Existing comment:
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, Walter Koons, and the Manhattan String Quartet in an NBC recording studio. Photograph, ca. 1935.
Coolidge Reaches out Radically with Radio: "I told you so."
In her effort to share chamber music with as large an audience as possible, Coolidge insisted that the Coolidge Auditorium be equipped for radio broadcast. She asserted that "practically everyone loves chamber music who understands it; and . . . almost everyone understands it who hears it enough." By broadcasting her concert series on the Columbia, National, and Mutual Broadcasting Companies, Coolidge made it possible for the American public to enjoy chamber music in their own living rooms. She received a deluge of letters from listeners around the country expressing deep gratitude for the radio broadcasts. She occasionally offered a greeting at the beginning of a broadcast, such as she did for a 1936 NBC broadcast when she celebrated the success of her broadcasting efforts and gloated, "I told you so." |