# When Critics get it wrong (past and present)



## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Hello Everyone,

I stumbled upon Gramophone's featured article on the top ten blunders made by music critics when assessing compositions (for the first time, or whenever). Among my favorites include:

Anton Bruckner wrote the same symphony nine times (who said it I forgot).
Alexander Glazunov's wrote the same symphonies over again (Gerald Abraham).

Here's the link below. 
http://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature...A.0&utm_referrer=http://www.gramophone.co.uk/

Please, what do you think?


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Schumann on Haydn:

"...an old family friend whom one receives gladly and respectfully but who has nothing new to tell us."


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

dholling said:


> Please, what do you think?


Give it a listen and make up your own mind. Use a review as a guide, if you feel the need of steering, but don't let what someone tells you steer you away from what you are interested in.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Recently I've been enjoying Rameau's great opera _Les Paladins_, here is how it was received in its time by one critic:

"The music is intolerably boring. Rameau seems to be waffling, and the audience is telling him it is time to retire."

- Charles Collé


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Well, when the old-time critics agree with me, they're insightful. When they don't, they're dumb as posts! Either way, I kind of like George Bernard Shaw, a major critic of his day -- he even has a statue, something Sibelius thought would never happen.

On the Brahms German Requiem: "I do not deny that the Requiem is a solid piece of musical manufacture. You feel at once that it could only have come from the establishment of a first-class undertaker."


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

An old favourite:

"Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on a human stage, ... and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, so far as the sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember in my life, by the stopping of any sound - not excepting railway whistles - as I was by the cessation of the cobbler's bellowing."

John Ruskin did not attend the best _Meistersinger_ stagings, it seems.

Not in a published review, but a private letter, to be fair.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I won't quote Hanslick's famous review of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. But it's said that Tchaikovsky could recite it, bitterly and word for word, to the end of his life.

Not music but... "Rimsky-Korsakov - what a name! It suggests fierce whiskers stained with vodka." --New York Musical Courier (1897)


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

I can't prove he's wrong, but suffice it to say that Philip Goepp gave Raff more credit than he receives today. Here he compares Raff to Wagner:



> *Indeed, there is no doubt that some of the melodic, harmonic, and chromatic manner that is all attributed to Wagner is quite distinctively Raff's own; *that with him it is allied with a true mastery of the art, independent of dramatic illustration; that it is the sensational quality of Wagner's style, his constant reiteration of the same idea on the largest dramatic scale (lacking the economy of highest art), helped, too, by the attraction of visible story, that has stamped his name unduly upon much of modern musical discovery, of which he was not the only pioneer. This symphony of Raff was finished seven years before the first hearing of the Nibelungen Cycle."


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## donnie a (Jan 15, 2015)

A really great and highly entertaining book on this subject that was published a few decades ago is Nicholas Slonimsky's _Lexicon of Musical Invective_. Despite the rather ponderous-sounding title, it's basically a huge collection of the slanderous, wrong-headed comments about great composers and their works down through the centuries. It's been available both in hardback and in paperback-your local library may have it. Check it out sometime if you have a chance.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

My perception of a lot of this sort of thing:

Critics are writers, and some have more real understanding of music, can read a score, even attend rehearsals of a new work to be better able to assess it (the "normal" circumstance is attend the concert, get back to the office, and have your final copy ready to go to the editor by midnight -- a set up with the built-in high probability of many on-the-fly quick and incorrect assessments.)

Many a music critic has little or no musical training, and what they know of music comes from books 'accessible' to many a lay reader, though they have read and learned much, and the rest is merely _their personal taste at work._

Some are far more integrally responsible than others.

What they pretty much all are, are _writers,_ writers entirely prone to be pleased to turn a pithy or witty phrase with a lot of color and punch when read. I think often enough, that primary impulse overrides their prudence in giving a more reasonable assessment of a work.

Hyperbole, then.

For those who get it 'right,' i.e. attend a concert that ends about 10p.m., rush to the office and deliver their final copy by midnight, all while reviewing a never-before-heard work? Hey, I couldn't do it.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

A very well known critic, Olin Downes, on the Rite of Spring: "...the expression of one who is fundamentally a barbarian and a primitive, tinctured with, and educated in, the utmost sophistications and satieties of a worn-out civilization."

Who's to say there's not some truth in this?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> A very well known critic, Olin Downes, on the Rite of Spring: "...the expression of one who is fundamentally a barbarian and a primitive, tinctured with, and educated in, the utmost sophistications and satieties of a worn-out civilization."
> 
> Who's to say there's not some truth in this?


