Contents • • • • • • • • • Biography [ ] Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge's father was a wealthy wholesale dealer in. She was musically talented and studied as well as composition.

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She married the physician Frederic Shurtleff Coolidge who died from syphilis contracted from a patient during surgery, leaving her with their only child Albert. Soon after, her parents died as well. Coolidge's cousin was, the founder of. Coolidge provided with funds for the founding of the school in 1916.

Make The Teacher Walk The Plank Game For Children. She inherited a considerable amount of money from her parents and decided to spend it on promotion of chamber music, a mission she continued to carry out until her death at the age of 89 in. Due to her husband's profession, she also gave financial support to medical institutions. Coolidge's financial resources were not unlimited but through force of personality and conviction she managed to raise the status of chamber music in the United States, where the major interest of composers had previously been in orchestral music, from curiosity to a seminal field of composition. Her devotion to music and generosity to musicians were spurred by her own experience as a performing musician: she appeared as a pianist up to her 80s, accompanying world-renowned instrumentalists.

Coolidge established the in 1916 and started the Berkshire Music Festival at South Mountain,, two years later. Out of this grew the, which she also supported. She was elected a Fellow of the in 1951.

Elizabeth's only son, Albert, graduated from the and was a chemical physicist, political activist, and civil libertarian. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Medals [ ] In 1932, Coolidge established the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Medal for 'eminent services to chamber music.' The medals were initially awarded by the. But, in 1949 — after objections by U.S. Congressmen over the appropriateness of a government body awarding prizes in fine arts and literature to individuals who might harbor dissident views towards the U.S. (re: and the ) — the discontinued awarding medals of any kind, including (i) the, the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Medal for 'eminent services to chamber music, and (iii) three prizes endowed by in connection with an annual national exhibition of prints.

Recipients [ ] Earlier Coolidge Prizes and Commissions • 1918 – • 1919 –: Chamber Music Prize for the Berkshire Festival • 1920 – • 1921 – (1874–1945) • 1922 –: Chamber Music Prize for the Berkshire Festival • 1923 – Commissions for the Berkshire Festival: • 1936 –: String Quartet no. 4 Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Medals for Eminent Services to Chamber Music •, Four Diversions, string quartet, composed in 1930 • (1938) • • • • (1941) • (1941) • (1941) • (1942), Sonata for Violin and Piano • (1943) • (1945) • (1948) Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Medal for Conductors • (1928–2007) (1955) Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Medal for Best Performance of Contemporary Music • The Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Medal for the Best String Quartet in Europe • The Netherlands String Quartet (1965) Other commissions [ ] In 1945 she commissioned the, led.

The Sprague Memorial Hall at was also financed by Coolidge. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation [ ] Her most innovative and costly endeavor, however, was her partnership with the, resulting in the construction of the 500-seat, specifically intended for chamber music, in 1924. This was accompanied by the establishment of the Elizabeth Sprague 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. Print Shop Mail Suite V7 Cracked here. Support of composers and musical works [ ] Coolidge had a reputation for promoting 'difficult' modern music (though she declined to support one of the most modern of all composers, ). 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. She sponsored the 1927 tour of the United States of composer Ottorino Resphigi and his wife, the soprano Elsa. The conclusion of the tour was a program held at the Library of Congress chamber music hall that she had funded, and at that occasion Resphigi promised to dedicate his next musical composition to Mrs. That composition turned out to be the Trittico Botticelliano, inspired by three Botticelli paintings on display at the Uffizi museum in Florence, Italy. The first performance of the work was at a concert in Vienna at the end of that same year, with the Resphigis in attendance. The most lasting memorial to Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge's patronage of music are the compositions which she commissioned from many leading composers of the early 20th century.

Among the best-known of those compositions are the following: •: •: •: •: String Quartet No. 58 •: •: •: First Piano Concerto (1937) •: •: •: •: •:, •: •: •: Oboe Quintet •: Trittico Botticelliano Other composers supported by Coolidge include,,,,,,,,,, and.

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