Frank Capper's name has been synonymous with music in Northern Ireland for the past halfcentury. Born in Lurgan, Co Armagh in 1910, Frank first trained as a chorister in St Anne's Cathedral, Belfast and fell in love with music. His schooling and later studies encouraged him to get a "proper job", but in his early thirties accountancy had to take second place to his first and only love.
Frank's singing technique and resounding baritone voice, already well known to Irish radio audiences before the outbreak of the second World War, was to attract generations of students from all over Ireland. Indeed, the same day Britain declared war on Germany, Frank was busy broadcasting with RTE, a world removed from the horrors that were to unfold. In 1941, with a few equally committed musicians, he founded The Performers' Club, providing fledgling instrumentalists, singers and poets with a platform on which to practice and perfect their art. The club also provided muchneeded classical concerts in the dark days of the war and was to do so again in the North's more recent Troubles.
In the 1950s and 1960s the club introduced local audiences to the music of Janacek, Britten and Pfitzner, to name but a few. With the co-operation of Havelock Nelson, the Dublin-born musician who was then head of music at the BBC, singers and instrumentalists from north and south of the Border had the enviable opportunity of working on all kinds of music, old and new.
When foreign travel was still in its infancy, Frank visited the great international music festivals of Salzburg, Vienna, Rome and Barcelona as well as attending the Edinburgh Festival, London concerts and the Dublin Grand Opera season each year. More often than not he returned with new plans, recently published contemporary music, and the experience of singing lessons with acclaimed international stars. At his death his personal music library was second to none.
In his long career as a singing teacher Frank produced hundreds of colourful voices. Year after year the music festivals in Ireland and England had the pleasure of hearing his pupils, all of them individual voices retaining their unique sound but with something of the Capper touch and polish. Adjudicators regularly heaped praise upon the quality of teaching which sustained such outstanding singing. While providing and ensuring voices for choirs and opera choruses, he produced a sizeable number of outstanding voices of international standard and quality, many of whom won prestigious awards at home and abroad and made music their career.
Though challenging and sometimes testy, Frank was always the epitome of charm and elegance associated with a bygone age. The little domestic rituals of the house - the chiming and ever watchful grandfather clock in the hall which heralded the beginning and end of lessons, the highly polished antiques and gilded mirrors, the well-thumbed books and the radio permanently tuned to the "Third Programme" - made the rite of passage from the busy and troubled world of Belfast seem complete. His students revered him not only as a teacher but also as an adviser, a confidant and a friend.
Though not a political or religious man in the conventional sense, Frank's awareness of a man's civil rights and duties and of his spiritual needs was worthy of any statesman or divine. Music and song went beyond the limitations of partisan politics and the religious views of those who believed they had God "in their pocket" or at their beck and call. In 1973 The Queen's University of Belfast awarded him an honorary MA in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the musical life of Northern Ireland and in 1989 he received the MBE from Queen Elizabeth II.
In the last two years of his life Frank was imprisoned in an ailing and sick body, though his spirit remained undimmed. It was difficult for family and friends to see his once robust frame slowly crumble under the weight of sickness. Nevertheless, he retained his sense of dignity and humour to the end. Frank's broad musical vision and experience, together with his personality, enriched every aspect of musical life in our society. We are the poorer for his passing. His family, students and colleagues here, in Ireland and beyond, say farewell to an inspiring teacher and dear friend.
Frank Capper, bachelor, born June 28th 1910, died June 26th 1998. His elder sister, Mrs Rae Corry, survives him.