Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time

by Nicolas Slonimsky

Who says the world of classical music is sedate or even dull? Certainly not anyone who has read Nicolas Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective! This funny, irascible little book details contemporary critical attacks on virtually all of the great musical figures of the past 200 years. Beethoven is here, along with Liszt, Mahler, Schumann, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner -- all of whom were skewered by the critics at some point in their careers. No classical music lover (or hater!) will want to live without it.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Humor, History, Criticism

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

Reviews

[ALLEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like any classic, this unusual, peevish, and fun little book that assembles various critics' nasty remarks about some of the most glorious music of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries has "stood the test of time." LEXICON reminds students and devotees of great music that great compositions by great composers were once dangerously envelope-pushing in terms of style and technique, and offended critics and their "standards" most of all. For example, numerous composers, including Wagner, were accused of employing 'trained cats' in the orchestra to portray their key-busting tonalities (even editorial cartoons got into that act). And when one French critic snarked that Debussy's La Mer would better be called "Mal de Mer (seasickness)," you wonder how wrongheaded even sharp observers could be regarding "the music of the future."

Once in a while, composers fought back: Beethoven said of one critic: "Was ich scheisse, ist mehr als er je gedacht hat." Mean, of course, but also very, very funny. Highly recommended.

Note: Peter Schickele, a serious composer, is the street name of the comedian P.D.Q. Bach.

[Gary Inbinder · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this about 40 years ago. It's a collection of critical hatchet jobs aimed at some of the greatest music ever written. As far as I know, all the great creative geniuses in every art form have, at one time or another, had their works trashed by influential critics. And the same critics often promoted crap that's long since been forgotten. Reading these critical beat downs from our perspective can be amusing, but I'm sure the composers didn't think they were funny if and when they read them.

[GONZA · Rating 4 out of 5]

C'é da dire che scoprire che c'é stato piú di un critico musicale che in passato si é permesso di parlare male dei pezzi di Beethoven ha aperto un nuovo orizzonte nella mia già vasta esperienza con la stupidità umana. A parte questo peró, vi consiglierei di leggere le critiche ascoltando i pezzi se sono meno noti e di non leggere tutto il libro dalla prima all'ultima pagina, ma piuttosto di scegliere un autore e di leggere le critiche ascoltando il pezzo in questione ed inserendolo nel contesto storico. Male che vada, amplierete i vostri orizzonti musicali.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of critics’ averse reactions to some of classical music’s most canonized composers. While it’s fun to see how off the mark their opinions are in hindsight – especially with pieces like Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring or Tchaikovsky’s Pathètique symphony – I quickly lost my taste for the endless whinging. What I enjoyed more was the author’s classification of different kinds of invective that critics cluster around, like calling the music noisy or too “of the future” or just morally bereft and bad for the children. My big takeaway is that progress is always distasteful to anyone invested in the traditional past (be it art or culture or politics), and it’s perfectly fine to let them eat our dust.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a cover-cover read. Read some reviews. Laugh. Shake your head. Put it down. Come back to it. Repeat.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haha—what a compilation of “cacophonous quotes” you’ve given us in your lexicon, Maestro Slonimsky! These criticisms are bombastic. They’re barbed. They’re cruel and sometimes plain crazy, but they’re certainly never boring!

Case in point: this segment of a review by J. L. Klein of Leipzig: “The diabolical din of this pig-headed man, stuffed with brass and sawdust, inflated, in an insanely destructive self-aggrandizement, by Mephistopheles’ mephitic and most venomous hellish miasma, into Beelzebub’s Court Composer and General Director of Hell’s Music—Wagner!”

Hahaha, tralala. And thus the invective flows. By the way, the above excerpt is only a scant fourth of the full quote!

Of course, the author’s preliminary comments put all this boiling over of the mouth into perfect perspective: it’s all based on “non-acceptance of the familiar.” So, none of us can claim to be any better unless we are willing to accept new art and give it a chance to live.

Thoroughly entertaining, even if it’s mean.

[Greta · Rating 4 out of 5]

The forward to this books mentions: "It is a widely known fact - or, at least, a widely held belief - that negative criticism is more entertaining to read than enthusiastic endorsement. There is certainly no doubt that many critics write pans with an unbridled gusto that seems to be lacking in their (usually rarer) raves, and these critics often become more famous, or infamous, than their less caustic colleagues...Most of us feel constrained, in person, to say politely pleasant things to creative artists no matter what we think of their work; perhaps this penchant of ours endows blisteringly bad reviews with a cathartic strength that makes us read them aloud to our friends even when we don't agree with the reviewers' opinions...So, there's a lot of delectable venom in this book."

Yes, there certainly is. And I enjoyed every single bit of it.

[Tamar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glorious.

Everyone (as expected) has a field day with Schoenberg, but a couple of Berliners writing in 1941 took the top spot for most tasteless critique: "Schoenberg's tendency to negate all that was before him is the old tested Jewish tactics which are always put into practice, at an opportune moment, to destroy the cultural values of the host peoples in order to set up their own as the only valid ones." (translated from the original German)

Now part of me wants to give the compiler a break for this inclusion, as this was written back in 1953, and the other part of interjects, "BUT IT WAS NINETEEN FIFTY-THREE!" This book contains other racist remarks that also shouldn't have made it to the seventh edition, which was printed in 1984. If this was a history book, the record would be fine, but in this volume, it diminishes from the general spirit of hilarity brought about by the knowledge that the then-victims would eventually be celebrated and their attackers, lost to history.

