The Fairy Godmother of Chamber Music: Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Photograph of bronze relief sculpted by Sir Henry Kitson. 1933. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Collection. Music Division.
The special collections in the Music Division represent the creative life of women in myriad ways. Primary source materials
tell the story of women composers such as Ruth Crawford Seeger and Carrie Jacobs Bond and performers such as singer Geraldine
Farrar and violinist Maud Powell. The entrepreneurial talents of women can be seen in collections such as that of the National Negro Opera Company, founded and directed by Mary Cardwell Dawson, or the Edward and Marian MacDowell Collection, which documents the vision and tenacity of Marian MacDowell, founder of the MacDowell Colony (see “The House that Marian Built”). Especially important to the Library of Congress are those collections resulting from women's patronage.7 The Music Division is particularly fortunate to be the beneficiary of such support.
The generosity of two remarkable American women, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge (1864-1953) and Gertrude Clarke Whittall (1867-1965),
was instrumental in the formation of the first special collections in music at the Library of Congress. Elizabeth Sprague
Coolidge was an ardent supporter of chamber music and, in 1925, established a foundation at the Library of Congress to promote
the composition and performance of new chamber works. At the time her endowment was without precedent at the Library and served
as a model for those to follow. It funded the construction of the Coolidge Auditorium in the Library of Congress, an intimate
state-of-the-art concert hall that has seen premieres of such works as Igor Stravinsky's Apollon Musagète and Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, both Coolidge commissions. The endowment also supports musicological lectures and commissions new works of chamber music,
some by women composers. The resulting collection of commissioned autograph scores and related correspondence is part of the
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Collection. Among composers represented are Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979), Mary Howe (1882-1964), Mél Bonis (Mme. Albert Domange) (1858-1937),
Clara Wildschut (1906-1950), Vivian Fine (1913-2000), Miriam Gideon (1906-1996), and Sofia Gubaydulina (b. 1931). Mrs. Coolidge
was a composer herself and several of her songs and chamber pieces are included in
the collection.8
Gertrude Clarke Whittall. Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZ6-1192 (b&w film copy neg.)
Gertrude Clarke Whittall was another patron of the Music Division whose support, although independent of the efforts of Mrs.
Coolidge, nonetheless complemented them. In 1935-36 she donated five Stradivari instruments to the Library and established
a foundation for maintenance and promotion of their use in concerts. She saw these instruments as belonging to the nation
and in 1937 built the Whittall Pavilion, adjacent to the Coolidge Auditorium, for their public display. In 1941 she purchased
for the Music Division a collection of music manuscripts and letters by European masters of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and
twentieth centuries. The Gertrude Clarke Whittall Collection contains works by Haydn, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, and Schoenberg. These manuscripts also include an autograph
score of Clara Schumann's cadenzas to Mozart's Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466; a few letters of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel
(1805-1847); a facsimile of Hensel's Das letzte Lied; and a copy of a prelude for organ by Hensel in the hand of a member of the Mendelssohn family. Her gifts extended beyond
the Music Division when, in 1950, she established the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund in the Library of
Congress, which sponsors series of poetry readings, lectures, and dramas. She loved poetry and gave the Library many valuable
literary manuscripts in the hand of contemporary poets. Robert Frost, a dear friend of Mrs. Whittall, once wrote to her: “Having
you there in Washington is like having seeds of fire on the hearth that only needs a scrap of manuscript for tinder to burst
into flame with the first passing breath of inspiration.”9
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Painting by John Singer Sargent. 1923. Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZ6-1186 (b&w film copy neg.)
Since the acquisition of the Coolidge and Whittall collections, the Music Division has actively pursued collection development
of primary source materials. Today there are more than five hundred named special collections varying in size from fewer than
a dozen items to more than a half million. What follows is a selection of special collections that may be of interest to researchers
of American women in the performing arts.
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