Allan Arthur Willman


Allan Arthur Willman '' was an American classical pianist, composer, music pedagog at the collegiate level, and longtime chairman of the Department of Music at the University of Wyoming. Willman was a vanguard creator and influential exponent of twentieth-century contemporary music. As chairman of the music department at the University of Wyoming, he is credited with rapidly expanding music arts within the institution. He led the development of a more comprehensive Music Department for aspiring academicians and professionals in performance, composition, education, and musicology. Between 1940 and 1950, enrollment in the Music Department quadrupled. Willman was founder of the Wyoming Music Teachers Association; and—with Wyoming businessman and composer George William Hufsmith, Jr., and Casper conductor Ernest Gilbert Hagen —Willman was co-founder of the Grand Teton Music Festival in 1962.

Career

Early life

Born in Hinckley, Illinois, Willman grew up in Abingdon.

Higher education

Willman earned a Bachelor of Music degree from Knox College Conservatory of Music in 1928 under his original name, Allan Arthur Simpkins. He went on to earn a Master of Music degree from Chicago Musical College in 1930, where he studied with Maurice Aronson, Alexander Raab, and Lillian Powers, who was an associate teacher with Raab and a former pupil of Theodor Leschetizky and Giuseppe Ferrata, who in turn was a certified pupil of Franz Liszt. Willman then studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Thomas de Hartmann. Willman had been recommended to Boulanger by Paderewski. After World War II, while serving as Chairman of the Department of Music at Wyoming, Willman took leave during the 1947–48 school year to study in Lausanne and Paris—Robert R. Becker, a virtuoso violinist and violist who began teaching at Wyoming in 1941, served as Acting Chairman during Willman's sabbatical.

Performance career

As a concert pianist, Willman performed throughout the United States and in Europe. During the summer of 1953, Willman made a European concert tour with Rudolf Kolisch, artist-in-residence at the University of Wyoming and leader of the Pro Arte Quartet They performed in cities that included Vienna and Berlin and over numerous radio networks. In particular, they performed Arnold Schoenberg's "Fantasie for Violin and Piano," Op. 47, composed in 1949 and published by Edition Peters in 1952. They also performed works of Ernst Krenek, Edward Kilenyi, Beethoven, Schubert, and Kolisch.
Kolisch was Arnold Schoenberg's pupil and brother-in-law by way of his sister, Gertrud. Kolisch and Willman performed four times at the Arnold Schoenberg Chamber Music Festival sponsored by the International Summer School for New Music at Darmstadt and Frankfurt, July 16–30, 1952.

Artistic residency

Nominated by composer A. Albert Noelte of Northwestern University, Willman was accepted as a fellow of the MacDowell Colony in the summer of 1940 Willman worked there from August 4 to September 7, 1940, and composed "Where the Lilac Blows" for voice and piano. He also befriended other composers, including Mabel Wheeler Daniels and Normand Lockwood. Daniels kept in touch with Willman, writing on a least one occasion seeking advice on a composition. Lockwood composed in Laramie between 1955 and 1957.

Teaching career, professorship, and music department head

Chicago area

After graduating from the Chicago Musical College in 1930, Willman began teaching at the Boguslawsky School of Music in Chicago—Moissaye Boguslawski had been a piano teacher at the Chicago Musical College.

University of Wyoming

After returning from Paris in 1936 Willman began teaching music at University of Wyoming, where he remained until retirement in 1974. From the school years 1941–1942 to 1973–1974, he was head of the Department of Music. Willman was a proficient recruiter of visiting professors that included:
Willman was drafted into the U.S. Army March 1943 and served as an assistant director of the 524th Army Air Force Band, Sheppard Field, Texas. He also composed and arranged for the Army Air Corps radio program, as well as a small orchestra. During his time in the Army, George William Gunn was acting Chairman of the Music Division at the University of Wyoming. Having served as Chairman of the Music Division at the University of Wyoming for 32 years, Willman is, as of 2014, the longest serving chairman in the history of the institution.
A 1948 University of Wyoming publication profiled four classical music composers at the university:
As a collaborative achievement, Willman was a senior faculty administrator involved with the approval and design of the Fine Arts Center at the University of Wyoming, which opened in 1972.

Family

Willman was the third of five children born to the marriage of Arthur Burton Simpkins, DDS, and Lulu ''. His brother and three sisters all predeceased him:
  • Thomas Hughes Simpkins
  • Sylvia Hope Ann Simpkins, married to Arthur Leslie Decker
  • Eudora Mary Simpkins, married to Merle Robb Gallup
  • Isabel Burton Simpkins
In 1942, Willman married Regina Kastberg Hansen, also a composer. In 1956, after suffering from cancer for 8 years, Regina left Allan, and soon thereafter, they divorced. But they remained in close contact until she died in 1965, after 17 years of cancer. Regina and Allan never had any children and Allan never remarried.
Willman's original manuscripts, letters from prominent musicians, 26 various musical instruments including Willman's piano, art work and some of Willman's personal library were devised under the will of his estate to his nephew, Gordon Alban Gallup, PhD, a retired professor at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

Selected works

Original compositions

  • "Pièce Fantastique", for piano, composed in 1926, while at Knox College
  • "Theme and Variations", by Alan Samar
  • "Sonata No. 1"
  • "Sonata No. 2", by Alan Samar
  • "Elevation", for piano, manuscript ;
  • "Toccatina", for piano, manuscript ;
  • "Capriccio", piano solo, Op. 2, manuscript ;
  • "Solitude", symphonic poem, for orchestra, words by Percy Bysshe Shelley: "Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude"
  • "A Ballad for the Night", for string quartet and solo voice, words by Margaret Louisa Woods
  • "Alchemy", for voice & piano, music by Willman, poem by Francis Carlin
  • "Truth", poem by John Masefield
  • "Symphonic Overture" †
  • "Fugue"
  • "Tracery", for piano
  • "Where the Lilac Blows", for voice & piano, words by Adelaide Crapsey
  • "Past Surmise", poem by Emily Dickinson
  • "Tone Poem"
  • "The Hymn of Free Russia", Alexandre Gretchaninoff, arranged for band by Willman to accompany a men's chorus

Arrangements and adaptations

  • Bach: "Andante: from the Third sonata for unaccompanied violin", adaptation by Willman, manuscript ;
  • "University of Wyoming Alma Mater", composed in 1901 by June Etta Downey, PhD, arranged in 1943 by Willman;
  • Rachmaninoff: "Vocalise", Op. 34, No. 14; transcribed for two pianos Willman ;
  • "Intermezzo Appassionato", composed by Albert Noelte, orchestrated by Willman

Arrangements for the 534th Army Air Corps Band at Shepperd Field


Other publications

I Am a Composer, by Arthur Honegger; translated by Wilson Ober Clough in collaboration with Willman, St. Martin's Press ;

Awards

Selected discography

  1. Live, July 27, 1953 ;
  2. The RIAS Second Viennese School Project: Berlin, 1949–1965, Audite ;,

Collections

Allan Arthur Willman Papers, 1929–1987, University of Wyoming, American Heritage Center; , University of Wyoming, American Heritage Center; : Guide, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
; Manuscripts of Allan Arthur Willman

Notable students

Affiliations