Swayne, Giles (1946– )

English composer. He studied with Messiaen. In the early 1980s he visited the Gambia and Senegal to study the music of the Jola people.

He studied at Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music, and with Messiaen from 1976. He has worked as an opera répétiteur and has taught at Bryanston School, Dorset, and St Paul's Girls' School, London.

Works Chamber two string quartets (1971, 1977), The Good Morrow, for mezzo and piano (to texts by Donne, 1971), Synthesis for two pianos (1974), string quartets nos. 1 and 2 (1971, 1977), Missa Tiburtina (1985), Into the Light for seven players (1986), Tonos for five players (1987), Songlines for flute and guitar (1987), A Memory of Sky brass quintet (1989), string quartet no. 3 (1993).

Orchestral Orlando's Music for orchestra (1974), Pentecost-Music for orchestra (1977), Song for Hadi for drums and instruments (1983), symphony for small orchestra (1984), The Song of Leviathan for chamber orchestra (1988).

Choral Cry for 28 amplified solo voices, in which the creation of the world is depicted (1979), Count-Down for 16-part chorus and two percussion (1981), Circle of Silence for six voices (1991).

Opera and stage ballet A World Within with tape (on the life of the Brontës, 1978); opera Le nozze di Cherubino (1984); melodrama Harmonies of Hell (1988); children's drama The Song of the Tortoise (1992), The Owl and the Pussycat for narrator and seven instruments (1993).