A Century of Great Music

The Library currently is in the midst of a major, 18-month centennial celebration of the series — a century of free concerts, historic commissions and broadcasts featuring generations of legendary artists like Leonard Bernstein, George Szell, Igor Stravinsky, Leontyne Price, Joshua Bell and countless others. The celebration launched in February 2024 and continues through this December.

Among the great national libraries, sponsorship of a major concert series still is a rare thing. But the Library does have certain enviable advantages: the Coolidge Auditorium, considered one of the world’s finest acoustic environments; a stunning musical instrument collection; and treasures from the Music Division’s holdings to enrich every concert experience.

For its auditorium and performance tradition, the Library has founding benefactor Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge to thank. In the early 1920s, Coolidge was well established as a philanthropist, a festival presenter and a commissioner of new works. She was seeking a home for her manuscript collection — and a concert hall to host performances.

In November 1924, her check for $60,000 funded construction of the auditorium that today bears her name. A second gift of $400,000 established a permanent fund for concerts — the Coolidge Foundation — that served as a model for future endowments at the Library and for the federal government.

In October 1925, the concert series opened in the Coolidge Auditorium — already wired for the then-new medium of radio — with a Coolidge Foundation commission for Charles Loeffler’s “Canticle of the Sun.”

That work was the first of many landmark commissions, such as Maurice Ravel’s “Chansons madécasses”; Stravinsky’s ballet “Apollon Musagète”; and Samuel Barber’s “Hermit Songs,” which premiered at the Coolidge in a performance featuring both the composer and a rising young opera star named Leontyne Price. Now an icon of American culture, “Appalachian Spring” premiered at the Coolidge in 1944; the foundation commissioned both Aaron Copland’s music and Martha Graham’s choreography for the ballet.

Even Coolidge could not have foreseen what is today an astonishing roster of nearly 700 Library commissions made by multiple foundations, including the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, covering an impressive diversity of genres and styles.

In the series’ early years, the caliber of performances was as exceptional as the commissions. Legendary artists like Josef Szigeti, Wanda Landowska, Béla Bartók, Nadia Boulanger, Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith made the Library internationally renowned as a concert presenter.

Other donors followed Coolidge’s example. Gertrude Clark Whittall’s magnificent gift of Stradivari instruments in 1935 and 1936 inspired an influential residency held by the Budapest and the Juilliard string quartets between 1940 and 2002.

The concert series also maintains a commitment to presenting and documenting American musical traditions, from the 1926 presentation of the Hampton Institute Choir to memorable concerts featuring Broadway composers like Jason Robert Brown (“The Last Five Years,” “Parade”) and Jeanine Tesori (“Thoroughly Modern Millie,” “Fun Home”) performing their own music. Since the 2010s, the Library has been a premier presenter of jazz in the nation’s capital, with support from the Revada Foundation of the Logan Family.

“Guided by our glorious history and the vision of our founders,” says Music Division chief Susan Vita, “we look forward to seeing our audiences grow as we host a splendid celebration of the past and build a foundation for the next century.”