Lou Henry Hoover and the Origins of the Friends of Music

A Zoom Presentation by Elena Danielson, Ph.D. 1975, Archivist Emerita, Hoover Institution, Stanford University

While music played a large role in life at Stanford dating back to the University's beginnings in 1891, it got a huge boost from Lou Henry Hoover, class of 1898, when she returned from Washington, D.C., to her campus home in 1933. While serving as First Lady, she had expanded the musical offerings at the White House with help from her friend Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the generous music patron known for commissioning Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring. In the middle of the Great Depression, Lou and Elizabeth were able to form a dedicated group, known as the Friends of Music at Stanford, to enrich the University's concert programming and music instruction. Documentation, scattered in various archives, demonstrates how they made this work, creating in the process a platform for a full-fledged Department of Music established in 1946-47.

This event is sponsored by the Friends of Music at Stanford. Co-sponsored by the Stanford Historical Society, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and the Hoover Institution.