Over the course of her career, the composer Elena Ruehr has found inspiration in very different writers and very different worlds. She has, for example, set poems by Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes to music. Her latest project, “The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage,” recently premiered at MIT and marks another stylistic turn. And as with many artistic projects, the initial spark was serendipitous. Victorian scientific mavens Ruehr, a senior lecturer in MIT Music and Theater Arts and a celebrated, versatile composer, was listening to National Public Radio while…
