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Grace Harriet Spofford

Grace Harriet Spofford (September 21, 1887 – June 5, 1974) was an American music educator. She was director of the music school of the Henry Street Settlement from 1935 to 1954.[1]

Grace Harriet Spofford
BornSeptember 21, 1887 Edit this on Wikidata
Haverhill Edit this on Wikidata
DiedJune 5, 1974 Edit this on Wikidata (aged 86)
New York City Edit this on Wikidata
Alma mater
OccupationEducator, music teacher, academic administrator Edit this on Wikidata
Employer

Early life

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Grace Harriet Spofford was born on September 21, 1887 in Haverhill, Massachusetts,[2] the only child of Harry Hall Spofford and Sarah G. Hastings. Her interest in music came early, playing with a piano at age three. By age seven she was taking music lessons, and her childhood music education was guided by her sister, contralto Harriet M. Newman.[3]

In 1905, Spofford graduated from Haverhill High School.[4] She initially attended Mount Holyoke College, studying piano under William Churchill Hammond. Due to the lack of college credit for music study and the domestic work required of students, Spofford transferred from Mount Holyoke to Smith College, where she studied with Edwin Bruce Story and Henry Dike Sleeper. After graduating in 1909,[5] she studied with Richard B. Platt in Boston for a year, then taught piano at Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio, from 1910 to 1912, giving public recitals in both places.[3][6]

Career

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Peabody Conservatory and Curtis Institute

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She spent the next twelve years in Baltimore at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. She earned teacher's certificates in piano (1913) and organ (1916). She taught piano for several years and served as executive secretary of the Peabody from 1917 to 1924. Spofford also wrote music criticism for the Baltimore Evening Sun.[3][6] She later wrote that her performing career was cut short by a ganglion cyst she attributed to over practicing, but "I was rather 'bossy' anyway, and loved administrative work."[3]

In 1924, she became the dean of the newly opened Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia,[7][8] where she established the curriculum and started an international scholarship program. In September 1928, she would tell Musical America that women's position as performers, players, and singers is "now unquestioned," arguing that women have always been a "great, active, moving, vitalizing force in music," and note representation of women in the Curtis Institute faculty.[9]

Spofford was forced to resign in 1931 after a conflict with director Josef Hofmann.[3][6] Henry Bellamann would replace her as dean.[10] Following this, Spofford entered the field of "radio education," with the Peabody Bulletin saying she would "devote her efforts to that study of that work."[11]

Later career

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Spofford moved to New York City and held a variety of jobs, including running a radio and music counselling service in the Steinway Building, serving as executive secretary of Olga Samaroff’s Layman's Music Courses, and managing the Curtis String Quartet and other acts. She was a music lecturer at the Katharine Gibbs School from 1936 to 1959 and associate director of the New York College of Music from 1934 to 1938.[3][6][7] She later received a honorary doctorate of music from the New York School of Music in 1952.[12]

Spofford's most notable job was as director of the music school of the Henry Street Settlement.[13][14] In 1935, she replaced ousted founding director Hedi Katz. The school provided access to music education for the underprivileged, including future music professionals as well as students moving on to non-musical careers. The teaching staff included leading musicians and teachers from Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute. A highlight of her tenure there was a two-act opera she commissioned from composer Aaron Copland for Henry Street students.[15][16] The Second Hurricane premiered at the school in 1937. The libretto was by Edwin Denby and it was conducted by Lehman Engel and staged by Orson Welles.[3][6] She was honored after 17 years as director of the Henry Street Settlement in a town hall event.[17]

Retirement and later life

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Spofford retired in 1954.[13] In her retirement, she represented the United States and over 20 international conferences, including the conference which created the International Society for Music Education. She chaired the music committees of the International Council of Women (1954–1963) and the National Council of Women of the United States (1953–1964), and was a delegate to the UNESCO International Music Council.[3][6] She would also serve on the Board of Counselors for Smith College.[18]

She died of a heart attack on June 5, 1974, in a New York City nursing home.[3][2]

Personal life

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Spofford developed a lifelong personal friendship with Peabody colleague Elizabeth Coulson, who was fifteen years older than her. They lived together at Tudor Arms Apartments near Wyman Park.[19] In 1920, both would begin leasing a townhouse, at 609 Cathedral Street in Baltimore, in an area near the present-day Walters Art Museum.[20][21][22] Coulson and Spofford both co-authored a book in 1916 entitled A Guide for Beginners in Piano Playing.[23][24]

In September 1924, Spofford left Coulson behind when she accepted an appointment as head of the Curtis Institute of Music, with Coulson calling her "sweet and dear and tender", wished Spofford well, said she would "miss her sadly," and added that their apartment would only feel like "home" when they shared it.[19] Later, Spofford and Coulson would travel abroad together in the summer of 1930 to attend the Oberammergau Passion Play, and also visit Salzburg for an opera festival, and other cities such as Bayreuth, Munich, Marienbad, Vienna, and Paris.[25] They would travel again together the following year to Southampton, England, Lucerne, Paris, Vienna, and other locations.[26] Coulson would continue teaching at the Peabody Conservatory of Music until late in her life, when she began living with her sister in Orange, New Jersey. She would die in January 1941 at the Orange Memorial Hospital in Orange, New Jersey.[27]

