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Willem Willeke collection of music

 Collection
Identifier: Gen-Mss-Willeke

Scope and Contents

The Willeke Collection includes sonatas, short pieces, chamber works, orchestral works and concerti. There are works from the standard repertoire and many from unusual or rarely-heard composers. Many works include extensive editorial markings, along with cuts, documenting how Willeke would have performed them.

Also in the collection are manuscripts of some of Willeke's original compositions and editions. His score of the Lalo Concerto in D Minor, for example, contains the original markings which formed the basis for his published edition of the work. The score of the Saint-Saens Concerto in A Minor bears Willeke's note that he performed it with the composer conducting.

There are also several scrapbooks containing detailed information on the activities of the Elshuco Trio. Numerous concert programs are preserved, as are newspaper advertisements, reviews, news releases, subscription income figures, ticket samples, printers' bills, and original publicity photographs. Another scrapbook is a memorial to Willeke's colleague (and the father of his first wife) Franz Kneisel, and contains obituaries and testimonies published upon Kneisel's death in 1926.

Included in the memorabilia are a silver wreath from Brahms, given in remembrance of their cello-piano collaboration in 1894; a wooden sewing box from Greig; decorations from rules of Europe; and a 1907 letter from Mahler to Willeke, agreeing to ask the emperor Franz Joseph to release Willeke from his contract as the opera's solo cellist so that he might join the Kneisel Quartet. Additional items include a photograph of Richard Straus inscribed to Willeke, and two unpublished manuscript cadenzas by Joachim for the Beethoven Violin Concerto.

Dates

  • Creation: unknown

Willeke, Willem (1879-1950)

Willem Willeke was a Dutch cellist. Born in 1880 in Den Haag (The Hague), Netherlands, as a boy he performed the solo parts of both the Schumann Piano Concerto and the Haydn Cello Concerto in D Major on a single orchestral concert, to the fascination of the playwrights Ibsen and Bjornson. When only 14, he played the cello works and chamber music of Brahms with the composer at the piano. He received degrees from universities in Bonn and Vienna, and although he considered a career in medicine, the great violinist Joseph Joachim persuaded Willeke to give up his medical ambitions and make music and the cello his career.

His concert touring took him to the Scandinavian countries playing the Grieg Sonata with Grieg at the piano, and to Europe and America playing the Strauss Sonata with Strauss at the piano. He was solo cellist with the Hofoper (now the Statsoper) in Vienna, the Vienna Royal Philharmonic, Covent Garden Royal Opera, and imperial cellist to Emper Franz Joseph of Austria. From 1903 until the violinist Franz Kneisel sought him out in 1907, Willeke played under Mahler in Vienna.

Coming to America as cellist with the Kneisel Quartet, he remained with that distinguished ensemble until it disbanded in 1917. In that same year he joined the New York Symphony as principal cellist and assistant conductor, and founded the Elshusco Trio. He served on the faculty of the Julliard School of Music until 1948, and was the founding music director of the South Mountain Concerts and the Berkshire Music Festival at South Mountain, funded by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge on her estate there. He died in 1950.

Elshuco Trio

The cryptic name "Elshuco"contains the clue to an event which took place in 1918, and to the festival with which Willeke would be intimately associated for the rest of his life. Elshuco was an acronym for ELizabeth SHUrtleff COolidge, the fabled patroness of chamber music, who in 1918 sponsored the first Berkshire Festival of Chamber Music on South Mountain in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the residences of herself and her son, Albert Sprague Coolidge. (For a time, Mrs. Coolidge used her husband's middle name, Shurtleff, rather than her own, Sprague, to which she eventually returned.) Concerts were held in the Temple of Music, a hall specifically built for chamber music. At Mrs. Coolidge's invitation, Willeke became Musical Director of the South Mountain Festivals, an outgrowth of the Berkshire Festival. Upon his death in 1950, his wife Sally took his place.

Extent

100 Linear Feet (approximately 160 boxes)

Language of Materials

English

Arrangement

Works for cello are cataloged separately from those for violin, piano, or voice.

Custodial History

Sally Willeke, widow of Willem Willeke, presented the Willeme Willeke Collection of Music to the Williams College Department of Music, under the care of Prof. Doug Moore, in 1981. The extensive library of music, scrapbooks, and notebooks, as well as other career memorabilia, memorializes not only Willeke but his son, Frank (Williams Class of 1933), who died in an automobile accident in 1936. Mrs. Willeke also established an endowment for the purpose of maintaining and adding to the collection.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Transferred from the Williams College Department of Music, 2015.

Title
Willem Willeke collection of music
Status
In Progress
Author
Peale, Anne
Date
2019
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin
Language of description note
English

Repository Details

Part of the Chapin Library Repository

Contact:
26 Hopkins Hall Drive
Williamstown Massachusetts 01267
413-597-4200