Me. That reads to me like more a mirror reflecting the critic than a lens focused upon Le Sacre. But hey, who's to say there is not some truth in that, too?


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Who's to say there's not some truth in this?


Russians?

................


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

ahammel said:


> Russians?


Well, Stravinsky for sure! :lol:

Downes was a huge fan of Sibelius but was generally a tad conservative. On Webern's Symphony for Chamber Orchestra: "...one of those whispering, clucking, picking little pieces which Webern composes when he whittles away at small and futile ideas, until he has achieved the perfect fruition of futility and written precisely nothing."


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

ahammel said:


> Russians?


... or just about any 'other side.'


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Those who can, do. Those who can't, seek to parasitize, by tactics ranging from name-dropping to demolition, the worth and reputation of those who can.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Well, when the old-time critics agree with me, they're insightful. When they don't, they're dumb as posts! Either way, I kind of like George Bernard Shaw, a major critic of his day -- he even has a statue, something Sibelius thought would never happen.
> 
> On the Brahms German Requiem: "I do not deny that the Requiem is a solid piece of musical manufacture. You feel at once that it could only have come from the establishment of a first-class undertaker."


But then, only a second-rate Stalinist is capable of saying something so utterly charming to begin with.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

A couple I like.

Louis Schneider on La Mer: "The audience seemed rather disappointed: they expected the ocean, something big, something colossal, but they were served instead with some agitated water in a saucer."

Robin Holloway on Shostakovich's music: "Battleship-grey in melody and harmony, factory-functional in structure; in content all rhetoric and coercion."


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

KenOC said:


> A couple I like.
> 
> Louis Schneider on La Mer: "The audience seemed rather disappointed: they expected the ocean, something big, something colossal, but they were served instead with some agitated water in a saucer."
> 
> Robin Holloway on Shostakovich's music: "Battleship-grey in melody and harmony, factory-functional in structure; in content all rhetoric and coercion."


And these people wonder why they're not dined, feted, or attended to.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Marschallin Blair said:


> And these people wonder why they're not dined, feted, or attended to.


To each her own. If I find out there's a scabrous music critic at a party, I'll promptly corner him and ply him with drinks. Surest way to a good laugh, imo.

Another for Brahms, courtesy of GBS:

The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary... He is the most wanton of composers... Only his wantonness is not vicious; it is that of a great baby... rather tiresomely addicted to dressing himself up as Handel or Beethoven and making a prolonged and intolerable noise.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Even Erik Satie had a shot at La Mer. Speaking of the movement _From Dawn to Noon on the Sea_: "I liked the bit about quarter to eleven."


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

I especially like when shots are fired by composers, not critics.

How can you not chuckle at this one?

_Beethoven Symphony No 9

"The fourth movement is, in my opinion, so monstrous and tasteless and, in its grasp of Schiller's Ode, so trivial that I cannot understand how a genius like Beethoven could have written it."

Louis Spohr, his autobiography, 1860_


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Stavrogin said:


> I especially like when shots are fired by composers, not critics.


Paging a certain member (former?) who likes to _Carry On_!

Deadly serious ideological business, this, and we'll all have to be very careful lest it tear music apart!

Anyway, sad trombone sound and big yawn to all those who wish to yet again jump on the bandwagon of critic hate. You'll trumpet their talking points if you agree with them and yet seem oblivious as to how your music experience is constantly and comprehensively curated and moderated by the shadows of critical giants from the past and present (alongside the producers as well, of course) - be self aware, peeps 

Let's raise a statue to music critics everywhere!

P.S. in the OP link I agree with at least three of the supposedly amusingly wrong critic statements. Go figure!


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Well, when the old-time critics agree with me, they're insightful. When they don't, they're dumb as posts! Either way, I kind of like George Bernard Shaw, a major critic of his day -- he even has a statue, something Sibelius thought would never happen.
> 
> On the Brahms German Requiem: "I do not deny that the Requiem is a solid piece of musical manufacture. You feel at once that it could only have come from the establishment of a first-class undertaker."


Shaw was even an adversary of Sir Charles Stanford (and condescendingly I must add).


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

brotagonist said:


> Give it a listen and make up your own mind. Use a review as a guide, if you feel the need of steering, but don't let what someone tells you steer you away from what you are interested in.


I do (a lot/often). This is more of what people think critics went amiss (historical, anecdotal, etc.).


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Stavrogin said:


> I especially like when shots are fired by composers, not critics.
> 
> How can you not chuckle at this one?
> 
> ...


