Cecilia A. Schultz | |
|---|---|
| Born | Anna Cecilia Augspurger 1878 Trenton, Ohio, United States |
| Died | March 4, 1971 (aged 92–93) Mercer Island, Washington, United States |
| Occupation(s) | Impresario, pianist |
Cecilia Augspurger Schultz (1878 – March 4, 1971) was an American pianist and impresario who heavily influenced the artistic and cultural development of Seattle, Washington, from the 1920s until her death.
Biography
editAnna Cecilia Augspurger was born in 1878 to Magdalena Kennell and Jacob A. Augspurger, in Trenton, Ohio. The Augspurgers were a large, mostly Mennonite clan; her great-grandfather Christian Augspurger, a wealthy farmer and land-owner who received the Legion of Honour from Napoleon Bonaparte, had emigrated from France to the Cincinnati area in 1812.[1]
Augspurger began piano lessons at age 5 and went on to study music at Illinois Wesleyan College, graduating at 17. She spent two years studying piano under Emil Liebling in Chicago.[1] By 1904, she was a piano instructor at the Kansas State Agricultural College (now Kansas State University), where she remained for three years.[2] Augspurger toured the country giving piano recitals during the summer months when she was not teaching at the college, and after one such trip to Seattle, Washington, she decided to move there, doing so by 1908.[1]
The Seattle Symphony and Tacoma Philharmonic Orchestra merged in 1947 to form the Pacific Northwest Symphony Orchestra. The arrangement lasted a year, and when the Seattle musicians withdrew in 1948, disagreement between the musicians and management led to a majority of the musicians leaving the Seattle Symphony to form the Seattle Orchestra, a collective ensemble governed by the musicians. The musicians chose Schultz as their manager, with Eugene Linden as conductor.[3]
Notable family members
editSchultz had three cousins with considerable achievements in science and academia. Arthur Compton won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 for demonstrating the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation, and was later chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis. Karl Compton was also a prominent physicist and served as president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Wilson Compton was president of Washington State College (now Washington State University). Their mother, Otelia Augspurger Compton, Schultz's aunt, was named America's "Mother of the Year" in 1939.[1]
Notes
edit- ^ a b c d Caldbick 2012.
- ^ Schultz's own autobiographical notes suggest she began at Kansas State in 1899 and was in Seattle by 1904, but contemporaneous sources indicate she was employed at the college from 1904 to 1907 (Caldbick 2012).
- ^ Armbruster 2011, p. 155.
References
edit- Armbruster, Kurt E. (2011), Before Seattle Rocked: A City and Its Music, Seattle: University of Washington Press, retrieved 2019-07-07
- Caldbick, John (November 2, 2012), Schultz, Cecilia Augspurger (1878-1971), Impresario Extraordinaire, HistoryLink.org, retrieved 2019-07-05