NP literary insults

[Dave Monroe]

And see as well ...

Slonimsky, Nicolas.  Lexicon of Musical Invective:
   Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's
   Time.  2nd ed.  Seattle: U of Wasington P, 1965.

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 Bülow,
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—or hates —classical music.

http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring00/32009.htm

--- MalignD at aol.com wrote:
> 
> Relatedly, the composer Virgil Thompson wrote this
> to a critic who had given  him an unfavorable
> review.
> 
> "I am sitting in the smallest room of my house.  
> Your review is before me.  Soon it shall be behind
> me."


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