Each year on October 30, the Library’s Music Division presents its Founder’s Day concert. This homage to Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge (1864-1953), namesake of our concert hall and founder of our world-renowned concert series, is a longstanding tradition that ensures our appreciation for Mrs. Coolidge’s impact remains strong. We also find joy in sharing Mrs. Coolidge’s story and impact with audiences who are new to the series. This year’s Founder’s Day concert (October 30, 2024, 8 p.m.) features flutist Emi Ferguson and ruckus in an eclectic concert that juxtaposes the music of Georg Philipp Telemann and György Ligeti. Click here to learn more.
Mrs. Coolidge: The Legend
Mrs. Coolidge was born and raised in Chicago to two parents who doted on her and were major supporters of the arts. She trained as a pianist, studied composition, and became one of the first women to appear as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony. After attending boarding school and traveling throughout Europe, she returned to the U.S. and married Frederic Shurtleff Coolidge (1865-1915). Tragedy struck in 1915 and 1916, with Coolidge’s father, mother, and husband all passing away within 18 months of each other. During this period, she began to carry on her father’s work as a philanthropist, providing an initial $100,000 endowment to create Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s musicians’ pension fund. She also built her first of four concert halls, Sprague Hall at Yale University, as a tribute to her late father. She also built the South Mountain Concert Hall (Pittsfield, Massachusetts; 1918), the Coolidge Auditorium (Library of Congress, Washington, DC; 1925), and the concert hall at Mills College (Oakland, California; 1928).
Mrs. Coolidge was a devoted listener and performer of chamber music, both standard repertoire and contemporary. She believed firmly in the importance of exposing American audiences to chamber music and invested extensive financial resources in presenting chamber music concerts at festivals, libraries, and cultural institutions. She also believed in advancing chamber music repertoire by commissioning living composers and ensuring their works would be performed and heard, even if they were not always to her own liking.
In the early 1920s, Mrs. Coolidge developed a friendship with Carl Engel (1883-1944), who was the Chief of the Music Division at the time. The two spent many months corresponding about Mrs. Coolidge’s desire to find a home for the manuscripts of works she commissioned and to explore the possibility of her sponsoring concerts in Washington, D.C. These discussions were in part motivated by Mrs. Coolidge’s desire to ensure that her efforts in promoting chamber music would sustain far past her own time on earth. Having a stable institutional partner was viewed as the key ingredient.
After many months of advocating to Librarian of Congress Dr. Herbert Putnam, Coolidge and Engel received the approval to present a series of “pilot” concerts in February 7-9, 1924, at the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer Gallery, which had recently built a charming auditorium suitable for chamber music. These performances drew members of Congress, diplomats, and dignitaries from as far away as Boston and New York. They were a huge success and gave Coolidge and Engel the proof of concept needed to go to the next stage of their plan: to establish a concert series at the Library of Congress.
While several obstacles stood in their way, Mrs. Coolidge and Engel persisted in their efforts. When they were told there could not be concerts at the Library because there was no concert hall, Mrs. Coolidge said she would fund the construction of an auditorium. When she was told there was no legal mechanism for the Library to accept private funds to build the concert hall, save a new act of Congress, she was more than happy to go straight to Congress to get support for her plan. The first legislation to accept Mrs. Coolidge’s funds for the building the hall was introduced in November 1924 and it was on President Coolidge’s desk (no relation) in January of 1925 for signature. Separate legislation was required to accept and create the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation in the Library of Congress, which would fund the concerts and commissioning program in perpetuity. Mrs. Coolidge’s endowment was the first trust fund established within the Library of Congress using private funds.
The Coolidge Auditorium was miraculously built in ten months, a feat that nobody can envision being repeated in modern times. Coolidge moved the federal government in a way few have managed, but her staying power is revealed in the purpose of her efforts, as she expressed to Putnam in 1926:
“If the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation might foster the interests of musicians, both creative and interpretative, by freeing them from the power of advertising middlemen such as manufacturers, managers, publishers and critics, I should consider it a service, rendered by a small corner of our Government, to Art, to America, and therefore to the idealism of the world.”
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge desired to invite others into the world of music that saved her during her darkest hours. She believed in the good that government could do in nurturing the arts, and her vision was larger than just building concert halls and presenting free concerts. She wanted the arts to be central to American civic identity.
Since 1925, the Music Division has presented thousands of concerts, radio broadcasts, lectures, films, and educational programs. While Mrs. Coolidge’s efforts inspired many to follow in her footsteps with financial support—including the Friends of Music, Gertrude Clarke Whittall, and more—she is, without question, the reason why the series exists. Millions of Americans and people around the world have been touched by the concert series, whether through tuning in to a concert on the radio from California or traveling to the Library to hear unique performance by leading artists, presented in the presence of the manuscripts and archival material that tell the story of the creative process.
All of us in the Music Division owe Mrs. Coolidge our gratitude for her vision, fortitude and savvy as a philanthropist. The traditions she started at the Library have resulted in almost 700 new works in the musical canon (the manuscripts of which become part of the Library’s collections), enriching cultural experiences that many experience over decades and proof that a “government of the people, for the people, and by the people” (The Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln, 1863) can and should have a role in preserving and advancing the arts.
We invite you to experience Concerts from the Library of Congress this season, as we continue our celebration of its centennial.
Founder’s Day Concerts from the Archive
For Further Study
- Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Uncut: Conversation with Coolidge Exhibit Curators & Filmmaker Marjorie Short (October 31, 2015)
- Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation Collection – Finding Aid
- “The Coolidge Legacy” by Cyrilla Barr (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1997) – e-book
- “Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge: American Patron of Music” by Cyrilla Barr (New York: Schirmer Books, 1998)
- Cyrilla Barr Research Materials on Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge – Finding Aid
Previously on In the Muse
- Musical Birthday Wishes to Mrs. Coolidge (October 29, 2020)
- A Musical League of Nations: The 1918 Berkshire Festival of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge (September 19, 2018)
- Coolidge Uncut (October 28, 2015)
- New Exhibit! Chamber Music: The Life and Legacy of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge (August 27, 2015)
- Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge @ 150 (October 29, 2014)
