Existing comment:
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge on her wedding day, November 21, 1891.
Passion for Music
Immersed in music from a young age, Coolidge studied piano with Regina Watson (1835–1913), a student of Polish virtuoso pianist and composer Carl Tausig (1841–1871). In 1891, at the age of twenty-seven, Elizabeth married physician Frederick Shurtleff Coolidge (1865–1915), who encouraged her passion for music. She continued to play musicales and charity concerts. In 1893, Elizabeth was invited to perform at the World's Columbian Exposition, where she played Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto in A Minor, with an orchestra led by Theodore Thomas (1835–1905), founder and first music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. |