# Composers as Critics



## rojo (May 26, 2006)

Apparently Debussy wrote musical criticisms for journals in Paris. He went by the name of "Monsieur Croche", or "Mr. Eighth Note." (Ha, "eighthnote" was a moniker I used on a music forum I used to frequent that went bust. It has since reopened, but I haven't been back.)

In one of his articles, he described listening to Grieg's music as giving "the charming and bizarre sensation of eating a pink bon-bon stuffed with snow." According to this article, he also had interesting words for the music of R. Strauss, Wagner and Saint-Saëns.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,798705,00.html

Shocking!  

What other composers had nasty words for other composers under assumed names?
Should composers be criticizing each other's work? 
Should criticism of this nature be reserved for non-composers? 
Who gets to criticize the critics? 
Is it true that everyone's a critic? 
Is Grieg's music really a tasty, yet frosty treat?


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

> Should composers be criticizing each other's work?


And who else should? Critics? Poor devils! Where do these unfortunate creatures come from? On what butcher's block will they meet their end? What reward does municipal munificence allot them for thus cleaning (or dirtying) the pavements of Paris? At what age are they sent to the glue factory? What becomes of their bones (their skin is good for nothing)?

Critic is the most silly profession ever invited. Why are they able to criticize works better than anyone else? Because they are educated? Then they are really worthless because even though they are educated they can't contribute to music as a musicians/composers. So they pretent to be wise guys in their quasi-witty writings.

There are only two kinds of critics: common people that are interested in music and express their opinions and people that are great artist themselves so they can put forth more valueable opinion. There is nothing between, no place for any "profession".


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## Il Seraglio (Sep 14, 2009)

I'm not surprised by this story in the slightest. Debussy was a super-critical person, even for someone French. In any event, all of those statements he made about Wagner were true. He didn't even criticise his music (which is great), only his person, by the sounds of it. I thought nobody was in any doubt as to Wagner's narcissism and megalomania.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Aramis said:


> There are only two kinds of critics: common people that are interested in music and express their opinions and people that are great artist themselves so they can put forth more valueable opinion. There is nothing between, no place for any "profession".


In theory artists should be the best critics, but are they? Sometimes they might be dismissive of other artists because they see them as a rival or just because they compose in a style they don't feel relates to their own work. Also it's good to have the longer historical view something which a great artist at the time they speak (or a critic at that time either) won't have.


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## 52paul (Sep 13, 2009)

Berlioz was perhaps the most prolific critic and made a good living from his writings. Here is an extract from a book: "Hector Berlioz and the development of French Music Criticism"
this is where I found it: http://oq.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/8/2/133


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## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

Boulez was infamous for his polemics against other composers such as Stravinsky... um, especially Stravinsky. Ironic that he's one of the best Stravinsky conductors around, really.

There are books by Boulez that have some of these review things.


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## Andy Loochazee (Aug 2, 2007)

rojo said:


> Apparently Debussy wrote musical criticisms for journals in Paris. He went by the name of "Monsieur Croche", or "Mr. Eighth Note." (Ha, "eighthnote" was a moniker I used on a music forum I used to frequent that went bust. It has since reopened, but I haven't been back.)


That must be "_Music Discussion"_ you are referring to there, methinks. I remember it well. As you say, it suddenly disappeared and I thought for good, but having now checked it is, as you say, alive and kicking again. The classical section doesn't seem well laid out, but at least they have a couple of British Mods/Admin this time. In that regard, I really can't fathom why this Forum is completely dominated by North Americans, with no Brits or other Europeans who carry out any active role.

Regards your various questions about composers, this topic must be one of the oldest chestnuts in the book! Here's my two-penneth, all the same.

Composers are bound to be critics of others' works. It's the same the whole world over in almost any profession: the most vociferous, and best critics are fellow professionals because they are the people normally best qualified to do it. I'm not being emphatic about this, just stating what normally applies in many spheres.

As for the secrecy of some of the composers' identity, that's not surprising, either. We're all here on T-C as critics in some sense of composers' works, and most of us are completely unknown individuals in regard to our real identity. We might be a bit more careful what we sometimes say if we were professional composers commenting on colleagues' work, and if we couldn't hide behind secret identities.

An obvious composer critic who did an extremely good job was Robert Schumann, who founded the magazine "_New Journal in Music"_, both to promote new (good) composers (famously Chopin and Brahms among others), and to lambast some of the then popular flashy material from inferior composers. He did not write anonymously. I have read some of his writings and they are very perceptive and well written.

Dvorak was another composer who occasionally acted as a critic of various earlier 19th C composers, and whose drafting skills were very good.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Also artists tend to spend most of their time creating rather than looking at many other people's art. So they may not be as widely aware of many works by others because it just isn't their job to be.


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## James clerk (Jan 28, 2010)

Funny that Schumann wasnt mentioned here.


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## rojo (May 26, 2006)

^ Hi James. He was. Check the second to last paragraph of Andy's post:


Andy Loochazee said:


> That must be "_Music Discussion"_ you are referring to there, methinks. I remember it well. As you say, it suddenly disappeared and I thought for good, but having now checked it is, as you say, alive and kicking again. The classical section doesn't seem well laid out, but at least they have a couple of British Mods/Admin this time. In that regard, I really can't fathom why this Forum is completely dominated by North Americans, with no Brits or other Europeans who carry out any active role.
> 
> Regards your various questions about composers, this topic must be one of the oldest chestnuts in the book! Here's my two-penneth, all the same.
> 
> ...


