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TRIBUTE
November 11, 2003
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By Robert Commanday
Richard G. Swift, distinguished composer and Professor Emeritus at UC Davis, died Saturday morning at Sutter Davis Hospital. He was 76 and had been in poor health, primarily a heart condition, for 10 years. A member of the UC Davis music faculty, since 1956, he was “a major element in making the department what it has come to be,” his colleague and fellow composer Jerome Rosen said yesterday. Mr. Swift's principal activity was composition and he produced almost 100 compositions, in most forms, especially chamber works for different combinations. Start to last, he was dedicated to serial composition, largely in 12-tone.
Jerry Kuderna, a pianist who was personally close to him and who played most of Mr. Swift's works for piano including a late piece, Radix, Matrix and his last pieces, Four Elegies, yesterday said, “Richard Swift's music reflected his lively mind, warm heart and uncompromising spirit. Once you entered his special musical world and experienced its subtle and irresistble beauty, there was no escape but to play more of it." Notable among his works were six string quartets, Roses Only for soprano and symphony, A Field of Light for eight instruments, and a work for solo guitar A Stitch in Time that has been frequently performed.
Born in Ohio in 1927, Mr. Swift studied English literature at the University of Chicago, switching to music and composition as a graduate student, studying with Grosvernor Cooper, Leland Smith and Leonard Meyer. He has received awards from the American Institute Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm and Rockefeller Foundations, National Endowment for the Arts, and annual awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. His music has been recorded by Orion, NEX, PNM and CRI.
At the University of California, Davis, he was instrumental in building the music library in a major way, served as chair of the Department of Music, 1963-71, as a member of the Editorial Committee, University of California Press, was a UC Faculty Research Lecturer (1982-83) and received the University's Distinguished Teaching Award in 1980.
Mr. Swift's wife Dorothy died in 1985 and he is survived by three sons, John, Michael, Jeremy and Joel, and grandchildren Vanya, Marinka, John, Jesse,
Sean and Zachary. No memorial service is planned.
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