“If there were any doubt that Giles Swayne is the most accomplished choral composer in Britain … the premiere of The Silent Land would have swept it aside… The silent land is a worthy companion for… Tallis' 28-part masterpiece Spem in alium. Praise indeed.”
Richard Morrison - The Times
Born in 1946, Giles Swayne made his mark as a composer in the mid-Seventies with orchestral pieces such as Orlando’s music (1974), Pentecost music (1976) and Symphony for small orchestra, and choral music of huge impact and depth – culminating in his groundbreaking work for 28 amplified & electronically treated voices, CRY, which was first performed in 1980 at St John’s Smith Square, London. It made an even wider impact at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in 1982, and even more so in the Albert Hall Proms in 1983, Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1988, and again in the Proms in 1994. CRY put Swayne firmly on the map.
The Silent Land for cello and 40-part choir (1996) was 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'. HAVOC, the 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 and Giles Swayne gave a recital at the Purcell Room which included Swayne’s Duo of 1975 and a new piece, Echo. From 2000, Swayne taught composition at Cambridge; from 2001 to 2014 he was Composer-in-residence at Clare College. In May 2002, Malu Lin & Giles Swayne were married.
Since 2018, Giles Swayne and Malu Lin have lived in Herefordshire. Their recital CD Relationships was issued by Resonus Records in 2021. In November 2024, The Kiss, Swayne’s 1967 song-cycle for tenor & piano on poems by Siegfried Sassoon, was performed at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.
He followed it with a steady stream of powerful works – including Magnificat I (1982) for the choir of Christ Church, Oxford (which soon became a choristers’ favourite; Riff-raff for organ (for the 1983 St Albans Festival) which became an organ repertoire regular; Missa Tiburtina (1985, in response to the 1984 Ethiopian famine); The silent land of 1996 (see review above), and CRY’s sister-piece HAVOC (1999) which was commissioned for the 2000 Proms.
In 1996, the organ concerto Chinese whispers, commissioned by the St Albans International Organ Festival, was premiered by Kevin Bowyer and the Britten Sinfonia under Nicholas Cleobury. More recently, other organ works followed, including the monumental, hour-long sequence in two books and fourteen movements Stations of the Cross (2004) and the lighter-hearted Mr. Bach’s Bottle-bank (also in 2004).
In his FREE recital in St Albans Cathedral at 3pm on Sunday 3rd August, the celebrated organ virtuoso Jamie McVinnie will perform the premiere of my new piece Twinkletoes, which I wrote for him earlier this year. Lasting seven minutes, it is a set of seven variations on a riff (or raff) which is first heard on the pedals – or, as the great Fats Waller put it in “Your feet’s too big”, the peedal extremities. Each variation is more manic than the last, until the listener may fear for the physical and/or mental health of James McVinnie and myself. Disaster is averted, however, by the last variation, which is slow and heavily tranquillised.
The programme will also include my RIFF-RAFF, which was commissioned by the St Albans Festival and first performed by Andrew Parnell in St Albans Cathedral on July 9th 1983.