Easy not to chuckle, actually. He even clearly states "in my opinion". And although the majority embraces B9 as a masterpiece, there are plenty who would agree with Spohr.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

dholling said:


> Shaw was even an adversary of Sir Charles Stanford (and condescendingly I must add).


Condescending? Shaw-ly not! :lol:

GBS hated a number of British composers whom he regarded as dry and academic- an autodidact's chippiness, perhaps? He was an iconoclastic judge of singers, too- it helps to remember that he was both a failed baritone and a man who had an almost pathological need to know more than his readers, to be privy to secret information, even while disingenuously proclaiming his lack of expertise. Look at the vitriol he regularly poured over JB Faure (opera reviews, passim): the baritone was both the doyen of his, and Shaw's, own fach, and had committed the sin of being an established star already when GBS began to write, thus depriving the Irish scribbler of any claim to have discovered him. Of Faure's successors, he generally dismisses Lassalle as a de Reszke hanger-on of limited intelligence (and to be fair, you can hear he wasn't an actor) and is torn between reluctant admiration of Maurel and the desire to tear him down. (The only unreservedly positive coverage of Maurel, as a lecturer rather than singer, was a result of the intervention of a mutual friend, Lady Colin Campbell.) Jean de Reszke he admired, but never ceased to remind readers that he heard the tenor when he (de Reszke) was a baritone: Jean, having abandoned the contentious fach, was now safe to idolise (other than being chided for complacency which led him to postpone many performances, which in reality reflected more of a self-defeating perfectionism combined with hypochondria). Being able to contrast the present tenor de Reszke (and, as the Don, Maurel) unfavourably with the previous baritone de Reszke whom he had heard as Don Giovanni in Dublin allowed Shaw to claim a greater experience of the Polish tenor's art than his readership possessed, since London audiences only knew de Reszke as a fully formed star tenor.

Shaw's rabid and often inappropriate Wagnerism also influenced his criticism of de Reszke: was he perhaps motivated to deprecate the tenor's achievements in Faust and other established favourite roles by the desire to nudge him into more Wagnerian roles? In this, Shaw was hardly alone, but collectively the Wagnerite critics may have shortened the highly strung tenor's career- or maybe not, since Jean came late to Wagner, and didn't need the money from singing. Beautiful women fared better than baritones in his reviews: Emma Calvé was a favourite and, he implies, a protegee, although I'm sure she conquered Covent Garden audiences without his help. Shaw was a controversialist to the end, claiming in a late article (c. 1950) that none of the singers of the Golden Age held a candle to the effete Handelian tenor Heddle Nash, of all people!

Even his politics, usually an oasis of goodwill in his otherwise mean-spirited personality, could lead to some perverse conclusions when applied to the world of opera: he pleaded for a state funded opera along the lines of the Opéra in Paris, a notoriously sclerotic institution with a reputation for freezing out new composers and alienating performers with rigid contracts which treated singers in its permanent employ like schoolgirls (to borrow Blanche Arral's description of the Opéra Comique, run on similar lines). The Opera's loss was other houses' gain, both internationally and in France: to name a couple of examples, Pol Plançon stormed out when an onerous clause forbidding him to sing at private parties was rigorously enforced, and even Agustarello Affre, an Opera 'lifer', eventually walked out because he had been repeatedly denied the opportunity to create new roles. Of all the things which Shaw could have admired about French musical culture (but generally didn't), he had to home in on the rigid, state controlled opera houses, in which the Minister of Culture had the final word!

As maddening as his opinions usually are, he's nearly the only critic of his day whose writings I want to read avidly. Unless there's a sea change in literary fashions, his music criticism will be his claim to immortality, not his plays (of which an actor once said 'remember, this is Italian opera'- GBS the frustrated musician strikes again!)


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

Art Rock said:


> Easy not to chuckle, actually. He even clearly states "in my opinion". And although the majority embraces B9 as a masterpiece, there are plenty who would agree with Spohr.


It's not for Spohr's taste that I chuckle, it's for the contrast between the aura of greatness of the work and the ruthlessness with which he outright dumps it.

