Elizabeth Penn Sprague Coolidge

Elizabeth Penn Sprague Coolidge (born Oct. 30, 1864, Chicago, Ill., U.S.—died Nov. 4, 1953, Cambridge, Mass.) was an American philanthropist, herself a trained pianist, who is remembered for her generous support of musicians and the world of music.

Elizabeth Sprague was of a wealthy family that early encouraged her to study music. In her youth she appeared on a few occasions as a pianist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, of which her father was a sponsor. She married Frederic S. Coolidge of Boston in 1891. They lived in Boston until 1901, when they moved to Pittsfield in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. Elizabeth Coolidge’s career in philanthropy began after the death of her father in 1915. She and her mother gave the memorial Sprague Hall (a music building) to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and a short time later, after her mother’s death, she endowed a pension fund for the Chicago Symphony. In 1916 she organized what became the Berkshire Quartet, and from 1918 to 1924 she sponsored annual Berkshire Chamber Music festivals in Pittsfield. In 1920 she founded an annual competition for musical compositions. In 1925 she created the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation to build an auditorium, complete with organ, for the Library of Congress. The auditorium was opened in October 1925.

Over the years Coolidge commissioned works for the Library of Congress concerts and festivals from such notable composers as Igor Stravinsky, Sergey Prokofiev, Béla Bartók, Benjamin Britten, Maurice Ravel, Aaron Copland, Paul Hindemith, and Darius Milhaud. In 1932 she established the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Medal for “eminent services to chamber music.”