Jonathan O'Neill’s Reviews > Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time > Status Update
Jonathan O'Neill
is on page 129 of 336
Leonid Sabanayev wrote a scathing review of Prokofiev's Scythian Suite in 'News of the Season', Moscow, December 25, 1916 only to find, all too late, that the performance was actually cancelled and Prokofiev's Suite was never performed.... Awkward! 😆
— Sep 14, 2025 05:07AM
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Jonathan’s Previous Updates
Jonathan O'Neill
is on page 73 of 336
I played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless bastard! It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed as a genius. Why, in comparison with him, Raff is a giant, not to speak of Rubinstein, who is after all a live and important human being, while Brahms is chaotic and absolutely empty dried-up stuff.
Tchaikovsky's Diary, 1886
😲 Pyotr, you slimy devil!! 😁
— Aug 14, 2025 04:55AM
Tchaikovsky's Diary, 1886
😲 Pyotr, you slimy devil!! 😁
Jonathan O'Neill
is on page 57 of 336
Berlioz, musically speaking, is a lunatic; a classical composer only in Paris, the great city of quacks. His music is simply and undisguisedly nonsense. He is a kind of Orchestral Liszt, than which I could name nothing more intensely disagreeable.
Shots fired! A few innocents caught in the cross-fire too! :D
— Aug 05, 2025 05:13AM
Shots fired! A few innocents caught in the cross-fire too! :D
Jonathan O'Neill
is on page 27 of 336
"... Bestial cries are heard: neighing horses, the squeal of a brass pig, crying jackasses, amorous quacks of a monstrous toad... Listening to this screaming music (a jazz band concert) for a minute or two, one conjures up an orchestra of madmen, sexual maniacs, led by a man-stallion beating time with an enormous phallos"
- Maxim Gorky
— Aug 03, 2025 05:45AM
- Maxim Gorky
Jonathan O'Neill
is starting
I wasn't intending to read this right away and I'll probably still just dip my toes for a bit while I finish some other books but this from the sample excerpts was just too good to ignore:
"The Finale of [of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony] is to me for the most part dull and ugly.... Oh, the pages of stupid and hopelessly vulgar music! The unspeakable cheapness of the chief tune, 'Freude, Freude'!"
:D :D
— Jul 26, 2025 02:29AM
"The Finale of [of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony] is to me for the most part dull and ugly.... Oh, the pages of stupid and hopelessly vulgar music! The unspeakable cheapness of the chief tune, 'Freude, Freude'!"
:D :D
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Haha, yeah, there's form in this area, for sure. Aussie newspaper 'The Age' printed a 'Victoria University' ad commiserating the Western Bulldogs on a loss in the 2016 Grand Final... Which they won 😁In this case, evidently Mr. Sabanayev was never willing to accept a satisfactory performance of one of Prokofiev's works! 😆
Reminds me of that example from USA where a newspaper in Chicago ended up declaring one candidate winner of the presidential elections, but it was the other one. Truman was the winner, if I remember correctly.