The Mentor: Makers of Modern Opera, Vol. 1, Num. 47, Serial No. 47

Henry Edward Krehbiel

Henry Edward Krehbiel was an American music critic and musicologist who was the chief music critic of The New York Tribune for more than forty years. Along with his contemporaries Richard Aldrich, Henry Theophilus Finck, W.J. Henderson and James Huneker, Krehbiel is considered part of the 'Old Guard', a group of leading New York–based music critics who first established a uniquely American school of criticism. A critic with a strong bend towards empiricism, he frequently sought out first-hand experiences, accounts and primary sources when writing; drawing his own conclusions rather than looking to what other writers had already written. A meliorist, Krehbiel believed that the role of critici