![]() ![]() The first "Strad" concert was played in the Library in January 1936. Whittall’s enthusiastic support of the Music Division continued for another thirty years until her death in 1965. To that end, she established the Whittall Foundation, an endowment to finance professional in-house use of the instruments and concerts for the public. According to her bequest, they would be played from time to time, as they were intended. Whittall’s choice to donate to a library, and not to a museum, assured her that the instruments would not become mere relics. Apparently affected by a vivid memory of the Flonzaley String Quartet playing a private concert for her family in 1908, she became well known for the soirées held in her Washington apartment. Gertrude Clarke Whittall (1867-1965, born Gertrude Littlefield Clarke, of Belleview, Nebraska) moved to Washington, D.C., in 1934 after the death of her husband, Matthew John Whittall, a dealer in fine carpets. This quartet of instruments, most likely the first such quartet held by a public institution in the United States, along with the subsequent addition of a fifth Whittall Stradivari violin, formed the cornerstone of the Library’s "Cremonese" collection, as it is now sometimes called. There were chamber music concerts (which included the legendary Gregor Piatigorsky, Artur Rubinstein, the Budapest String Quartet, the Beaux Arts Trio, and the Juilliard String Quartet), a broadcast series, commissions, lectures, festivals, and the gift of musical instruments, commencing with Whittall’s gift, in 1935, of a quartet of stringed instruments by Antonio Stradivari. The unprecedented generosity and foresight of these two patrons furthered the Library’s musical activities. From 1924 to 1935, aided by the philanthropy of two remarkable women, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and Gertude Clarke Whittall, the mission of the Music Division included musical performance and music commissions. The Library’s Music Division was established by 1896. His library collection held 13 books on music literature and theory, thus laying the foundation for the future music division. Jefferson, a keen admirer of music, was also a violinist. In 1815 Congress purchased Thomas Jefferson’s library, a rich collection universal in scope, knowledge, and creativity. The mission of the Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, is to serve Congress and preserve its resources for the future. This site offers descriptive information about the instrument collections, as well as photos and an audio comparison of five violins by violinist Nicholas Kitchen performing Bach’s Chaconne. Since then other instruments have been acquired, including strings, flutes and winds, and Siamese folk instruments. Instrument collecting at the Library began in 1935 with the donation of five Stradivarius stringed instruments by Mrs. ![]()
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