Verdi (among others) had the same feelings about that movement but his words about it are not amusing as these.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Figleaf said:


> Condescending? Shaw-ly not! :lol:
> 
> GBS hated a number of British composers whom he regarded as dry and academic- an autodidact's chippiness, perhaps? He was an iconoclastic judge of singers, too- it helps to remember that he was both a failed baritone and a man who had an almost pathological need to know more than his readers, to be privy to secret information, even while disingenuously proclaiming his lack of expertise. Look at the vitriol he regularly poured over JB Faure (opera reviews, passim): the baritone was both the doyen of his, and Shaw's, own fach, and had committed the sin of being an established star already when GBS began to write, thus depriving the Irish scribbler of any claim to have discovered him. Of Faure's successors, he generally dismisses Lassalle as a de Reszke hanger-on of limited intelligence (and to be fair, you can hear he wasn't an actor) and is torn between reluctant admiration of Maurel and the desire to tear him down. (The only unreservedly positive coverage of Maurel, as a lecturer rather than singer, was a result of the intervention of a mutual friend, Lady Colin Campbell.) Jean de Reszke he admired, but never ceased to remind readers that he heard the tenor when he (de Reszke) was a baritone: Jean, having abandoned the contentious fach, was now safe to idolise (other than being chided for complacency which led him to postpone many performances, which in reality reflected more of a self-defeating perfectionism combined with hypochondria). Being able to contrast the present tenor de Reszke (and, as the Don, Maurel) unfavourably with the previous baritone de Reszke whom he had heard as Don Giovanni in Dublin allowed Shaw to claim a greater experience of the Polish tenor's art than his readership possessed, since London audiences only knew de Reszke as a fully formed star tenor.
> 
> ...


As a student of Wagner, I have unavoidably spent some time with Shaw's dissertation on the _Ring_ as a socialist tract. There is basis for this in Wagner's own words and life experience at the time the _Ring_ was conceived, which allows Shaw to be about half right. Shaw doesn't need to be right to be entertaining - he's even more entertaining when he's wrong - and it's as an entertainer that he survives. His opinions of Brahms are some of the funniest things I've ever read - quite a bit less than half right, but right enough to make me love the pedantic old sweettooth - Brahms, that is - even more.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

"Siegfried was abominable. Not a trace of coherent melodies. It would kill a cat and turn rocks into scrambled eggs from fear of these hideous discords. My ears buzzed from these abortions of chords, if one can call them such. The opening of the third act made enough noise to split the ears. The whole crap could be reduced to 100 measures, for it is always the same thing, and always equally tedious."

- the young Richard Strauss, who later regretted these remarks


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

I wonder if anyone today dislikes Wagner because of the "discords"...


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> "Siegfried was abominable. Not a trace of coherent melodies. It would kill a cat and turn rocks into scrambled eggs from fear of these hideous discords. My ears buzzed from these abortions of chords, if one can call them such. The opening of the third act made enough noise to split the ears. The whole crap could be reduced to 100 measures, for it is always the same thing, and always equally tedious."
> 
> - the young Richard Strauss, who later regretted these remarks


:lol:

(15 characters)


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## Guest (Jan 20, 2015)

Did any of these misguided critics ever describe the _new music_ they heard as sounding like "frying bacon"?
Answers on a postcard please, c/o this forum.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

TalkingHead said:


> Did any of these misguided critics ever describe the _new music_ they heard as sounding like "frying bacon"?
> Answers on a postcard please, c/o this forum.


Close enough?

"The devilish Wagner has set the explosion on Place de la Sorbonne to music. Had he been present last night at this curious performance, he would have understood that our public, so easy to please, so enamored of beautiful things, will never allow itself to be imposed upon by this so-called music of the future, with its effects of *frying pans* and broken china."

- Albert Wolff


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> As a student of Wagner, I have unavoidably spent some time with Shaw's dissertation on the _Ring_ as a socialist tract. There is basis for this in Wagner's own words and life experience at the time the _Ring_ was conceived, which allows Shaw to be about half right. Shaw doesn't need to be right to be entertaining - he's even more entertaining when he's wrong - and it's as an entertainer that he survives. His opinions of Brahms are some of the funniest things I've ever read - quite a bit less than half right, but right enough to make me love the pedantic old sweettooth - Brahms, that is - even more.


You can say that again: If it wasn't for his sardonic wit, very little of his _oeuvre_ would even be remembered today-- so he's like his antagonist G.K. Chesterton in that capacity.

Try reading his _Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism_ without blushing. . . for 'him.'


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Of Wagner and his 'disciples', from London in 1855: "...madmen, enemies of music to the knife, who, not born for music, and conscious of their impotence... their being is to prey on the ailing trunk, until it becomes putrid and rotten."


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## Polyphemus (Nov 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> As a student of Wagner, I have unavoidably spent some time with Shaw's dissertation on the _Ring_ as a socialist tract. There is basis for this in Wagner's own words and life experience at the time the _Ring_ was conceived, which allows Shaw to be about half right. Shaw doesn't need to be right to be entertaining - he's even more entertaining when he's wrong - and it's as an entertainer that he survives. His opinions of Brahms are some of the funniest things I've ever read - quite a bit less than half right, but right enough to make me love the pedantic old sweettooth - Brahms, that is - even more.


