David Stech

Professor of Music, Emeritus

Music Theory, Music Ear Training, and Analysis
Fine Arts 221
907.474.5010
ffdas@uaf.edu

David Stech recently retired as Professor of Music after having been a member of the faculty since 1972. He continues to work at the Music Department in a part-time cacity, teaching music ear training, and serving as a senior academic advisor. He previously served as Head of the UAF Department of Music.

He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Music from the University of Minnesota-Duluth, his Master of Arts in Music from The Ohio State University, and his Ph.D. in music theory from Michigan State University where he studied music theory pedagogy with Paul Harder.

Dr. Stech has worked extensively with computer applications to music theory and aural training. His involvement with music technology began at Michigan State, where he designed a massive FORTRAN-language program to catalog motivic patterns in linear music. From 1976 to 1981, he programmed and made available a number of interactive computer-assisted instructional programs in music fundamentals to computer users throughout the State of Alaska through the University of Alaska Computer Network, long before the Internet was commonly used.

He has demonstrated his use of MIDI technology to enhance music education at the Association for Technology in Music Instruction, and at technology forums at the University of Minnesota Duluth and at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Has published in international scholarly journals on the subjects of computer-assisted music analysis and the subject of applying music technology to college-level music education.

More recently, Dr. Stech has published two sets of music score transcriptions of improvisations by the French organist Marcel Dupré based upon rare sound recordings. The first of these collections: Three Chorale Variations on Veni Creator Spiritus, was published by MorningStar Music Publishers in 2000. A second set titled: Dans la Gloire Des Invalides was published in 2005 by Wayne Leupold Editions.  A recital of all of Dr. Stech's published transcriptions, plus four new transcriptions, was presented by David Hatt, Assistant Organist at the Cathdral of St. Mary the Assumption in San Francisco on January 7, 2007. 

On December 9, 2007, Dr. Stech traveled to Paris to attend a solo organ recital organ recital that commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the dedication of the organ at the the soldier's church at Les Invalides, next to the resting place of Napoleon.  The principal work on the program was the performance of the eleven versets of the Dans la Gloire Des Invalides performed with the Latin invocations sung by a baritone soloist to replicate the event that occure fifty years earlier, nearly to the day.  Dr. Stech continues work transcribing other recorded improvisations by Marcel Dupré.

An organist himself, he was the co-tonal designer of the three-manual, sixty-six stop Gress-Miles organ in UAF's Charles W. Davis Concert Hall. It is the largest pipe organ in the State of Alaska.