Winifred Merrill Warren

Winifred Merrill was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the daughter of Barzille Winfred Merrill and Mary Ann Neely Merrill.[1] Her father was a violinist, a student of Joseph Joachim and Bernhard Ziehn;[2] he taught music in Iowa and was founder and dean of the music department at Indiana University.[3] She attended the Institute of Musical Art in New York, with further studies in Paris in 1932.[4] Her teachers and mentors included Édouard Dethier, Franz Kneisel, Percy Goetschius, and Nadia Boulanger.[5]

Winifred Merrill gave her first professional recital in 1925, in Iowa.[6] She was a guest soloist with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. She began teaching music at Indiana University in 1927.[7][8] She became an assistant professor in 1938, after her father's retirement from the school.[5] She formed the Indiana University Trio with two of her colleagues, Finnish cellist Lennart von Zweygberg and German pianist Ernest Hoffzimmer.[9][10] She taught two summers in Munich with the Indiana University Summer Music School program.[11] She gave a solo recital at Carnegie Hall in 1944.[12] "Miss Merrill is obviously a musician who knows what she wants to do, and her intent and accomplishment were closely allied," reported one reviewer in 1950.[13]

She wrote The Arthur Stories (1987), a book of stories about her husband.[14]

Winifred Merrill married Arthur Warren in 1961, the year she retired from Indiana University.[15] She died in 1990, aged 91 years, in Illinois. She left her violin to the Indiana University Foundation, for the use of violin students there.[16]

• Winifred Merrill Warren at Find a Grave