It’s well documented that in the classical music realm, the egos that accompany the talent can get a little out of control. Here we’ve collected 20 harsh insults that great composers gave to other great composers.
1. Tchaikovsky on Brahms
“Brahms is just some chaotic and utterly empty wasteland.” Source
2. Beethoven on Rossini
“Opera seria is ill-suited to the italians. you do not know how to deal with real drama.” Source
3. Rossini on Wagner’s Lohengrin
“One can’t judge Wagner’s opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and i certainly don’t intend hearing it a second time.” Source
“That is just meaningless noise – not a single healthy idea anymore, everything confused, a clear harmonic progression is not to be found here any longer.” Source
8. Vaughan Williams on Mahler
“A very tolerable imitation of a composer.” Source
9. Bizet on Wagner
“He is endowed with such insolent conceit that criticism cannot touch his heart – admitting that he has a heart, which I doubt. ” Source
10. Schoenberg on Strauss
“The expressions he uses are as banal as a cheap song.” Source
11. Fauré on Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major
“Truncated, ill-balanced, and, in a nutshell, a failure.” Source
12. Saint-Saëns on Debussy
“He cultivated an absence of style, logic, and common sense.” Source
13. Mendelssohn on Berlioz
“Indifferent drivel, mere grunting, shouting and screaming back and forth.” Source
14. Tchaikovsky on Borodin
“He can’t compose a single line without somebody’s help.” Source
15. Brahms on Liszt
“The compositions are getting more and more terrible..my fingers often itch to pick an argument, and to write anti-Liszt. ” Source
16. Schumann on Wagner
“He cannot write or think out four consecutive bars of beautiful, or even good music.” Source
17. Copland on Vaughan Williams
“Listening to the fifth symphony of ralph vaughan williams is like starring at a cow for 45 minutes.” Source
18. Stravinsky on Messiaen
“All you need to write like him is a large bottle of ink.” Source
19. Louis Schneider on Debussy’s La Mer
“The audience expected the Ocean. Something big, something colossal, but they were served instead with some agitated water in a saucer. ” Source
20. Britten on Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress
“I liked the Opera very much. Everything but the music. ” Source
1 thought on “The 20 Harshest Composer-on-Composer Insults in Classical Music”
Richard Strauss on Schoenberg:
“The only person who can help poor Schoenberg now is a psychiatrist …”. “I think he’d do better to shovel snow instead of scribbling on music-paper…”
Richard Strauss on Schoenberg:
“The only person who can help poor Schoenberg now is a psychiatrist …”. “I think he’d do better to shovel snow instead of scribbling on music-paper…”