Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge - Coolidge Foundation

Coolidge Foundation

Her most innovative and costly endeavor, however, was her partnership with the Library of Congress, resulting in the construction of the 500-seat Coolidge Auditorium, specifically intended for chamber music, in 1924. This was accompanied by the establishment of the Coolidge Foundation to organize concerts in that auditorium and to commission new chamber music from both European and American composers, as it continues to do today.

Coolidge had a reputation for promoting "difficult" modern music (though she declined to support one of the most modern of all composers, Charles Ives). But she never aimed at such a reputation and explained her preferences in music as follows: "My plea for modern music is not that we should like it, nor necessarily that we should even understand it, but that we should exhibit it as a significant human document." Though American herself, she had no national preferences, and in fact most of her commissions went to European composers. She didn't have any urge to specifically promote women composers, either.

The most lasting memorial to Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge's patronage of music are the compositions which she commissioned from practically every leading composer of the early 20th century. Among the best-known of those compositions are the following:

• Samuel Barber: Hermit Songs, Op. 29
• Béla Bartók: String Quartet No. 5
• Benjamin Britten: String Quartet No. 1
• Aaron Copland: Appalachian Spring
• Francis Poulenc: Flute Sonata
• Sergei Prokofiev: String Quartet No. 1
• Maurice Ravel: Chansons madécasses
• Arnold Schoenberg: String Quartet No. 3, String Quartet No. 4
• Igor Stravinsky: Apollon musagète
• Anton Webern: String Quartet
• Sir Arthur Bliss: Oboe Quintet
• Ottorino Respighi: Trittico Botticelliano

The list of composers who benefited from Coolidge's support is impressive, including also Ernest Bloch, Frank Bridge, Alfredo Casella, George Enescu, Howard Hanson, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Paul Hindemith, Bohuslav Martinů, Darius Milhaud, Rebecca Helferich Clarke, and Albert Roussel.