Willem Mook - biography

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Willem Mook commenced his musical studies at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where he studied the lute with Toyohiko Satoh. He went on to study with Anthony Bailes at the Sweelinck Conservatory of Amsterdam and attained his certificate in 1983. Further coachings followed with i.a. Eugen Dombois, Robert Spencer, Paul O’Dette and Hopkinson Smith. Also he was active as a singer in the Cappella Josquinina under the guidance of Rebecca Stewart, examining and performing early Renaissance polyphony.

In the period following his studies at the conservatories, he was one of the animators of the newly founded Dutch Lute Society. Together with Louis Peter Grijp he organized the International Lute Symposium Utrecht 1986. He was one of the founders of the Susato Collective of Zutphen – a cooperation of specialists in early music and dance.

Willem Mook went on to study musicology at the University of Utrecht, his Master thesis of 1993 dealing with the arrangements for the lute of music by Josquin des Prez. Ever since he has been an avid researcher of musical sources and performance practice of the period 1400-1650.

In the meantime he extended his career as a soloist, accompanist and ensemble musician, performing in many European countries and in Morocco and Zimbabwe, on radio and tv.
For the Spaarne Music Foundation of Haarlem he organized a number of Lute & Guitar Festivals, in which many professional and amateur players and ensembles presented themselves to a large audience in a historical setting.
His CD Proba me Deus with music by Constantine Huygens and contemporaries, together with the singers Harry van Berne en Jasper Schweppe, has been received with international acclaim. More recently he recorded with the Hemony Ensemble and with Quadrivium.

As a lute teacher Willem Mook has an extensive class of students both in his residence town Haarlem and in Deventer. Besides his many individual students he coaches a number of early music ensembles. He is director of two ensembles in Haarlem that concentrate on vocal Renaissance music.