Oh, and the index is stellar, and the whole book, as another reviewer correctly noted, is very quotable.

[Patri · Rating 4 out of 5]

La principal característica de 'La consagración de la primavera' es que se trata de la composición más disonante y estruendosa jamás escrita. Nunca se ha puesto en práctica el sistema y el culto a la nota falsa con tanta diligencia, tanto celo y tanto empeño. Desde el primer compás de la obra hasta el último, cuando se espera una nota, esa nota nunca suena, sino otra que no debería sonar; cuando se espera un acorde, es otro el que se escucha; y este acorde y esta nota se emplean deliberadamente para dar una impresión de disonancia aguda y casi cruel. Cuando dos temas se superponen, nunca se trata de dos temas que encajen; esto estaría muy lejos de las intenciones del autor. Por el contrario, lo que este elige son temas cuya superposición genere las fricciones y los rechinamientos más irritantes que se puedan imaginar.
Pierro Lalo, Les Temps, París, 3 de junio de 1913.

[Caleb Hu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mischevious, hilarious, often very quotable- some of the greatest content from this book comes not from the author but from the critics and composers who often have the most outlandishly scathing criticisms about those currently revered as legends.

Favorite quote goes to Max Reger: "I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have my review before me. In a moment it will be behind me!"

Delightfully euphemistic.

[Hosanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Composers were a bunch of drama queens and this proves it.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nicolas Slonimsky's LEXICON OF MUSICAL INVECTIVE collects those critical reviews of composers from Beethoven's time which proved "biased, unfair, ill-tempered, and singularly unprophetic judgements". It's handily arranged in alphabetic order by composer, so while listening to, say, Bela Bartok's first piano concerto, you can amuse yourself with a 1928 review from the Cincinnati Enquirer:

"Mr. Bartok elected to play his composition dignified by the title Concerto for Pianoforte and Orchestra. Note the ommission of key. Ultra-moderns cannot be bothered with such trifling designations ... It has been said that the Concerto is based on folk tunes. They have been successfully concealed. Only tonal chaos arises from the diabolical employment of unrelated keys simultaneously."

A 1913 review from the Boston Journal manages to make unprophetic judgements about two composers in one go:

"For the most part the latest symphony [the Sibelius Fourth] from the pen of Finland's foremost composer is a tangle of the most dismal dissonances. It eclipses the saddest and sourest moments of Debussy."

In addition to these citations, Slonimsky offers his own analysis of critical tendencies in the opening essay "Non-Acceptance of the Familiar". To the elderly among the old critics, Slonimsky notes, new music always seems louder than what they are used to. They also often resorted to linguistic similes, comparing new music to "Chinese", a then-handy symbol of incomprehensibility. He gives some general anecdotes about the world of music reviewing, such as a Russian journalist writing a review on Prokofiev's "Scythian Suite" before the concert even took place--he was fired when the review appeared but the piece had actually be taken off the programme at the last minute. There's even an index of Invective, so if you want to find all reviews making use of the terms "Hideous", "Grunting", or even "Feeding Time at Zoo", you'll know which pages to turn to.

Though the work is entertaining, it's no essential addition to a home library. You can read it in an hour at your public or university library. Also, the work was never updated after 1965--it ends with the generation of Bartok, Webern, and Varese--and so those hoping to read invective against Boulez, Stockhausen and others won't find it here.

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compendium of pompous, arrogant, exasperated, blockheaded or woefully incorrect statements by "critics" about composers and their greatest or most famous works. The most lengthy sections are devoted to Liszt, Wagner, Richard Strauss, but just about every composer since Beethoven comes in for some abuse. These reviews, extracted (for the most part) from newspapers and journals, are generally contemporaneous with the music or composers they pan. Some Russian bozo enthusiastically condemns, with silly witticisms, a Moscow performance of Prokofiev's "Scythian Suite," evidently unaware that the performance had been cancelled & never took place. (This seems to me truly unforgivable!) The funniest reviews tend to be those that contain some degree of truth, though distorted beyond the bounds of propriety. Conservative critics were always complaining that new musical developments would lead to the "death of music," and though we all enjoy music today it's pretty clear that "serious" music in the so-called "classical" tradition has fallen out of favor with the general public. This book helps to explain how and why that happened.

[Lydia]

This is such a hilarious book. it just goes to show that everybody says snarky things now and then and that predictions and comments made in all seriousness will be totally ridiculous and laughable in a few years.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, so amusing! And it's useful for reception history research! (Well, sometimes.) A fascinating look at the most colorful critical insults on various famous (and some not-so-famous) composers throughout history. Notes available for further research.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very funny collection of actual negative reviews written about classical music performances and compositions. Organized by composer.

[Mynameisandycostello · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slonimsky once declared that the book should be treated as "toilet literature." Althought I wouldn't disagree, this book teaches a valuable lesson for any artist or art appreciator.

[Mi · Rating 5 out of 5]

So bitter, painful, but hilarious in a certain weird manner. Fascinating to read!

[Jordan Kinsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Changed my perception of music (again).

[Avis Black · Rating 1 out of 5]

The selections need to be wittier.

[Jeff Harrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of wonderfully horrible musical reviews. The perfect gift for a composer!

[Sarah Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pure Gold