Professional critics, from time to time, give us valuable insight into how art works.
Okay, that’s enough about that. Let’s get to the red meat!
Critics are not always invested in the goal of evaluating art with objectivity. In their defense— that’s our fault, sometimes. What’s the incentive for them to do that? Nobody’s going to click on a clickbait headline that promises “Objective Evaluation of Art, Without The Lowbrow Distraction Of Celebrity Sideboob Shots.”
But I’m not letting the critics off the hook. Critics are humans, and they’ve been handed a little bit of power, and they often use it to showcase their prejudices, their ignorance, their laziness, their lack of self-awareness, and their addiction to confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and so forth; these things can all happen even when they’re reviewing artists that conform to familiar conventions. But when artists are breaking new ground, bringing in something unfamiliar to be evaluated— a certain amount of critics are not going to get it, and they are not going to be embarrassed about this, either. They’ll suggest the artist is at fault, for not doing what the critic thinks the artist ought to have done instead of whatever they were trying to do. (I recall a critic saying on TV that he knew everybody was excited about then-current film David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, but he just didn’t get it. I admired him for saying this. I went to a Blue Velvet sneak preview where the film ended, and a guy in front of me literally hopped to his feet and started loudly ranting about the movie. His yelled words— “I give it a zero! I give it a big fat zero!”
Hey, pal, save it for Fire, Walk With Me. Or, even better— for the one where David Lynch talks to a monkey for 15 straight minutes. I enjoyed it, but I’m not dying on that hill.)
In the relatively recent past, punk rock and hard rock albums got tons of bad reviews from mainstream outlets, where the critical roster often didn’t include anyone equipped to understand music that departed from the conventions of the early rock golden period. This meant that innovative bands like Black Sabbath, the Stooges, the MC5, Television, Black Flag, and many others were often dismissed by people who had recognized the value of excellent but accessible artists like the Beatles, Joni Mitchell, and Otis Redding. (This failure of the music criticism establishment to deal with both hard rock and punk rock is well documented in Joe Carducci’s Rock And The Pop Narcotic.)
In the jazz field, critics were condemning new developments beginning around 1930. The sniping directed at innovators began to ramp up with the coming of bebop in the 1940s, and it got even uglier with the provincial dismissals of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Coltrane in his later phase, Eric Dolphy, etc.
Zooming out and away from the modern era, we have the research of Nicolas Slonimsky. Slonimsky was a 20th century composer who wrote a legendary music theory book as well as a few of the best classical music reference works. All of that material is essential reading for serious students of classical music, but we’re gathered here today to talk about the book of his that has brought me the greatest pleasure and solace.
Sloninsky’s Lexicon of Musical Invective is a collection of obscure print reviews that damned great composers of the past. Some of these reviews used language so harsh it’s hard for the contemporary reader to believe this sort of vitriol was once deemed acceptable in a newspaper, by the sort of people who deem things.
It’s comforting to see that no less a personage than Beethoven— who is today as close to being universally respected as an artist can get— was often dismissed and reviled by critics of his day. In much of his late work, he was working hard to expand the language of western musical composition. If you heard his late string quartets when they were new, you heard something new in the world. Many critics responded to his innovations with a wall of dismissal. Beethoven’s current music didn’t sound like any music they had ever heard, and therefore it must not be any good.
When you take college music theory classes today, you’re taught that whatever Beethoven did, that’s one of the things you can do. But it takes a long time for music theorists— and even musicians— to stop dismissing radical new approaches to an art form. I went to Howard University, and learned a ton about music; I’m eternally grateful for that profound education. But while I was there (I graduated in 2002)— I never heard Cecil Taylor mentioned, the only time I ever heard Ornette Coleman’s name was as the punchline of a tired joke, and my composition teacher was thoroughly versed in Coltrane, but had never listened to Lee Konitz or his mentor Lennie Tristano. He mistakenly lumped those two historymaking groundbreakers in with “west coast jazz.” Ken Burns had a TV series about jazz airing during that time, and Cecil— one of the most innovative and advanced composer/improvisors in jazz since the bebop era— was mostly discussed in that series as if you could comfortably dismiss him as a pretentious clown.
A quick aside, before I dive into the choice excerpts from this indispensable book.
There’s nothing wrong with you, or me, not liking the work of an innovative artist. I’ve spent four decades working hard to understand what Cecil and Ornette were up to, and I can’t pretend I enjoyed their music unequivocally at the beginning. Cecil is a tough nut, and it was an Augean task for me to learn to appreciate his work. (Now I’m a huge fan.) My objection is never to a person for simply not liking Monk, or Cecil, or Dolphy, or Anthony Braxton, or Roscoe Mitchell, or Derek Bailey, or Peter Brőtzmann. What I question is the idea that your personal taste is the same thing as an objective critical evaluation. Critics often make that error, and I suggest that we all should strive to be better than critics.
