You Think Critics Are Petty Now?
Today’s scribblers are a timid lot compared to music reviewers in the 19th century, who thought nothing of dragging the personal into the professional assessment. These classic examples of bitchery were collected by the polymath Nicholas Slonimsky (pictured) in “Lexicon of Musical Invective,” which is still in print. Just one example of a critic’s animus: “‘Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto‘ gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear.” Cute.
