Famintsyn, Alexander (Sergeievich)

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Famintsyn, Alexander (Sergeievich)

Famintsyn, Alexander (Sergeievich), Russian music critic and composer; b. Kaluga, Nov. 5, 1841;d. Ligovo, July 6, 1896. He studied with Vogt in St. Petersburg and attended the Univ. there. After further training with Santis, he studied with Hauptmann, Richter, and Riedel at the Leipzig Cons. (1862–64) and with Seifriz in Lowenberg. He was prof. of music history and aesthetics at the St. Petersburg Cons. (1865–72), and then devoted himself principally to music criticism in which he acquired a reputation as a trenchant polemicist against the Russian nationalist school of composition. Famintsyn wrote the operas Sardanapal (St. Petersburg, Dec. 5, 1875) and Uriel Acosta (1883), a piano quintet, a string quartet, and songs.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire