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

by Slonimsky, Nicolas

• ISBN13: 9780393320091
• ISBN10: 039332009X
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-08-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

A snakeful of critical venom aimed at the composers and the classics of nineteenth- and twentieth-century music. Who wrote advanced cat music? What commonplace theme is very much like Yankee Doodle? Which composer is a scoundrel and a giftless bastard? What opera would His Satanic Majesty turn out? Whose name suggests fierce whiskers stained with vodka? And finally, what third movement begins with a dog howling at midnight, then imitates the regurgitations of the less-refined or lower-middle-class type of water-closet cistern, and ends with the cello reproducing the screech of an ungreased wheelbarrow? For the answers to these and other questions, readers need only consult the "Invecticon" at the back of this inspired book and then turn to the full passage, in all its vituperation. Among the eminent reviewers are George Bernard Shaw, Virgil Thomson, Hans von B?ow, Friedrich Nietzsche, Eduard Hanslick, Olin Downes, Deems Taylor, Paul Rosenfeld, and Oscar Wilde. Itself a classic, this collection of nasty barbs about composers and their works, culled mostly from contemporaneous newspapers and magazines, makes for hilarious reading and belongs on the shelf of everyone who loves?r hates ?lassical music. With a new foreword by Peter Schickele ("P.D.Q. Bach").

Author Biography

Nicolas Slonimsky, writer, lexicographer, pianist, composer, conductor, teacher. He died in 1995 at the age of 101

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Peter Schickele
Prelude: Non-Acceptance of the Unfamiliar Lexicon of Musical Invective	3	(36)
Bartok	39	(3)
Beethoven	42	(11)
Berg	53	(4)
Berlioz	57	(5)
Bizet	62	(4)
Bloch	66	(2)
Brahms	68	(12)
Bruckner	80	(3)
Chopin	83	(3)
Copland	86	(2)
Cowell	88	(1)
Debussy	89	(15)
Franck	104	(1)
Gershwin	105	(1)
Gounod	106	(1)
Harris	107	(1)
D'Indy	108	(2)
Krenek	110	(1)
Liszt	111	(9)
Mahler	120	(4)
Milhaud	124	(3)
Moussorgsky	127	(2)
Prokofiev	129	(6)
Puccini	135	(2)
Rachmaninoff	137	(1)
Ravel	138	(1)
Reger	139	(3)
Riegger	142	(1)
Rimsky-Korsakov	143	(3)
Ruggles	146	(1)
Saint-Saens	147	(1)
Schoenberg	148	(20)
Schumann	168	(4)
Scriabin	172	(3)
Shostakovitch	175	(3)
Sibelius	178	(2)
Strauss	180	(16)
Stravinsky	196	(9)
Tchaikovsky	205	(8)
Varese	213	(5)
Verdi	218	(4)
Wagner	222	(27)
Webern	249	(4)
Invecticon	253	(32)
Index of Names and Titles	285	(12)
Supplement	297