(Regarding MD, it's alive, but I don't know about kicking. It was kicking about 5 years ago, but I probably shouldn't discuss what happened there, here. Ah, memories. I met some neat peeps there who are now on this board. And I'm still friends with a mod from there. Btw, the head honcho there is the same one as before, and yes, he's a Brit. Here at TC, it's a Dane that runs the whole show.)

Thanks for all your contributions, everyone. This isn't the kind of topic I usually post, as I'm not a fan of criticism, generally. I didn't recall a thread here on this topic though, and I thought that the " charming and bizarre sensation of eating a pink bon-bon stuffed with snow" comment was rather cute, and _a propos_. I think I'm gonna add it to my siggy. 

I like chestnuts. *sings "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..."*


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

The English composer Havergal Brian (1876-1972) had a substantial career writing for and editing _Musical Opinion_. Brian's interests and knowledge were exceptionally wide and his writing stands the test of time. It is almost invariably insightful, often ahead of its time, fair and literate.
Toccata Press have issued two volumes of his music journalism.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

http://www.talkclassical.com/16563-karajan-hero-hype-11.html#post271777

Should conductors criticize the work of other conductors?

Should composers criticize conductors?

Gardiner has called Karajan "evil".

Stravinsky wrote an angry screed against Karajan's recording of the Rite of Spring.

As Stravinsky once commented on a typically hard-driven Solti performance, 'Mozart is poorer than that'. By which, of course, he meant that Mozart is richer than that.

Then again, Solti was a good conductor of Wagner, and Stravinsky hated Wagner.

http://boulezian.blogspot.com/2009/10/interview-with-sir-thomas-allen-10.html

MB: Did you ever sing for Karajan?

TA: I sang for him. I did a memorable audition for him. He offered me the earth afterwards, including a production of Trovatore, which I told him I didn't sing. I'd auditioned for Un ballo in maschera, Faust, the St Matthew Passion, all kinds of stuff, and he wanted me to do Trovatore. *He said, 'You will do Trovatore,'* and I said, 'I won't do Trovatore for anybody.'


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Paul Dukas was also a major critic besides composer, it was his primary job. Ironically, his own critical opinion was his downfall because he wasn't hypocritical and highly criticized his own works. Consequently the burning of many unfinished works that may have actually been really good nonetheless, just not good to him. Who knows, perhaps he would have become more famous in a different way today (I say different as opposed to only more, because I don't think anything could trump what the Sorceror's Apprentice did for him).


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## Truckload (Feb 15, 2012)

*"Funny that Schumann wasnt mentioned here."*

Exactly! I believe Schumann's primary source of income was as a critic. Of course Clara did well as a touring artist, but she did not work steadily.

Wasn't Brahams also a part-time (or perhaps full time) paid critic?


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

Il Seraglio said:


> I'm not surprised by this story in the slightest. Debussy was a super-critical person, even for someone French. In any event, all of those statements he made about Wagner were true. He didn't even criticise his music (which is great), only his person, by the sounds of it. I thought nobody was in any doubt as to Wagner's narcissism and megalomania.


From Wikipedia:

"_He (Debussy) could be caustic and witty, sometimes sloppy and ill-informed. Debussy was for the most part enthusiastic about Richard Strauss and Stravinsky, worshipful of Chopin, Bach and Mozart, and found both Liszt and Beethoven geniuses who sometimes lacked "taste". He also admired the works of Charles-Valentin Alkan.[29] Schubert and Mendelssohn fared much worse, the latter being described as a "facile and elegant notary."_


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

6.) Is Grieg's music really a tasty, yet frosty treat? 
Yes, Greig's music really is a slurpy sweet sno-cone, the larger works melted before Grieg could complete them in time before the syrup ran, the piece consequently having lost both taste and form (the piano concerto). Those little things, very nice bon-bons indeed. Monsieur Croche did call those bon-bons both 'charming and bizarre.'

5.) Is it true that everyone's a critic? 
Some notion floating amid the general populace today has allowed many of that public, somehow, weirdly, and completely within a context of massive delusional mental facilities, to believe their opinion has equal weight next to those who took a lifetime of study and years to develop the craft, and feel their opinion is also of equal weight next to the opinions of those who have learned not only the craft but how to write about it well. Go Figure.... a noob / amateur opinion in print on the internet legitimizes Nothing and No One. (So... it seems you have a blog ;-)

4.) Who gets to criticize the critics? 
The composers and other critics of course - nothing gets quite so cat-fight yet well-versed and sharp as some of Those back and forth salvos of repartee, believe me. Worth the price of admission. Practiced pros, having at each other. Just the phrase 'my highly esteemed colleague' alone has never sounded as lethal or as funny as it can in this sort of Alpha Dog fight.

3.) Should criticism of this nature be reserved for non-composers? 
Naaaaw. Let the pros say what they will (see # 4). The professional critics who are not composers will say what they want anyway.

2.) Should composers be criticizing each others work? 
Who better than a composer to criticize another composer's work? Then again, one composer's set of aesthetics can get very much in the way of giving a reasonable critique of a good composer whose work does not agree with that aesthetic. Stravinsky put it best, I think, "The one true comment on a piece of music is another piece of music." I agree with him. Words and music theory, no matter how well put or salient, fall far short of doing justice to comment at all on any piece, they are that far removed from the medium they attempt to discuss.

1.) What other composers had nasty words for other composers under assumed names?
As a critic, Philip Heseltine - real name - went out of his way to slam, with the sharpest of negative words and unforgiving phrases, the music of one Peter Warlock, composer: Peter Warlock was Philip Heseltine's pen name as a composer! Lord knows what inner conflict was going on there, but I'm thinking that one takes a special sort of prize!


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