Today I was sent a newsletter from Classicfm, the classical music radio station here in the UK. It had a section on historical insults from one musician aimed at another. My God, they're worse than luvvies! Some of the commenters are quite witty and I have added one or two of their remarks to the mix. Click on the link and you can read some more:
"Listening to the fifth symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes." - Copland
"I like your opera - I think I will set it to music." Beethoven
Mark Todd · Institute of Education
What about Reger's letter to a young composer who has sent him a composition to look at: 'I am in the smallest room in my house. I have your composition in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.'"All you need to write like him is a large bottle of ink." Stravinsky on Messiaen
"It's beautiful and boring. Too many pieces finish too long after the end." Stravinsky on Handel's Theodora
"The musical equivalent of St Pancras Station." Sir Thomas Beecham on Elgar
"Wagner has beautiful moments, but awful quarters of an hour." Rossini on Wagner
"A tub of pork and beer." Berlioz on Handel
Edward Schaffer · California State University, Long Beach
Is that a bad thing? A rack of baby backs and a pint of Newcastle Ale... Nothing wrong with that
"The audience expected the ocean. Something big, something colossal, but there were served instead with some agitated water in a saucer." Louis Schneider on La Mer
Renée Gilbert · Top Commenter
So many of my orchestra friends gripe about La Mer. I even saw that one added a "de" at the end of it.
"He likes what is coarse, unpolished, and ugly." Tchaikovsky on Mussorgsky
Carl Sholin · Honolulu, Hawaii
He just wasn't Godunov.