Richard Swift (composer)

Richard Swift (September 24, 1927 – November 8, 2003) was an American composer and music theorist.

Born in Middlepoint, OH, Richard Swift studied with Leland Smith, Grosvenor Cooper, and Leonard Meyer at the University of Chicago, where he received an MA in 1956. His career was spent teaching at the University of California, Davis, from 1956 until his retirement in 1991. He was the recipient of many awards, amongst others from the National Endowment for the Arts (1977), and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1978). He died in Davis, California in 2003 (Fennelly 2005).

In addition to his activity as a composer, he also published many articles on twentieth-century music and music theory.

His wife, Dorothy Zackrisson Swift (1928–1990), was an accomplished musician and poet who wrote the libretto for Swift’s opera, The Trial of Tender O’Shea (1964). Richard Swift also set two of her poems in the song cycle Roses Only, conceived as a memorial for her (Morris 1997, 15). Her collected poetry was published posthumously (D. Z. Swift 1992).

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