Philipp Wolfrum
Philipp Wolfrum was a German composer and organist, choral conductor, and musicologist. The son of a local cantor, he began helping his father as a second organist at the age of nine.
From 1872, he worked as a private music tutor in Bamberg. He studied at the Munich Conservatory from 1876 to 1878, taking composition with Josef Rheinberger, piano with Carl Baermann, and conducting with Franz Wüllner. He then returned to teaching and performed as a pianist and conductor in Bamberg.
From 1884, Wolfrum taught at Heidelberg University; Heinrich Kaminski was among his first students. He founded the Heidelberg Bach Choir in 1885 and became Heidelberg’s general music director in 1907.
Wolfrum wrote choral and organ works. As a musicologist, he is known chiefly for his two-volume monograph on Johann Sebastian Bach, published in 1910. Since 2004, Heidelberg has held an organ competition in his name every four years, devoted to organ music of the Romantic era.