A Life With Music
Bibliography
- Swafford, Jan (1992). The Vintage Guide to Classical Music. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-679-72805-4.
- Swafford, Jan (1998). Charles Ives: A Life with Music. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-31719-0.
- Swafford, Jan (1999). Johannes Brahms: A Biography. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-679-74582-2.
- Swafford, Jan (2014). Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph. Boston: ISBN 978-0-618-05474-9.
- Swafford, Jan (2017). Language of the Spirit: An Introduction to Classical Music. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-09754-8.
- Swafford, Jan (2020). Mozart: The Reign of Love. New York: ISBN 978-0-062-43357-2.
References
- ^ Jan Swafford & Glann Gass: Chamber Works, The Scott Chamber Players (album notes), Database of Recorded American Music
External links
- Official website
- Profile from Tufts University
- "'Missa Solemnis', a Divine Bit of Beethoven", NPR commentary by Swafford