Benjamin Johnson Lang
Benjamin Johnson Lang ( born December 28, 1837 in Salem / Massachusetts, † April 3, 1909 in Boston / Massachusetts) was an American organist and pianist, conductor and composer.
Life
Lang had first music lessons from his father, the piano maker, organist and music teacher Benjamin Lang and then at the Boston pianist Francis G. Hill. He has held positions as organist in various churches of his native city before he went in 1855 to Germany to study with Alfred Jaell organ, harmony and composition. During this time he also took lessons with Franz Liszt. After his return to the United States, he continued his education at the pianist and composer Gustav Satter ( 1832-1879 ).
Late 1850s, Lang was the successor of James Cutler Dunn Parker organist of the Handel and Haydn Society. In 1857 he played the solo part in Beethoven's Choral Fantasy under the direction of Carl Zerrahn ( 1826-1909 ). His debut as a conductor, he gave in 1862 in the Boston Music Hall with Mendelssohn's First Walpurgis Night. With a Dedicatory Concert 1863 he appeared together with the organist John Knowles Paine, Eugene Thayer, Samuel Parkman Tuckerman and George Washburne Morgan. In Shakespeare's 300th birthday in 1864 he conducted the first complete performance of Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream in Boston.
During a concert tour in Germany, which it, inter alia, led to Berlin and Leipzig, he also stayed with Richard Wagner in Triebschen on, with his wife Cosima, he was known for his studies at Liszt. In 1875, he directed the world premiere in Boston of Tchaikovsky 's First Piano Concerto with soloist Hans von Bülow.
From its founding in 1871 to 1901 Long led the Boston Apollo Club, one of the most prestigious men's choirs of the United States, with which he gave hundreds of concerts and, inter alia, Works by Mendelssohn, Brahms and Grieg as well as aufführte by American composers such as George Whitefield Chadwick, Arthur Foote and Whitney Eugene Thayer.
Since 1876 he was also conductor of The Cecilia, a mixed choir, which often occurred with orchestra and performed numerous works by Beethoven, Brahms, Bruch, Dvořák, Gade, Handel, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Schumann. The choir was in the period of its existence ( until 1917 ) 200 concerts, singing fifteen American and fifteen world premieres. As a guest conductor seemed to Lang's time, inter alia, Bruch ( 1882), Parker ( 1889), Dvořák (1892 ), Henschel (1902 ) and Colonne ( 1904).
Furthermore, Lang worked together as a soloist with the Philharmonic Society of New York, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Harvard Musical Association. In 1891 he took, who had campaigned as a supporter of Wagner's music for the popularization of the Bayreuth Festival in the U.S. and 1876 guest of honor at the premiere of Der Ring des Nibelungen in Bayreuth was Anton Seidl and his orchestra for the first performance of Parsifal to Boston.
From 1895 to 1897 he was the successor Zerrahns director of the Handel and Haydn Society, with which he, inter alia, Handel's Messiah, Verdi's Requiem and Bach's St. Matthew Passion aufführte.
Long composed symphonies, overtures, chamber music, piano pieces, sacred music and songs. He also worked as a piano teacher; his most important students were Arthur Foote, Ethelbert Nevin (1862-1901) and William Foster Apthorp ( 1848-1913 ). Even his children were known as a musician: Margaret Ruthven Lang (1867-1972) as a composer, Rosamond Long (1878-1971) as a pianist and Malcolm Long (1881-1972) as a pianist and organist.
Works
- The Chase, UA 1882
- Nocturne, 1885
- Sing, Maiden, Sing, UA 1886
- The King Is Dead
- Diversion in C Major, UA 1892
- Te Deum Laudamus in F, UA 1893
- Grand March from David, UA 1894
- Caprice in C Major for Piano, UA 1895
- Diversion in C Major
- David, oratorio
- Classic pianist
- Classic organist
- American composer
- American musician
- Born in 1837
- Died in 1909
- Man