The following guest blog post contributed by Senior Archivist Maya Lerman and Archives Processing Technician Regina Dziergas introduces the Music Division’s Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation Collection, now fully processed and available to the public.
The Music Division is pleased to announce that the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation Collection has been fully processed and is open for research in the Performing Arts Reading Room. The culmination of this project coincides with a milestone for the Music Division and the Library of Congress: 2025 marks 100 years since the first Library of Congress Festival of Chamber Music, held October 28-30, 1925, in the newly completed Coolidge Auditorium. Throughout this centennial year, the Music Division has been celebrating 100 years of Concerts from the Library of Congress, which we owe to the vision and patronage of Mrs. Coolidge in establishing the Coolidge Auditorium as a space for live music and in endowing a concert series that has made this significant music accessible to the public.
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge was a vital part of the history and life of the Music Division. Mrs. Coolidge commissioned composers to produce new musical works, many of which contributed to the Music Division’s early manuscript holdings. Béla Bartók, Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland, Alfredo Casella, Rebecca Clarke, Martha Graham, Paul Hindemith, Darius Milhaud, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky are examples of the luminaries who received Mrs. Coolidge’s patronage to support their work and who are documented at the Library.
Born in Chicago in 1864, Mrs. Coolidge became an accomplished pianist and, later, a composer. She settled in the Berkshire Mountains in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1904. There she built the South Mountain Concert Hall to support the work of chamber music groups and established the Berkshire Festival of Chamber Music and the Berkshire Prize for composition. Seeking to build on the success of these endeavors and to find a location for her growing collection of music manuscripts, in 1922 Mrs. Coolidge was introduced to Carl Engel, Chief of the Music Division, who was interested in finding a way for the Library to host live music performances. Their meeting ultimately developed into a mutually beneficial partnership with the Library, fulfilling Mrs. Coolidge’s vision for the future of chamber music by building the Coolidge Auditorium, commissioning new chamber music works, and increasing accessibility of live performances through her festivals of chamber music, performances at the Library and elsewhere, and radio broadcasts. To this day, the Music Division continues Mrs. Coolidge’s legacy through commissioning composers, presenting world-class live music in the Coolidge Auditorium, and providing access to the music collections she helped build.
The Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation Collection is organized into eleven series, each representing important elements of the collection, and together reflecting the depth and breadth of Mrs. Coolidge’s life and work. The first and most notable is the Music series, containing scores, parts, and sketches of nearly 1,000 works commissioned by Mrs. Coolidge and the foundation, as well as works that Mrs. Coolidge composed, received as gifts or collected. The Correspondence series provides written documentation of the personal and professional relationships formed throughout Mrs. Coolidge’s life, including communications with prominent musical figures and organizations and Library of Congress administrators, as well as family correspondence received as gifts from Coolidge family members.
The Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation and Personal Philanthropic Activities series includes administrative records and accompanying correspondence documenting the work of the Coolidge Foundation, the organization that allowed Mrs. Coolidge to formalize her relationship with the Library of Congress. The Programs series contains event programs from Foundation-sponsored concerts and festivals, as well as other non-sponsored performances Mrs. Coolidge attended, many of which are autographed by the artists who performed. The Photographs series contains visual documentation of the construction of the Coolidge Auditorium, as well as extensive photographs of Mrs. Coolidge, her family, and other notable friends, acquaintances, and musical figures of the first half of the 20th century. The remaining series—Biographical Materials, Scrapbooks, Materials of Interest, Realia, Artwork, and Books—include materials documenting Mrs. Coolidge’s personal and family history, philanthropic endeavors and creative projects, as well as a range of materials collected by Mrs. Coolidge over the course of her lifetime.
Within the series described above, there are many lesser-known collection highlights relating to Mrs. Coolidge’s personal and creative life, including her own original musical compositions, family photograph albums, love letters with her husband, Frederic Shurtleff Coolidge, and original drawings and paintings by Mrs. Coolidge and her mother, Nancy Atwood Sprague. The collection also contains a variety of exemplary materials that document aspects of life of a prominent family in the late 19th and early 20th century, including a Civil War battlefield letter addressed to Mrs. Coolidge’s father, Albert Arnold Sprague, historic photographic materials, travel journals and keepsakes of hair and pressed botanicals. Additionally, the digital exhibition titled “Chamber Music: The Life and Legacy of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge,” curated by the Music Division in 2015, provides an overview of Mrs. Coolidge’s personal history and work as a patron, alongside a sample of digitized materials from the collection.
As detailed in the new finding aid, the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation Collection is rich in research materials about 20th-century music and the inner workings of a prolific arts sponsor. The Music Division is grateful to preserve and provide access to one of our bedrock collections, and to continue to honor Mrs. Coolidge’s legacy. We invite you to explore the wealth of materials documenting the life of one of the world’s most celebrated patrons of music.
To learn more about Mrs. Coolidge’s impact on the Library of Congress and music in the United States, check out the Library’s recent book publication “Let the People Hear It: Concerts from the Library of Congress at 100” (Library of Congress, 2025).