On March 9, the Department of Music and the University of Alberta will celebrate its new pipe organ, the Krapf Memorial Continuo Organ built by James Louder and delivered to Convocation Hall on October 11, 2011.
The Department of Music officially began a fundraising campaign for a new portative organ (meaning free standing and moveable) with the celebration of the life of Gerhard Krapf on his birthday in 2008. The organ was specially designed to play early music particularly well at Baroque pitches, complete with an early tuning system.
The Friday, March 9 concert is part of the Music at Convocation Hall series, and will honour the donors who contributed to this superb instrument. Performances will feature the organ with solo repertoire in a variety of ensembles. Organist Marnie Giesbrecht will be joined by guests Leonard Ratzlaff and the Madrigal Singers; Josphine van Lier, gamba and violoncello piccolo; Guillaume Tardif, violin; and Eva Bostrand, soprano.
The organ has already been a catalyst to new explorations into the teaching and performance of historically informed performance practices of a broad variety of early keyboard, choral and chamber music.
About Gerhard Krapf, Professor Emeritus
Gerhard Krapf, Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta, was born Dec. 12, 1924, and passed away on July 2nd, 2008 after a long illness. He is survived by his wife Trudl, three daughters and a son. Gerhard Krapf is renowned for his significant contribution to church music, creating a prolific body of organ, choral and vocal works; for the designing and supervision of the 1978 Casavant Organ in Convocation Hall at the University of Alberta; for scholarly works about the organ; and for a decade of teaching at the University of Alberta between 1977 to 1987. His distinguished career as a composer, organist and pedagogue, along with his prior experience building undergraduate and graduate organ programs at the University of Iowa, contributed significantly to the development of library resources and the graduate keyboard programs at the University of Alberta, including the establishment of the first Doctor of Music degree in Organ Performance at an English speaking Canadian University. A champion for tracker action, through Krapf the U of Iowa was the first American State University to acquire a mechanical action instrument (Casavant), and the U of A followed suit upon his faculty appointment. A dedicated and brilliant teacher of organ, and related subjects, theory and counterpoint, it was said he could improvise a six-voice fugue. Those of us who had the privilege of working with him will remember his amazing intellect and accomplishments, his devotion as a teacher and friend, his deep Christian convictions and his delightful sense of humour. He is greatly missed.
Below is his biography as printed by the Sacred Music Press in 1977, which covers the years before he and his wife Trudl arrived in Edmonton.
[Quoted from the biography printed by Sacred Music Press in 1977:
Gerhard Krapf was born in the small German town of Meissenheim in 1924. After many years of piano and organ instruction, Krapf was drafted into the German army in 1942. He was wounded four times during the course of his military service, and he did not even know that the war had ended when the Russians captured him on May 10, 1945. Years of hard labor followed, and during this period of mental and physical agony, Gerhard Krapf began composing. Music paper was unavailable and even paper was in short supply, so he wrote his scores on old cement bags! Believing that his life would end in central Russia, he was eventually freed on July 3, 1948. By 1950, Krapf had completed his music education and received the Staatsexamen-Diploma in organ, choral conducting, and music theory in Karlsruhe.
Gerhard Krapf then came to the United States as an exchange student at the University of Redlands, where he received his Master of Music degree in 1951. His limited visa forced him to return to Germany, but he was able to immigrate to this country [USA] in 1953, attaining citizenship in 1959. He taught in Michigan, Missouri, and Wyoming prior to his appointment in 1961 as professor and head of the organ department at the University of Iowa.
In addition to his teaching, concertizing, and lecturing, Gerhard Krapf is the author of reviews, articles, books on organ and church music, and has also translated Hans Klotz' Handbook of the Organ and Werckmeister's 1698 Orgelprobe.
The journal Church Music stated, "Gerhard Krapf does not think of himself as a composer, but rather as a musician who happens also to write." As he says, "When I have something to say, I say it." His formidable catalog of works suggests that he has found a great deal to say. And a look into one of his scores will show that he says it with fluency and imagination."