Franz Lehrndorfer premiered Bertold Hummel's Invocationes for trumpet and organ op. 68a in 1978. In 1987, the composer dedicated his Phantasie for organ op. 87c to Franz Lehrndorfer, for which the dedicatee thanked him in a letter.

 

Biography

Franz Lehrndorfer spent his youth in Kempten and received his basic musical training from his father, a choir director and musicologist. After leaving school, he studied Catholic church music and organ at the University of Music in Munich from 1948 to 1951, graduating in 1952 with "special honours" and a master class diploma in organ. He began his professional career a year earlier as a music teacher with the Regensburger Domspatzen and was appointed to the Hochschule für Musik in Munich in 1962, where he headed the Department of Catholic Church Music and Organ from 1969 until his retirement in 1993. Since 1969 he has also worked as a cathedral organist in Munich and since 1998 as a visiting professor at the Catholic University in Porto (Portugal).

Lehrndorfer won first prize at the ARD International Music Competition in 1957. In recognition of his success as an artist and music teacher, he has received a number of awards and honours from the state and church, including an honorary doctorate from the Pontifical Academy of Music in Rome and the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class. Song and choral works as well as arrangements and compositions for the organ round off his artistic output. The great artist and teacher died in Munich on 10 January 2013