Peggy Stuart Coolidge

Who was Peggy Stuart Coolidge?

Peggy Stuart Coolidge 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 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 influenced by American folk idiom; and also by composers such as Charles Ives, Aaron Copland and George Gershwin.

Peggy Stuart was born in Swampscott, Massachusetts. She started piano lessons at age five, wrote her first song at age nine, and later studied with Heinrich Gebhard, privately with Raymond Robinson, and at the New England Conservatory with Quincy Porter. She originally planned to be a concert pianist, and her early mature works are all for piano.

In 1937, she wrote a ballet Cracked Ice, for the Boston Skating Club. This was the first ballet ever composed specifically for ice skating. The work was scored, at her request, by Ferde Grofé, who conducted it at Madison Square Garden; it was also played by the Boston Pops Orchestra under Arthur Fiedler. Stuart then studied orchestration with a grand-pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Her orchestral scores Night Froth, The Island, Smoke Drift and Twilight City were all premiered by the Boston Pops.