Krehbiel was born in
Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1854, the son of a German clergyman of the
Methodist Episcopal Church. A first generation American, he was educated by his father, and grew up in a bilingual household speaking, reading, and writing in both German and English. He later mastered the French, Italian, Russian, and Latin languages. In 1864 his family moved to Cincinnati where his father took up the post of clergyman at a Methodist Church. There, Henry became the conductor of the church's choir while just a youth. In 1872 he began the study of law in
Cincinnati, Ohio. In June 1874, he was attached to the staff of the
Cincinnati Gazette where he began his career as a writer on sports and crime, reporting mainly on baseball games and murders. He quickly progressed to reporting on music events, and remained with the paper in that post until November 1880. He then went to New York, where he joined the staff of
The New York Tribune, initially as a journalist attached to the city desk who occasionally wrote editorials. As in Cincinnati, he quickly progressed to covering music events and rapidly rose to post of musical editor. He became an influential music critic, writing many articles for the
Tribune, ''
Scribner's Monthly'', and other journals. In researching his articles, he would often seek out first-hand experiences, and do his own research exhuming primary sources. For example, when writing on Wagner's
Die Meistersinger, he traveled to Nuremberg, and when writing on cantorial chant, he attended synagogues. Krehbiel wrote many books about various aspects of music, including
Afro-American folksongs: a study in racial and national music (1914); one of the earliest examinations of
African American music. His interest in the music was African-Americans dates back to his attendance of
World's Columbian Exposition where he was enthralled with performances of music by black musicians at the
Midway Plaisance. He annotated concert programs (including many of
Paderewski's recitals). '' toured the United States in 1921. Krehbiel translated some opera
libretti, including: Nicolai's
Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (1886), Paderewski's
Manru (1902), and Mozart's
Der Schauspieldirektor (1916). (Dates given are the first performance of the English translation.) When Mozart's
Così fan tutte was performed for the first time in the US, in 1922, it was in a new English version with a text by Krehbiel. He also translated the three volume German language biography of
Beethoven written by
Alexander Wheelock Thayer, for its first English language publication in 1921. A fourth volume had been planned but was left uncompleted by Thayer at the time of his death in 1897. Krehbiel penned his own fourth volume numbering 1,137 pages which was included in the 1925 republication of his English language translation. Krehbiel was a strong supporter of music by
Wagner,
Brahms,
Dvořák, and
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky when they were not yet well known in America. He detested French music, and together with his assistant,
Richard Aldrich, he waged a continuing campaign against it. When Krehbiel died in March 1923, still in post as critic of
The New York Tribune, Aldrich wrote in a tribute that Krehbiel had been "the leading musical critic of America" who raised musical criticism to an eminence it had never previously enjoyed in the US. ==Controversial assessment of Debussy's
La Mer==