Marga Richter

Florence Marga Richter (October 21, 1926 – June 25, 2020) was an American composer of classical music, and pianist. Biography Marga Richter was born in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, the daughter of the American soprano Inez Chandler (1885–1956) and a German army captain, Paul Richter. She studied piano at the MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis with Irene Hellner and with Helena Morsztyn in New York City. She entered the Juilliard School of Music in 1945 and studied composition with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti and piano with Rosalyn Tureck, graduating with a BS and then MS degree in 1951. Richter was the first woman to graduate from Juilliard with a master’s degree in composition. After completing her studies, she taught music appreciation at Nassau Community College from 1971 to 1972, and later began working as a composer full-time. Richter composed several works for the Harkness Ballet in the early 1950s. Her music was also performed, recorded, and produced on numerous albums by MGM recordings at this time. During the 1970s, two of Richter’s large-scale orchestral works Landscapes of the Mind I and Blackberry Vines and Winter Fruit received significant performances, and s