WAGNER
I’m putting an anti-Wagner screed right up front, for two reasons. Wagner inspired many of the most virulent bad reviews in the book, and I suspect he may be the most reviled composer in history. Lots of musicians have been radical innovators who flouted convention, and many of them were far more radical than Wagner, but Wagner’s music inspired an unusually vindictive level of frothing antagonism.
He’s also an interesting example of a great artist who enriched and altered the language forever, while also being a lousy human being whose work was trumpeted and used for ugly purpose by a group many of us see as the definitive historical example of heinous, monstrous barbarism.
On the other hand, he was good at melody.
Racism was often a significant component of bad reviews in the past. The critics here, trying to say something barely qualified as music, often suggested this meant it was Chinese. Similar idiocy appears a lot in the reviews here. There’s a ton of it in the book. The following review of Wagner, a deeply racist man, itself includes racist and misogynist claptrap. It’s a hell of a screed, though, and I’ve developed a perverse fandom for this sort of unhinged provincialism. I don’t agree with his 19th century “hot take,” and the racism grates, but if I ever got a review like this, I would be proud to have inspired it.
The wild Wagnerian corybantic orgy, this din of brasses, tin pans and kettles, this Chinese or Caribbean clatter with wood sticks and ear-cutting scalping knives… Heartless sterility, obliteration of all melody, all tonal charm, all music… This reveling in the destruction of all tonal essence, raging satanic fury in the orchestra, this diabolic lewd caterwauling, scandal-mongering, gun-toting music, with an orchestral accompaniment slapping you in the face… Hence, the secret fascination that makes this music the darling of the feeble-minded royalty, the plaything of the camarilla, of the court flunkeys covered with reptilian slime, and of the blasé hysterical female court parasites who need this galvanic stimulation by massive instrumental treatment to throw their pleasure-weary frog-legs into violent convulsions… the diabolical din of this pig-headed man, stuffed with brass and sawdust, inflated, in an insanely destructive self-aggrandizement, by Mephistopheles’ Court Composer and General Director of Hell’s Music— Wagner!
SCHOENBERG
Schoenberg’s music, to me, is both creepy and lyrical. It’s pretty engaging, if you learn how to listen to it. This critic— like many others both civilian and professional— didn’t put that work in.
Schoenberg’s Der Tanz Um Das Goldene Kalb was repulsive… a xylophone, alas, is heard… I admired the way the singers stuck to their line of country, though I doubt if anybody could have told, most of the time, what notes they were chasing. I’m afraid that this demonstration of Schoenberg on Orgies is not my cup of tea— or even the cup of cold poison that the composer’s worshippers seem to long to administer to those of us who can’t take very seriously some of the old man’s sequential squeals.
This next Schoenberg detractor gives you a steady volley of smears for quite a while, and then eats a can of spinach and lurches onto the highway. If we must have philistinism, please let it be this sort. I can see myself hanging out with this guy, especially if he was paying for lunch.
Schoenberg denies the stigma of futurism and contends that he writes ‘naturally,’ that his idiom is his individual expression, and that it is grossly misunderstood by many, chiefly by those obnoxious persons called critics. The man insists that the emotions of his soul clamor for perfect expression only through a chord of consecutive minor seconds, none can presume to deny his sincerity. The normal, that is the usual, ear, however, might decide that his emotions are fit subjects for a vacuum cleaner… Dissonance is chronic. Each of the Five Orchestral Pieces ends with every man choosing his note as by lottery. This is economical music, for what is the need of rehearsal? It is a sorry bit if the wrong note will it sound better than the right one…Mr. Schoenberg has opened the book of his life to the pages of yesterday and tomorrow. While his dreams for the future are not reassuring, the sins of his past must weigh heavily upon him. So a merry Christmas to Mr. Schoenberg, a merrier one than he enjoyed before writing this score. In due time may he find that region of fellowship where due appreciation of his gifts will be granted him. May he revel in the shrieks of hissing firebrands shot in welcome of new inmates. May his ears dilate with the groans of the lost souls of the damned. May curling, sizzling spirals of flame enfold and caress him. May the snarling, sardonic mockeries of grimacing imps soothe his harassed nerves.
DEBUSSY
This next critic really slathers on the racism, like an IHOP customer going to town with the maple syrup. And he’s literally suggesting that Debussy’s physical appearance is, and should be, part of the review. Aside from the obvious awfulness of this kind of thinking, I don’t really get the critique. Debussy was, perhaps, no Burt Reynolds— but I think this critic is projecting a bit.
