Not to be confused with composer Franz Brendel (1832–1874).
Karl Franz Brendel (November 26, 1811 – November 25, 1868) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 music critic, journalist and musicologist.

Brendel was born at Stolberg, the son of a successful mining engineer named Christian Friedrich Brendel.

He was a student at the University of Leipzig

University of Leipzig

The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university in Germany...

, University of Berlin, and University of Freiburg

University of Freiburg

The University of Freiburg , sometimes referred to in English as the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.The university was founded in 1457 by the Habsburg dynasty as the...

 up until the year 1840. In 1846 he began teaching music history

Music history

Music history, sometimes called historical musicology, is the highly diverse subfield of the broader discipline of musicology that studies the composition, performance, reception, and criticism of music over time...

 at the Leipzig Conservatory, and in 1852 he published a well-regarded general history of European music. Brendel also published a book on Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

.

He was the editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik

Neue Zeitschrift für Musik

Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik was a music magazine published in Leipzig, co-founded by Robert Schumann, his teacher and future father-in law Friedrich Wieck, and his close friend Ludwig Schuncke...

, taking over in 1845 the position relinquished by Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

 (in 1844) and remaining in post until his death in 1868. Brendel coined the phrase Neudeutsche Schule (New German School

New German School

The New German School is a term introduced in 1859 by Franz Brendel, editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik to apply to certain trends in German music...

) to describe the movement of German music critics (such as himself and Eduard Hanslick

Eduard Hanslick

Eduard Hanslick was a Bohemian-Austrian music critic.-Biography:Hanslick was born in Prague, the son of Joseph Adolph Hanslick, a bibliographer and music teacher from a German-speaking family, and one of his piano pupils, the daughter of a Jewish merchant from Vienna...

) on the rise in the middle of the nineteenth century. He died in Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

.