George Eliot on new music

Those who are familiar with the history of music during the last forty or fifty years, should be aware that the reception of new music by the majority of musical critics, is not at all a criterion of its ultimate success. A man of high standing, both as a composer and executant, told a friend of mine, that when a symphony of Beethoven's was first played at the Philharmonic, there was a general titter among the musicians in the orchestra, of whom he was one, at the idea of sitting seriously to execute such music! And as a proof that professed musicians are sometimes equally unfortunate in their predictions about music which begins by winning the ear of the public, he candidly avowed that when Rossini's music was first fascinating the world of opera-goers, he had joined in pronouncing it a mere passing fashion, that tickled only by its novelty. Not indeed that the contempt of musicians and the lash of critics is a pledge of future triumph: St. Paul five times received forty stripes save one, but so did many a malefactor; and unsuccessful composers before they take consolation from the poohpoohing or 'damnation' of good music, must remember how much bad music has had the same fate, from the time when Jean Jacques' oratorio set the teeth of all hearers on edge.

                               — "Liszt, Wagner, and Weimar," 1855