Not often I disagree with your opinions Woodduck, but if Wagner were alive today he would surely be institutionalised. In this PC world of ours he would not last 5 minutes, the feminist's would have him for breakfast.
As regards GBS he was a hell of a lot more entertaining than Wagner and he didn't need five hours to deliver the punchline. I am, however, being Irish, biased.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

For one that is not in Slonimsky's book (I seem to repost this about once a year...):

"Brass, lots of brass, incredibly much brass! Even more brass, nothing but brass!--that was the first movement....None the less, the fourth movement is positively the last [a reference to the changed order of the inner movements], and with it Mahler's symphony ends, for all symphonies must end sometime, even if they are as endlessly long as Mahler's Sixth, entitled 'tragic'. And now, heedless of the shrieks of rage of the Mahlerites, a loud, clear, and energetic protest must be made against the corruption of healthy musical sense and taste by performances of this kind in the city where Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart, and Haydn lived and produced their most sublime works....Theater people used to maintain that Mahler was a fine symphonist. Knowledgeable music lovers can now prove that he is not a good symphonist....His melodic invention is minimal, his contrapuntal and thematic elaboration is nil, and many things which look imposing on his scores produce no effect because you don't hear them. The harps with their gissandos and the thrice-divided violas labour in vain to be heard during the assault of the gigantic army of brass, and the insistent and continuous ringing of cow and sheep bells cannot conceal the hopeless emptiness of the Sixth Symphony." - Heinrich Reinhardt


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Polyphemus said:


> Not often I disagree with your opinions Woodduck, but if Wagner were alive today he would surely be institutionalised. In this PC world of ours he would not last 5 minutes, the feminist's would have him for breakfast.
> As regards GBS he was a hell of a lot more entertaining than Wagner and he didn't need five hours to deliver the punchline. I am, however, being Irish, biased.


I can't tell what opinion you're disagreeing with!

Neither can I find a basis on which to compare Wagner and Shaw.

Does Wagner have punchlines?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> For one that is not in Slonimsky's book (I seem to repost this about once a year...):
> 
> "Brass, lots of brass, incredibly much brass! Even more brass, nothing but brass!--that was the first movement....None the less, the fourth movement is positively the last [a reference to the changed order of the inner movements], and with it Mahler's symphony ends, for all symphonies must end sometime, even if they are as endlessly long as Mahler's Sixth, entitled 'tragic'. And now, heedless of the shrieks of rage of the Mahlerites, a loud, clear, and energetic protest must be made against the corruption of healthy musical sense and taste by performances of this kind in the city where Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart, and Haydn lived and produced their most sublime works....Theater people used to maintain that Mahler was a fine symphonist. Knowledgeable music lovers can now prove that he is not a good symphonist....His melodic invention is minimal, his contrapuntal and thematic elaboration is nil, and many things which look imposing on his scores produce no effect because you don't hear them. The harps with their gissandos and the thrice-divided violas labour in vain to be heard during the assault of the gigantic army of brass, and the insistent and continuous ringing of cow and sheep bells cannot conceal the hopeless emptiness of the Sixth Symphony." - Heinrich Reinhardt


Love that "insistent and continuous ringing of cow and sheep bells."


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I love collecting performances of the J.S. Bach complete cello suites.

One esteemed critic in a magazine I subscribe to recommended a performance by Hekun Wu. The critic wrote that this cellist really has a superb feel and rhythm for the dancelike movements of the suites.
In reality, the performances are clumsy, awkward, excruciatingly slow....playing dancelike music for elephants!

Three years later, I have never purchased another recommended CD from this critic ever since.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

ahammel said:


> Schumann on Haydn:
> 
> "...an old family friend whom one receives gladly and respectfully but who has nothing new to tell us."


strange thing is, I find their music similar - both are quite rational and less overtly emotional, imo.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

ahammel said:


> An old favourite:
> 
> "Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on a human stage, ... and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, so far as the sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember in my life, by the stopping of any sound - not excepting railway whistles - as I was by the cessation of the cobbler's bellowing."
> 
> ...


That guy got burned.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Of Wagner and his 'disciples', from London in 1855: "...madmen, enemies of music to the knife, who, not born for music, and conscious of their impotence... their being is to prey on the ailing trunk, until it becomes putrid and rotten."


I have no idea what the hell this means, but it looks important enough for everyone on TC to "like" it, so nobody thinks they are stupid for not understanding it. "Liking" that quote is equivalent to a finesse play in bridge.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

So like it, already!


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