Margaret Garwood

Margaret Garwood (March 22, 1927, Haddonfield, New Jersey – May 3, 2015, Philadelphia) was an American composer who is best known for her operas.

She turned into composition relatively late in her life, at age 35.

She stated that through composition, she had "found her fulfilment" in life.

About her late start in composition, she stated that before she was 35, she "...was totally absorbed in becoming a concert pianist at that time, and taught and coached singers, accompanied, played chamber music, played in cocktail lounges, worked with an opera company."

Garwood became best known for her operatic adaptation of literary works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, including The Scarlet Letter and "Rappaccini's Daughter".

She also composed works for instrumental chamber ensembles, orchestras, and other vocal ensembles.

Many of her works were commissioned by the Pennsylvania Opera Theater.

Garwood received a master's degree in Composition from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where her husband Dr. Donald Chittum worked as a professor of world music and music theory.

She taught at Muhlenberg College, where she taught students like composer Andrea Clearfield.

Garwood was born in New Jersey on March 22, 1927.

Her father, Morse Garwood, was a tax lawyer, and her mother, Miriam Frew, was a feminist housewife.

She also had a brother, Charles Garwood, who was born in 1930.

There were no musicians in her immediate family, but music was always present in her family through audio recordings and radio broadcasts of the music of Richard Wagner and Ludwig van Beethoven.

Her first musical experiences involved playing songs on the piano by ear when she was six years old.

At this age, she started to have formal piano lessons with Carol Johnston Sharpe.

When Garwood was fourteen, her family moved to a farm in Chester County, Pennsylvania.

She continued her piano studies with Allison Drake from the Philadelphia Conservatory for two years.

She also received lessons from Earle Echternacht, a private instructor in Lancaster, for an additional year.

Garwood moved from Chester County to Philadelphia with her mother in 1944 when her parents divorced.

In Philadelphia, Garwood continued her piano studies while her mother worked for Planned Parenthood, first as a field worker and then as an administrator.

In 1950, she took a job with a local opera company as an assistant to composer and director Romeo Cascarino.

Eventually, Garwood and Cascarino married in 1953.

She learned about composition and orchestration by listening to his music and observing his writing process.

During this time, she taught piano at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Here she met Donald Chittum, who became a strong supporter of her work, and eventually her husband.

From 1958 to 1970, Garwood would commute from Philadelphia to New York City to study with Joseph Prostakoff, himself a student of Abby Whiteside.

In 1964, while studying with Prostakoff, Garwood began working as a composer.

Prostakoff introduced Garwood to Miriam Gideon, another Abby Whiteside student.

Gideon became Garwood's composition mentor.

Gideon served as an educated and informed soundboard for when Garwood needed assistance with her compositions.

In 1969, Garwood met and married her second husband, economist Joe Oberman.

In 1970, they moved to a farm in East Greenville, two hours from Philadelphia.

During this time, Garwood developed a rabbit growing business.

She said, "I didn't believe pianists should go to college. They should stay home and practice. To this end, I studied piano extensively, going to New York every week for 12 years, and took courses that I felt like taking at the Philadelphia Music Academy. In 1975, after my second divorce, I applied for a teaching job at Muhlenberg University in Allentown, but although I had been teaching from 1953 to 1970 at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, I needed a Master's degree in order to teach at Muhlenberg."

She resumed teaching piano in 1975 in Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Garwood and Oberman divorced in 1979, and Garwood resumed her teaching in Muhlenberg College until 1984.

In 1981, Garwood married Dr. Donald Chittum, a professor of music at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Chittum insisted Garwood quit her teaching career to focus on her compositional work.

This relationship lasted until Gideon's death in 1996.

Margaret Garwood died on May 3, 2015, in her home in Wyncote, at age 88, from acute heart failure.