Margaret Ruthven Lang

Margaret Ruthven Lang (November 27, 1867 – May 29, 1972) was an American composer and violinist primarily active in Boston. Lang is often considered the first woman composer to have a composition performed by a major American symphony orchestra, when her now-lost Dramatic Overture was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1893. Life Early life and education Margaret Lang was born in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1867. She was the eldest child of Frances Morse Burrage Lang, an amateur singer, and Benjamin Johnson “B. J.” Lang, active as a conductor, pianist, organist and composer. Her father was a central figure in Boston’s musical life, and as the city’s leading choral conductor, he founded two choral societies: the Apollo Club and Boston Cecilia; as an organist he was closely associated with the Handel and Haydn Society and a number of city churches. These connections through B.J. permitted Margaret’s music to be regularly included in the programs of these ensembles. The Lang family home was a center of cosmopolitan music-making, hosting many of the period’s most eminent musical figures, including Hans von Bülow, Antonín Dvořák and Ignacy Jan Paderewski. As B.J. wa