Katwijk, Viola Beck van, 1894-1980

Viola Beck van Katwijk was born on February 26, 1894 in Denison, Texas. According to the Handbook of Texas Online, the Beck family moved to Dallas in 1911, and Viola Beck was soon teaching piano lessons there. She studied piano in Berlin with Richard Burmeister, a student of Franz Liszt, and she studied piano and composition with Percy Grainger. A 1914 article in the Dallas Morning News indicates that she also studied with Harold von Mickwitz. Beck made her solo debut with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra at age 20 with conductor Max Zach, on the occasion of the thirtieth biennial Texas State Saengerfest in Dallas on May 11-14, 1914, where she performed the Schubert-Liszt Wanderer Phantasie for piano and orchestra. Beck toured with her brother, Curt, a violinist, in the Beck-Allen trio. She won the national Mu Phi Epsilon music fraternity composition contest in 1920 (and again in 1930), and while performing in the Dallas area, she met Paul van Katwijk, the dean of the Southern Methodist University school of music. They married on July 15, 1922; she subsequently joined the faculty of SMU, and the Van Katwijks frequently performed as a piano duo. She was a charter member of the Dallas Music Teachers Association, and the Mu Chi Chapter of Mu Phi Epsilon at SMU. She retired from SMU in 1955. Viola Beck van Katwijk died in Dallas on December 25, 1980 at the age of 86.