Peggy Stuart Coolidge

Peggy Stuart Coolidge (19 July 1913 – 7 May 1981) was an American composer and conductor. She was one of the first female American composers to have a recording devoted to her symphonic works, and the first American composer (male or female) to have a concert devoted entirely to her works presented in the Soviet Union. Although she does not quote particular melodies, her compositional style is accessible and influenced by American folk and popular idioms; her success at creating a distinctly American musical voice places her among such figures as Charles Ives, Aaron Copland and George Gershwin.

Peggy Stuart was born in Swampscott, Massachusetts. After the war she moved to New York City, and started a research project in music psychotherapy at a mental institution.

In 1952 she married Joseph R. Coolidge, a freelance writer from Boston who was a descendant of Thomas Jefferson and a decorated Army captain and OSS operative who'd been wounded in French Indochina soon after World War II. Together they wrote a number of children's stories with Peggy's background music, and other songs in traditional folk style. She wrote her only film score for The Silken Affair, starring David Niven, in 1956. She wrote incidental music for a New York production of Seán O'Casey's Red Roses for Me, and the music was later reworked as the orchestral suite Dublin Town. In 1963 and 1965, she was invited to Vienna, Budapest, Warsaw and Moscow for performances of her works, also sometimes appearing as piano soloist. She and Joseph met Aram Khachaturian and his wife Nina Makarova, becoming close friends. A ballet An Evening in New Orleans was written on her return to the United States.

Rhapsody for Harp and Orchestra was written in 1965. In 1967 her works were played in Tokyo in a concert of American music, and she was received by Emperor Hirohito's brother, Prince Mikasa. In 1969 Peggy Stuart Coolidge wrote Spirituals in Sunshine and Shadow, an orchestral work inspired by African-American blues and spirituals.

In 1970 she wrote Pioneer Dances, inspired by the 19th century settlers of America. This was the only American work played at a 1975 Carnegie Hall concert to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Norwegian immigration to the United States. Her name started to become better known, and she was featured in concerts in Western Europe and East Berlin.

In 1971, at the request of the World Wildlife Fund, she composed a three-minute theme to complement the fund's visual symbol of a giant panda on a green field. The theme became the basis for a ten-minute orchestral work with narration written by her husband, called Blue Planet. That year also saw New England Autumn, a two-movement suite for chamber orchestra.

In 1975, the Westphalian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Siegfried Landau recorded one of the first LPs ever devoted to the works of a single American female composer. The works were the Rhapsody for Harp and Orchestra (with soloist Aristid von Würtzler), New England Autumn, Pioneer Dances, and Spirituals in Sunshine and Shadow.

She later wrote a song cycle to words by American poets, to honour the art patron Isabella Stewart Gardner, her husband's great-aunt. American Mosaic was written in 1978 on a commission by the American Wind Symphony. Her musical scores are held at the Harvard University Library.

Works In addition to the works mentioned above, Peggy Stuart Coolidge wrote: many songs and vocal pieces.