Love is Everywhere: Songs of Margaret Ruthven Lang

Margaret Ruthven Lang (1867-1972) was born in Boston, and lived long enough to have her 100th birthday commemorated by a concert in her honor by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, to which she was, and still is, the longest consecutive subscriber.

Her parents, both musicians, were prominent in Boston musical life, and indeed brought the international music scene to their home; they were friends of Dvorak, Liszt and Wagner.  Young Margaret showed immense musical ability at a young age, and the list of her teachers reads like a Who’s Who of American music of the nineteenth century:  George Whitefield Chadwick, John Knowles Paine, Edward MacDowell.

Lang's compositions covered a large territory; she wrote piano, chamber, choral and orchestral music.  Her 140-odd songs are distinctively turn-of-the-century Americana, and she chose many of her texts from the works of female poets of the day.

Lang stopped composing in the early 20th century; her last composition, a trio of pedagogical piano pieces, was published in 1919.  This collection of her songs is Volume 1, and Volume 2 is scheduled for release in the spring.  There are two CDs in this release; the first is the performance of the songs, and the second is a data disc including printable scores for all the songs in both volumes, as well as several PDFs of original manuscripts.