Howard Swanson

Howard Swanson was an American composer, born in Atlanta, Georgia. Swanson studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He received fellowships, awards, and prizes, including a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1939 that brought him to Paris for lessons with Nadia Boulanger. He returned to the US in 1940 ahead of the German occupation of France.

The New York Philharmonic performed his Short Symphony; the Louisville Orchestra and the Juilliard School were among his commissioners. Virgil Thomson said, "Howard Swanson is a composer whose work singers (and pianists, too) should look into. It is refined, sophisticated of line and harmony in a way not at all common among American music writers"