Glasenapp, Carl Friedrich
Glasenapp, Carl Friedrich
Glasenapp, Carl Friedrich, German musk scholar; b. Riga, Oct. 3, 1847; d. there, April 14, 1915. He studied philology at Dorpat, and from 1875 was head-master at Riga. An ardent admirer of Wagner’s art, he devoted his entire life to the study of the master’s works, and was one of the principal contributors to the Bayreuther Blätter from their foundation. His great work is the monumental Richard Wagners Leben und Wirken (2 vols., Leipzig, 1876-77; 3rd ed., rev. and enl., as Das Leben Richard Wagners, 6 vols., Leipzig, 1894-1911; Eng. tr. by W. Ellis as Life of Richard Wagner, 6 vols., London, 1900-1908; Vols. I-III based on Glasenapp; reprinted N.Y., 1977, with new introduction by G. Buelow; 5th Ger. ed., rev., 1910-23). Though Glasenapp’s work was considered the definitive biography in its time, its value is diminished by the fact that he publ. only materials approved by Wagner’s family; as a result, it was superseded by later biographies. His other works include Wagner-Lexikon with H. von Stein (1883), Wagner-Encyklopadie (2 vols., 1891), Siegfried Wagner (1906), and Siegfried Wagner und seine Kunst (1911), with sequels, Schwarzschwanenreich (1913) and Sonnenflammen (1919). He also ed. Bayreuther Briefef 1871-73 (1907) and Familienbriefe an Richard Wagner, 1832-74 (1907).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire