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, starting to compose after the divorce from her first husband, Romeo Cascarino. 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.

Margaret Garwood died on May 3, 2015 in her home in Wyncote, at age 83, from acute heart failure.

Margaret 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.

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