I met Debussy at the Café Riche the other night and was struck by the unique ugliness of the man. His face is flat, the top of his head is flat, his eyes are prominent— the expression veiled and somber— and, altogether, with his long hair, unkempt beard, uncouth clothing and soft hat, he looked more like a Bohemian, a Croat, a Hun, than a Gaul. His high, prominent cheekbones lend a Mongolian aspect to his face. The head is brachycephalic, the hair black… Richard Strauss via the music of Wagner, Liszt, and Berlioz has set the pace for the cacophonists. Since his Don Quixote, there’s been nothing new devised— outside of China— to split the ears of diatonic lovers… Rémy de Gourmont has written of the ‘disassociation of ideas’. Debussy puts the theory into practice, for in his peculiar idiom there seems to be no normal sequence…The form itself is decomposed. Tonalities are vague, even violently unnatural…If the Western world ever adopted Eastern tonalities, Claude Debussy would be the one composer who would manage its system, with its quarter tones and split quarters. Again I see his curious asymmetrical face, the pointed fawn ears, the projecting cheekbones— the man is a wraith from the East; his music was heard long ago in the hill temples of Borneo; was made as a symphony to welcome the headhunters with their ghastly spoils of war!
VARÈSE
Varèse rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, if they were forced to listen to him. The following review, to me, is a little like a social media rant. When you read enough of these reviews, you start to pick out the ones that get a little lazy. As narrowminded and prejudiced as these critics are, you can’t accuse the worst of them of phoning it in.
The grand finale was Edgard Varèse’s Intégrales. It sounded a good deal like a combination of early morning in the Mott Haven freightyards, feeding time at the zoo, and a Sixth Avenue trolley rounding a curve, an intoxicated woodpecker thrown in for good measure.
BERG
This next critic begins to construct a case for making Alban Berg’s music grounds for imprisonment. You may assume he was kidding, but leave us not forget the crazed response to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. My composition teacher at community college told us the reactionary boobs in the audience would have strung Stravinsky up if he hadn’t hid from them. Another student in the class said, “it would have been better if they had.” This exchange happened around 1995.
A side note about Berg: Frank Zappa, a composer keenly sensitive to what he saw as philistinism in people that didn’t appreciate his work, was pretty relaxed about dismissing the opera discussed below. But he did it with less wit than the critic below from a cruder era.
As I left the State Opera last night I had a sensation not of coming out of a public institution, but out of an insane asylum. On the stage, in the orchestra, in the hall, plain madmen. Among them, in defiant squads, the shock troops of atonalists, the dervishes of Schoenberg. Wozzeck by Alban Berg was the battle slogan. The work of a Chinaman from Vienna. For with European music and musical evolution, this mass onslaught of instruments has nothing in common. In Berg’s music, there is not a trace of melody. There are only scraps, shreds, spasms, and burps. Harmonically, the work is beyond discussion, for everything sounds wrong. The perpetrator of this work builds securely upon the stupidity and charity of his fellow-men, and for the rest relies on God Almighty and the Universal Edition. I regard Alban Berg as a musical swindler and a musician dangerous to the community. One should go even further. Unprecedented events demand new methods. We must seriously pose the question as to what extent musical profession can be criminal. We deal here, in the realm of music, with a capital offense.
It’s worth pointing out that the above composers include a few who still polarize classical music fans today. Wagner and Debussy don’t seem so outré in this century, but Varése, Berg, and Schoenberg can still drive customers from a theater. (I’ve seen old people stream for the exits with surprisingly sprightliness when it’s announced that Schoenberg’s music is coming up after an intermission.)
BEETHOVEN
So, to put it in perspective, I’ve put a couple harsh anti-Beethoven ones at the end. Few listeners today would understand how Beethoven got reviews like these.
In a letter, John Ruskin wrote:
Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of bags of nails, with here and there also a dropped hammer.
And this review, which is brutal but also sort of prissy and lacking in gusto:
Here you have a fragment of 44 measures where Beethoven deemed it necessary to suspend the habeas corpus of music by stripping it of all that might resemble melody, harmony, and any sort of rhythm…Is it music, yes or no? If I’m answered in the affirmative, I would say that this does not belong to the art which I am in the habit of considering music.
I didn’t want to overdo it and give you too much of this stuff, but if you enjoyed this essay, please let me know; I’m eager to do more installments.
Violently convulsing, pleasure weary frog legs ... I never knew Wagner was so blue ... .
You are so witty 😂!!