# Lexicon of Musical Invective

Le Lexicon of Musical Invective (Lexique d'invectives musicales) est une anthologie de critiques négatives, réalisée par Nicolas Slonimsky en 1953 (revue et augmentée en 1965), autour d'œuvres de musique classique de Beethoven jusqu'à Varèse.
La plupart de ces critiques étant anonymes, elles sont classées par ordre alphabétique des compositeurs « attaqués »

## Ludwig van Beethoven

* (en) [Often as we now have heard it performed], we cannot yet discover any design in it, neither can we trace any connection in its parts. Altogether, it seems to have been intended as a kind of enigma — we had almost said a hoax.
* The Harmonicon, Londres, juillet 1825
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 44

## Hector Berlioz

* (en) If all Bedlam were about to be let loose on earth, it does not seem as though any preparatory schock of foreboding could be more stupendous. What state of mind Berlioz was in when he conceived this music may never be known, but it may be imagined that if ever genius and insanity were found akin, it was at the time of the writing of La Damnation de Faust.
* Home Journal, Boston, 15 mai 1880
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 60

## Georges Bizet

* (en) Of melody, as the term is generally understood, there is but little. The air of the Toreador is the only bit on tune in the opera, and this scarcely rises above the vulgarity of Offenbach.
* Boston Gazette, 5 janvier 1879
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 65

## Ernest Bloch

* (en) Nearly all of Bloch's music is hot in the mouth with curry, ginger and cayenne, even where one has a right to expect vanilla and whipped cream…
* Evening Post, New York, 14 mai 1917
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 66

## Johannes Brahms

* (en) The First Symphony of Brahms seemed to us as hard and as uninspired as upon its former hearing. It is mathematical music evolved with difficulty from an unimaginative brain…
* Boston Gazette, 24 janvier 1878
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 68-69

## Frédéric Chopin

* (en) The entire works of Chopin present a motley surface of ranting hyperbole and excrutiating cacophony. When he is not thus singular, he is no better than Strauss or any other waltz compounder… There is an excuse at present for Chopin's deliquencies ; he is entrammeled in the enthralling bonds of that arch-enchantress, George Sand, celebrated equally for the number and excellence of her romances and her lovers ; not less we wonder how she, who once swayed the heart of the sublime and terrible religious democrat Lammenais, can be content to wanton away her dream-like existence with an artistical nonentity like Chopin.
* Musical World, Londres, 28 octobre 1841
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 84
* (en) The wildness of both the melody and harmony of Chopin is, for the most part, excessive… We cannot imagine a musician, who has not acquired an unhealthy taste for noise, and scrambling, and dissonance, to feel otherwise than dissatisfied with the effect of either the third Ballade, or the Grande Valse, or the Eight Mazurkas.
* Dramatic and Musical Review, Londres, 4 novembre 1843
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 85

## Franz Liszt

* (en) Liszt is a mere commonplace person, with his hair on end — a snob out of Bedlam. He writes the ugliest music extant.
* Dramatic and Musical Review, Londres, 7 janvier 1843
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 111
* (en) I beg respectfully to suggest to Liszt and all musicians of the future, get them carefully packed in air-tight boxes (like those awful preserved peas we are occasionally condemned to eat), and leave in their wills a stringent regulation that no rash hand shall bring them to light until at least 1966. We shall all be dead, then, my friend, and as for our descendants, qu'ils s'arrangent !
* The Orchestra, Londres, 15 mars 1886
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 119

## Gustav Mahler

* (en) It is not fair to the readers of the Musical Courier to take up their time with a detailed description of that musical monstrosity, which masquerades under the title of Gustav Mahler's Fourth Symphony. There is nothing in the design, content, or execution of the work to impress the musician, except its grotesquerie…
* Musical Courier, New York, 9 novembre 1904
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 120
* (en) Mahler had not much to say in his Fifth Symphony and occupied a wondrous time in saying it. His manner is ponderous, his matter imponderable.
* The New York Sun, 5 décembre 1913
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 121

## Modeste Moussorgski

* (en) Une nuit sur le mont Chauve by Moussorgsky is as hideous a thing as we have ever heard… an orgy of ugliness and an abomination. May we never hear it again !
* The Musical Times, Londres, mars 1898
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 128

## Maurice Ravel

* (en) This theme serves him for four movements during which there is about as much emotional nuance as warms a problem in algebra.
* New-York Tribune, 12 décembre 1906
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 138

## Nikolaï Rimski-Korsakov

* (en) The Antar Symphony eclipsed both Wagner and Tchaikovsky in weird orchestration and unharmonic effects… The Russian composer Korsakov evidently has evolved a musical enigma which is too complex of solution now.
* Boston Globe, 13 mars 1898
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 145

## Arnold Schoenberg

* Paris-Midi, 29 mai 1913
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 310

## Robert Schumann

* Le Ménestrel, Paris, 15 février 1863
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 171

## Alexandre Scriabine

* (en) It may be true that the Russian composer [Scriabin] is too far advanced for the present generation and that his doctrine and music will be accepted in years to come, but as the writer is not a reader of the future, the work is condemned for the present.
* Musical Courier, New York, 10 mars 1915
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 173

## Richard Strauss

* (en) In Thus spake Zarathustra, the genius of Strauss is merciless ; it possesses huge lungs and stands close to one's ear… When a man is awakened by an entire city tumbling about his ears, the blowing up of a single building by nitroglycerine passes unnoticed…
* Boston Gazette, 31 octobre 1897
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 183

## Giuseppe Verdi

* Gazette Musicale, Paris, 1 août 1847
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 218

## Richard Wagner

* (en) Vinegar, mustard, and cayenne-pepper are necessary condiments in the culinary art, but I question whether even the Wagnerites would care to make their dinner of these articles only.
* Lettre adressée à l'éditeur du Musical World, New York, 16 septembre 1876
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 240

## Anton Webern

* (en) Webern's five pieces follow his very subjective formula. One long-drawn note upon the bridge of the first violin (pause) ; a tiny scramble for viola solo (pause) ; a pizzicato note on the cello. Then another pause, after which the four players get up very quietly, steal away and the thing is over.
* The Daily Telegraph, Londres, 9 septembre 1922
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 324
* (en) The audience laughed him and his whines out of court. Quite right ! If modernism depended for progress upon the Weberns, it would get nowhere.
* Musical Courier, New York, 28 décembre 1929
* Lexicon of Musical Invective, Nicolas Slonimsky (trad. Wikiquote), éd. W. W. Norton & Company, 1953 (réed. 2000), p. 251