G. Marten Cornelissen

1936 - 2021

G. Marten Cornelissen

Northampton, MA — G. Marten Cornelissen, 85, of Massasoit Street, passed away at the Holyoke Medical Center on Saturday, November 13. Born in Apeldoorn, Holland, on August 30, 1936, he was the son of Reinier Albert Cornelissen and Gertrud Wrenkenhorst. Marten's father was committed to forced labor in Germany during World War II, leaving his mother with three young children to raise on her own.

As a child, Marten loved making and flying model airplanes and did so competitively. After reluctantly serving in the Dutch air forces as a military police officer, he worked briefly as a skilled machinist in a paper mill where he learned the precision necessary to craft musical instruments. In his mid-twenties, he trained with Czech violin-maker Vladimir Pilar in Prague and afterwards entered an instrument contest in which he won second prize. An American instrument dealer attending the contest detected Marten's skill and invited him to come work in the salesman's Kansas City shop. It is here that Marten began a life-long career building violins, violas, and violoncellos, becoming one of the country's most successful stringed instrument makers. In 1967 he moved to Northampton, and from the workshop in his home on Massasoit Street, he would go on to produce nearly six hundred instruments, up to twenty per year, played by some of the world's finest classical musicians, including Bernard Greenhouse, Yehudi Menuhin, Roel Dieltiens, and members of the Julliard and Guarneri String Quartets.

Friends remember Marten as sensual, kind, generous, and loving, and often blunt. An avid lifelong swimmer, he spent each August on Cape Cod making regular forays to East Orleans beaches, stroking in the open water. His athletic grace remained on display into his final years when, no longer able to swim, he walked daily throughout his Northampton neighborhood.

Marten is predeceased by his brother, Henk Cornelissen; and is survived by his wife of 55 years, Cornelia; a brother Rein Cornelissen and a sister Jannie Wey of Holland; and several nieces and nephews.

The Ahearn Funeral Home of Northampton is assisting the family.