Meredith Willson Music Collection available at The Juilliard School.

Gottlieb, Jane

Meredith Willson Music Collection available at The Juilliard School. Composer of world-famous musical, The Music Man, as well as innumerable hit songs such as "It's Beginning to Look at Lot Like Christmas," and "Till There Was You," Meredith Willson (1902-1984) began his musical studies at the Institute of Musical Art, Juilliard's predecessor institution, as a flute student of Georges Barrere in 1919. He was a flutist in the John Philip Sousa band from 1921 to 1923, and also played with the New York Philharmonic.

Willson's widow, Rosemary Willson, enhanced her husband's connection to his alma mater through her extraordinary generosity. In 1990, Juilliard's first-ever residence hall was named the Meredith Willson Residence Hall in his honor. And in 2009, the school's new black-box theater was named the Rosemary and Meredith Willson Theater. Mrs. Willson passed away on 25 January 2010. Continuing this legacy, the Meredith and Rosemary Willson Charitable Foundation has entrusted Juilliard with the care and preservation of all of Meredith Willson's music manuscripts. Digital images of the collection have been added to a password-protected page of the Juilliard Manuscript Collection Web site: www.juilliardmanuscriptcollection.org, with links to bibliographic information in JUILCAT, the library online catalog. Other repositories with materials relating to Meredith Willson and his legacy are The Michael Feinstein Great American Songbook Archives & Gallery in Carmel, Indiana, and the Meredith Willson Museum in Mason City, Iowa.

Jane Gottlieb

The Juilliard School