Wagner Society in NSW Inc

Great Composers, Lousy Reviews: When music critics attack.

Jan Swafford wrote a review on 3 February 2009 of Lexicon of Musical Invective by conductor, theorist, and scholar Nicholas Slonimsky. The book was published in 1953, but according to Swafford ‘the book is still in print.’ Swafford provides this snapshot of Slonimsky: ‘The author himself had caught his share of slings and arrows as a young conductor who was determined to promote what the time called ‘ultra-modern’ music. Now Slonimsky is remembered for premiering important pieces by Edgard Varese and Charles Ives, among others. After too many strange chords scuttled his conducting career, Slonimsky spent decades as a freelance writer, scholar, and theorist…. But Slonimsky's most enduring achievement is the Lexicon, his encyclopedia of umbrage.’

Within the review, Swafford laments that ‘only a short abstract of one example’ can be given, but, for the delight and chagrin of Wagnerians, the choice is ‘the rabid fury of one J.L. Klein in his 1871 History of the Drama. His parade of epithets—racist, classist, sexist, species-ist, satanic, and medical—is symptomatic of the time's wordsmiths when they really, really didn't like your stuff: ‘This din of brasses, tin pans and kettles, this Chinese or Caribbean clatter with wood sticks and ear-cutting scalping knives … [t]his reveling in the destruction of all tonal essence, raging satanic fury in the orchestra, this demoniacal lewd caterwauling, scandal-mongering, gun-toting music … the darling of feeble-minded royalty, …of the court flunkeys covered with reptilian slime, and of the blasé hysterical female court parasites … 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!’’ You can read the full review at Slate Magazine’s website: www.slate.com/id/2210339. If you enjoyed this article, Swafford has written many more for Slate Magazine, including The Beethoven Mystery: Why haven't we figured out his Ninth Symphony yet? – a list is at www.slate.com/default.aspx?search_input=swafford&search_loc=on&qt=swafford&id=3944. [Editor]

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This Page was last updated on: May 24, 2009->->