During World War II he served in the Army, stationed in India with the Seventh Bomber Group.
But it was his studies at New York University, where he was a student of the medieval and Renaissance music scholar Gustave Reese, that determined the future course of his life.
[5] In 1952, along with the conductor and musicologist Noah Greenberg, Krainis formed the New York Pro Musica Antiqua,[4] which brought wider public attention to early music and was in the forefront of the period-instrument movement.
Krainis is survived by his wife, Betty; a son, John, of Freeport, Maine; a stepson, David H. Lippman of Great Barrington; two stepdaughters, Deborah Morris of Great Barrington and Judith Grant of Chapel Hill, North Carolina; a sister, Esther James of Freeland, Washington; and nine grandchildren.
His friend Andrew L. Pincus, the music critic of The Berkshire Eagle, recalled in a recent tribute that Krainis could frequently be seen at the yearly Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music in Lenox, Massachusetts, and that his assessments of new works were insightful.