Marion Margaret Scott (16 July 1877 – 24 December 1953) was an English violinist, musicologist, writer, music critic, editor, composer, and poet.
Marion Scott entered the Royal College of Music in 1896 to study violin with Enrique Fernández Arbós, piano with Marmaduke Barton, and composition with Charles Villiers Stanford and Walford Davies.
Later Scott served as editor of the Royal College of Music Magazine (1939–1944), carrying it through the difficult war years from her temporary residence in Bridgwater, where she and her sister Stella had gone with their elderly mother.
Their programs at Aeolian Hall featured new works by Stanford, Frank Bridge, James Friskin, Hubert Parry, William Hurlstone and others, as well as occasional early music by Purcell and Arne and their contemporaries.
Although she was a gifted violinist, frequent ill health prevented Scott from pursuing a career as a solo concert artist, but she continued to work as a musician giving recitals and playing in orchestras, often serving as leader under conductors including Charles Stanford, Gustav Holst, Walter Parratt and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
Some critics called the slim volume "charming", the poems "exceedingly gracious, clever and withal philosophical", while others found it uneven in quality and weighed down by "too many adjectives".
Always an adventurous pioneer, Scott opened the field of music criticism to women when, in 1919, she became the London correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor.
She was the moving force behind the founding of the Society of Women Musicians (1911–1972) with her friends Katherine Eggar and Gertrude Eaton (1861–1940), a singer, editor and prison reformer.
The founding women and their Provisional Council made it clear that the society would have no political agenda and that it would be open to men who could join as associate members.
By 1918, the SWM had earned such an enviable reputation that music critic, editor and teacher Percy A. Scholes (1877–1958) regarded the organisation as "a model for men".
When Gurney began writing poetry during World War I, Scott encouraged him and acted as both his business manager and editor as he sent an increasing number of poems home from the Front.
When Gurney was committed to the City of London Mental Hospital in 1922 suffering from severe bipolar illness, Scott remained close to him, dealing with his doctors, making decisions about his care, taking him on day trips and providing financial support.
Marion Scott was a significant force in reshaping women's roles in classical music, in promoting and championing the work of several generations of British composers and musicians.