| Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time Contributor(s): Slonimsky, Nicolas (Author) |
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ISBN: 039332009X ISBN-13: 9780393320091 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company OUR PRICE: $19.76 Product Type: Paperback Published: August 2000 Annotation: A snakeful of critical venom aimed at the composers and the classics of 19th- and 20th-century music, this collection of nasty barbs culled mostly from newspapers and magazines makes for hilarious reading and belongs on the shelf of everyone who loves---or hates--classical music. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Music | Genres & Styles - Classical - Music | History & Criticism - General |
| Dewey: 780.9 |
| LCCN: 2001266586 |
| Physical Information: 0.89" H x 5.54" W x 8.4" (0.65 lbs) 336 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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. With a new foreword by Peter Schickele (P.D.Q. Bach). |
Contributor Bio(s): Slonimsky, Nicolas: - Nicolas Slonimsky, pianist, composer, conductor, author, lexicographer, jingle writer, and parent who spoke Latin to his daughter, died in 1996 at the age of 100. |