Alexander Sergeivich Famintsin (Russian: Александр Сергеевич Фаминцын) (also transliterated as Aleksandr S. Famincyn or Famintsyn)(1841-1896) was a Russian composer, critic, musicologist and scholar. He was one of the early faculty members of the renowned Saint Petersburg Conservatory. He was a pupil of Ignaz Moscheles, Moritz Hauptmann and Ernst Richter and friend of Alexander Serov.
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Life
Alexander Sergeivich, of aristocratic descent, was born at Kaluga, Oct. 24 (O.S.), 1841. His mother Wilhelmina Mestmacher was of German descent.
He was educated in St. Petersburg, where he studied with Jean Vogt, and on leaving the university spent two years in Leipzig, where he studied theory under Hauptmann, Richter, and Moscheles.
On his return to Russia he was appointed professor of musical history and aesthetics at the newly opened Conservatoire. He also was secretary of the Russian Music Society.
He resigned from the conservatory in 1872, in order to devote himself to composition. As a music critic, he was known for his attacks upon the new national school of music. But he also covered other topics such as an article about the first production of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at Bayreuth in 1876, which appeared in the Saint Petersburger Zeitung.