Paul Henry Lang

Who was Paul Henry Lang?

Paul Henry Lang was a Hungarian-American musicologist and music critic.

Lang was born in Budapest, Hungary, and was educated in Catholic schools. In 1918, as World War I was coming to an end, he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army though he had not completed school, and sent to the Italian front. When the war ended, he had to make his own way home, and then studied at the University of Budapest and the Budapest Music Academy, under Zoltán Kodály and Erno Dohnanyi, among others. Kodaly, learning that he only played piano, assigned him to learn to play the bassoon. After graduating in 1922, he was an assistant conductor at the Budapest Opera, but was encouraged to study musicology by Kodály and Béla Bartók. At that time serious study in musicology was only available in France and Germany. He began at the University of Heidelberg where he attended classes in philosophy and literature as well. He was not happy in Germany and moved on to the Sorbonne in Paris, where he studied with Andre Pirro. In the 1924 Summer Olympics Lang participated as part of the French National rowing team. He supported himself by playing bassoon in various orchestras and also conducted an emigrant Hungarian chorus. While a student in Paris he began his career as a music critic writing for the Revue Musicale. He completed his dissertation on French lute music, but was not awarded his doctoral degree because he could not afford the large sum needed to engrave the unpublished scores he was discussing and print the dissertation, as required by the university.