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B. J. Lang

Salem, 1837 - 1909, Boston

BiographyLang, Benjamin Johnson (28 Dec. 1837-3 Apr. 1909), organist, pianist, and choral conductor, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Lang, a piano teacher and church organist, and Hannah B. Learock. His first teacher was his father, and he later studied with F. G. Hill in Boston. At the age of fifteen he became organist and choir director of the Somerset St. Baptist Church in Boston, but in 1855, at the age of eighteen, he joined the growing number of young American musicians studying in Europe. There he studied first in Paris with Alfred Jaëll and Gustav Satter and later in Weimar with Franz Liszt, of whom he said, "He was most generous in his artistic advice, which always was given gratis."

Although Lang's early ambition was a career as a concert pianist, on his return to Boston in 1858 he became organist and choir director of the South Congregational Church, a position he held for twenty years, and a year later he was appointed organist of the Handel & Haydn Society under Carl Zerrahn. In 1861 he married Frances Morse Burrage; they had a son and two daughters.

Lang continued to perform as a pianist, and since he was for many years one of the few in Boston who had mastered some of the larger works for piano and orchestra, he occasionally appeared as soloist with the Boston Orchestra under Theodore Thomas. But he also concertized as an organist. In 1863 he took part in the inauguration of the large Walcker organ in Boston Music Hall, and two years later he presided at the memorial service for President Abraham Lincoln that was held there. He began teaching as soon as he settled in Boston, gradually building an enviable reputation as an educator. Among his more notable pupils were Arthur Foote, Ethelbert Nevin, William Apthorp, and his daughter Margaret Ruthven Lang, later to achieve prominence as a composer.

It was perhaps his long association with the Handel & Haydn Society that kindled Lang's interest in choral conducting. In 1868 he organized the Apollo Club, a chorus of male voices, and in 1874 he created the Cecilia Society, a mixed-voice chorus that remains active at the end of the twentieth century. He conducted both of these groups until almost the end of his life. As a choral director, Lang boldly introduced Boston audiences to such large-scale works as Berlioz's Damnation of Faust and Requiem, Bach's Mass in B minor, Brahms's Requiem, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Antonín Dvorák's Requiem, and such esoterica as Mendelssohn's Comancho's Wedding and a concert version of Wagner's Parsifal.

In 1888 Lang became organist and choirmaster of King's Chapel in Boston, where he directed a mixed quartet composed of some of the best singers in Boston, and during 1898 and 1899 he initiated a series of musical services in which a larger mixed choir performed. In 1895, after many years as its organist, he assumed the direction of the Handel & Haydn Society, holding that position for two years during a period of considerable turmoil. Zerrahn, who had directed the Handel & Haydn for over forty years, was refused reappointment by the board of directors, and Lang was promoted to director in his place. Although Lang had amply proven his skill with choruses, however, it became apparent that he did not have Zerrahn's command of the orchestra. The chorus and its directors were divided into two warring factions, and in the end Zerrahn's supporters gained the upper hand. Zerrahn was reinstated in 1897, only to retire a year later.

While many of his contemporaries were prolific composers, Lang seems to have been inordinately modest about his own efforts in this area. Although he wrote many orchestral, chamber, piano, and choral works, including David, an oratorio, most of these remained unpublished. His choir at King's Chapel performed many of his anthems from manuscript, and he is said to have often improvised impressive organ postludes, based on the last hymn in the service.

Lang adroitly balanced his multiple careers, becoming in the process one of the most highly regarded musicians in Boston during his lifetime and associating with many of the other notable artistic figures of the period. One of these, the artist Winslow Homer, was a good friend of the Lang family and in 1895 made a fine pencil drawing of Lang at the organ, now in the Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine. Always concerned with the advancement of professional standards, Lang was among the group of prominent organists who in 1896 founded the American Guild of Organists.

In the year preceding his death, Lang collaborated with the up-and-coming young Boston organ-builder Ernest M. Skinner in the design of a large new organ for King's Chapel but died suddenly at his Boston home as it was being completed. The new organ was played for the first time at his funeral, and his son Malcolm succeeded him as organist of the church. Writing just a few years before Lang's death, the music critic Louis C. Elson placed Lang with orchestra conductor Theodore Thomas as a vital influence upon musical taste in Boston: "They have taught the public how to appreciate the best music, and have made it familiar with the modern masterpieces."

Bibliography

The Boston Public Library houses a large collection of Lang's papers, including programs, correspondence, and manuscripts of music. Major sources of information on Lang's life and work include Louis C. Elson's American Music (1904; rev. ed., 1925) and an interview by H. J. Storer in The Musician 12 (1907): 475-76. During the period in which it was published (1852-1881) the periodical Dwight's Journal of Music often mentioned Lang's performances, particularly as a choral director. His long association with the Handel & Haydn Society is chronicled in H. Earle Johnson's history of that organization, Hallelujah, Amen! (1965).

Barbara Owen

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Citation:
Barbara Owen. "Lang, Benjamin Johnson";
http://www.anb.org/articles/18/18-00701.html;
American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
Access Date: Fri Aug 09 2013 16:21:29 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time)
Copyright © 2000 American Council of Learned Societies.

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