Margaret Ruthven Lang

From ChoralWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

Life

Born: 27 November 1867

Died: 29 May 1972

Biography

Margaret Ruthven Lang was an American composer, affiliated with the Second New England School. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the eldest child of Frances Morse Burrage Lang, an amateur singer, and Benjamin Johnson (B.J.) Lang, composer, organist and accompanist (later director) of several choral groups including: The Apollo Club, The Cecilia Society, and the Handel and Haydn Society. The family was part of the Boston musical aristocracy where famous musicians were frequent guests and the composer Richard Wagner was counted among their friends. Wagner’s children were her playmates. She received lessons in harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration, then went to Munich to study violin and counterpoint, but she was denied entrance into the Royal Conservatory of Music as a female. She returned to Boston and continued studies in orchestration and composition. She became a successful and productive composer and her works were often performed in Boston concert halls. In 1893, the Boston Symphony Orchestra premiered her Dramatic Overture, Op. 12, the first composition by a woman to be performed by a major American symphony orchestra. After she stopped composing, she was devoted to religious work, attending the Episcopal Church of the Advent in Boston. She was subscriber to the Boston Symphony Orchestra for a record 91 consecutive years. In 1967, the orchestra performed a concert in honor of her 100th birthday. In her honor, they installed a plaque on her seat, 1st Balcony, Right, B.

View the Wikipedia article on Margaret Ruthven Lang.

Choral Works

Partsongs for Mixed Voices

Art Songs

 
Click here to search for this composer on CPDL

Publications

External links