References

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  1. ^ "Grace Spofford, 87, Was Music Director". New York Times. June 7, 1974. Archived from the original on August 25, 2024. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
  2. ^ a b "Spofford, Grace Harriet (1887–1974)". Dictionary of Women Worldwide: 25,000 Women Through the Ages. Encyclopedia.com/Cengage. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Gotwals, Vernon (1980). "SPOFFORD, Grace Harriet". In Sicherman, Barbara; Green, Carol Hurd (eds.). Notable American Women: The Modern Period : a Biographical Dictionary. Harvard University Press. pp. 656–57. ISBN 978-0-674-62733-8.
  4. ^ "Graduates of High School, 1905". Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of Haverhill. Haverhill, Massachusetts: The Nichols Print. 1906. p. 57.
  5. ^ "Geographical List". Annual Register of the Almunae Association of Smith College with Report for 1913-1914. Northampton, Massachusetts: Smith College. 1914. p. 240.
  6. ^ a b c d e f McCarthy, Margaret William (1999). "Spofford, Grace Harriet (1887-1974), music educator and administrator". American National Biography. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1801088. ISBN 978-0-19-860669-7. Retrieved 2022-06-02.
  7. ^ a b Ohles, Shirley; Ohles, Frederik; Ramsay, John (1997). "Spofford, Grace Harriet". Biographical Dictionary of Modern American Educators. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. p. 303. ISBN 9780313005008.
  8. ^ The Curtis Catalogue of Music: Catalogue 1925-1926 (PDF) (Report). Smith College. 1926. p. 16. Retrieved August 25, 2024.{{cite report}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  9. ^ Nickell, Marian Fairfield (September 8, 1928). "Music as a Field for Women". Musical America. 48 (21): 14. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
  10. ^ "Education: New Dean for Curtis". Time. October 5, 1931. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
  11. ^ "Overtones". Peabody Bulletin. 28 (1). Peabody Conservatory of Music: 62. December 1931. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
  12. ^ Howe, Sonda Wieland (2013). Women Music Educators in the United States: A History. Plymouth, United Kingdom: Scarecrow Press. p. 193. ISBN 9780810888487.
  13. ^ a b "Music Head Will Retire At Henry St. Settlement". New York Times. May 4, 1954. Archived from the original on August 25, 2024. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
  14. ^ "Henry Street Music School records". University of Minnesota Libraries. Archived from the original on August 25, 2024. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
  15. ^ "The Second Hurricane". The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc. 21 April 2020. Archived from the original on February 28, 2024. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
  16. ^ Ruechel, Nate (2022). The Achievement of American Identity in Aaron Copland's Works for Theater (PhD. thesis). Florida State University College of Music. pp. 111–112, 218. ProQuest 2708024568. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
  17. ^ "Grace Spofford Feted at Concert; Henry Street Music School's Director 17 Years Honored at Town Hall Event". New York Times. May 21, 1952. Archived from the original on August 25, 2024.
  18. ^ Report of the President: Smith College Bulletin (PDF) (Report). Smith College. January 1957. p. 2. Archived (PDF) from the original on August 25, 2024. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
  19. ^ a b McCarthy, S. Margaret William (February 1996). "Grace Spofford: Educator, Internationalist, and Organization Woman" (PDF). Journal of the IAWM. 2 (1). International Alliance for Women in Music: 19–20. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
  20. ^ "Real Estate Notes". The Daily Record. Baltimore, Maryland. October 9, 1920. p. 2. Retrieved August 25, 2024 – via Wikipedia Library.
  21. ^ "606-10 Cathedral Street". Baltimore Heritage. 9 January 2011. Archived from the original on April 20, 2024. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
  22. ^ "1. Historic American Buildings Survey E. H. Pickering, Photographer July 1936 - 607-609 Cathedral Street (Houses), Baltimore, Baltimore (Independent City), MD Photos from Survey HABS MD-352". Library of Congress. c. 1933. Archived from the original on August 25, 2024. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
  23. ^ "Back Matter". The Musical Quarterly. 2 (1): 2. January 1916. JSTOR 738180.
  24. ^ "Book Notices". The Kindergarten and First Grade. 1 (7): 326. September 1916. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
  25. ^ "Overtones". Peabody Bulletin. 27 (1). Peabody Conservatory of Music: 50. Winter 1930. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
  26. ^ Grace, Spofford (June 26, 1931). "Visit to Europe and Other Personal Matters" (digitized). Letter to Mrs. Edward Bok. Northampton, Massachusetts: Smith College Special Collections. Archived from the original on August 25, 2024. Retrieved August 25, 2024. Download necessary for access.
  27. ^ "Elizabeth Coulson". Peabody Bulletin. 37 (2). Peabody Conservatory of Music: 23. May 1941. Retrieved August 25, 2024. continued here
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