A hilarious fake biography of the fictional, "last and certainly least" child of Johann Sebastian Bach. P.D.Q. spends most of his young life rebelling against his family's artistic legacy before he finally realizes that having the name Bach means that people will pay him good money for mediocre musical works.

And mediocre they are--besides being a drunk and a philanderer, he has no musical talent whatsoever. Which doesn't stop him from creating some of the most inept, bizarre and funny art the world has ever seen. Great stuff, even if you have no knowledge of classical music.

I first read this hilariously absurd book when I was in college. My only regret is that I read it in a public place, so I had to stifle the nearly-uncontrollable fits of laughter it provoked. Only Peter Schickele would solemnly explain that a suite for "divers instruments" was not actually performed with scuba gear, or that the left-handed sewer flute is nearly extinct as an instrument because most of them ended up back underground. Only Schickele would write a classical piece featuring ocarina and plucked strings (ok; so that's not true; Gyorgy Ligeti did it, too--but maybe Ligeti read this book!)

In short, this is the best written satire on classical music ever produced. It gives classical music the same treatment as the "Airplane" movies gave Irwin Allen films--one joke after another after another...

An absolute must for every P.D.Q. Bach fan! It includes an annotated catalogue of P.D.Q.'s music (titled "Such a Horrid Clang") up to its publication in 1976. Every page is full of hilarity. I am constantly getting mine out to read about the pieces I'm listening to, or just to laugh about the hilarious photos and captions in the pictorial essay. Even the index is worth reading beginning to end!

Slonimsky gave us in 1953 a collection of captious criticism upon innocent classical music compositions that eventually were greatly revered despite that these first detractors "erroneously" panned them. But the thesis of the critical work, the author's assertion in the opening essay, that the common prejudice of critics' "non-acceptance of the unfamiliar" is at the heart of the problem, falls short of explaining much of the matter.

We are led, in typical academic Modernist, hyperbole fashion, to believe that this selection of historical critique is a thorough examination of erroneous musical invective. The essays, picked mostly from journalistic (formal) music criticism from 1800-1950, seem to mutually agree that new musical ideas are bad and established music is good and therefore threatened by innovation.

The problem is obvious. The essays have been selected to support a general defensive attitude, commonly found during the twentieth century among music academia. The unspoken fact is this: throughout the twentieth century, the public's inability to welcome atonal music had been attacked by proponents of this publicly disliked, though educationally cherished, style.

This was a common sentiment among music academia and other vanguards of artistic music during the time of this writing. It still is. They, music academics who support innovation and originality above all else, are the people who like this book. The rest of us should be wary of their pretentious mudslinging, especially in works such as this that assert a generalized notion that all, or most, music criticism is too close-minded to accept anything new and unfamiliar.

The truth of the matter is that music academia's cherished atonal music is simply not as accessible to western music tastes than its predecessor, Romantic music. It is not accessible because atonal music requires an academic ear, not, as music academia and Slonimsky attest, because the public and its music critics are close-minded bigots against everything unfamiliar. Jazz was unfamiliar at first, yet finally became a popular form of music because it was accessible enough to non-academics. Rock, and Rhythm and Blues, styled music was unfamiliar at first, yet became the single most influential music style the twentieth century had produced, worldwide. Atonal music was unfamiliar at first, and continues to be unfamiliar, and more importantly inaccessible, simply because atonal music is difficult for anyone but the most academic of listeners to appreciate.

Throughout the entire last century, however, composers of Modern atonal music, along with their protecting guardians, the music education culture, have been hatefully envious of this naturally unavoidable predicament. Then, in typical academic fashion, they invent pretentious reasons for the predicament, such as that critics and the public are close-minded idiots who aren't worldly enough to appreciate this extremely abstruse, and therefore naturally perplexing, music. The bottom line: Modern music is simply not as accessible as Romantic and other popular music. Anything else added upon this undeniable fact means nothing.

What distinguishes Slonimsky's tirade from most of music academia's attitude, is how he has deceitfully tailored his anthology to suggest that most critics from the nineteenth century had the same inability to accept Romantic innovation as critics of Modern atonal music have had against this completely different, far more esoteric, style of music. Nothing could be further from the truth, and it doesn't even make logical sense that this could be true.

For Romantic music was loved by the public and critics alike. It was mostly loved from the beginning because it was accessible, highly emotional music. The opposite is true for Modern atonal music: it was not loved by the public and critics alike because it was not accessible music to anyone besides academics. Music academics like Slonimsky, a dime a dozen in colleges across America and Europe, will never accept this bona-fide fact. Instead they blame critics' and the public's short-sightedness, our ignorance, anything but acceptance of the truth of their naturally dire predicament. This compilation of historical critique simply edits out essays that do not support the author's point of view.

It seems that academics will stop at nothing to promote their beloved Modern music, which stands to reason since Modern music is inherently more analytical, thus educationally friendly, and inevitably sponsorship for educational careers. Here one music academic, Slonimsky, has created an entire thesis, more than half of which is erroneously based, and organized it into an easily read, thus easily sold, book.

Like most vanguardist promotions, Slonimsky means to uphold music only if it's innovative, original, unfamiliar, academic. So, as is common with these vanguardist academics, he says nothing of new compositions that are captiously criticized by music schools for their lack of originality; newly composed works, for example, that fit neither into the public's current taste nor into the pattern of music that is hailed by academic proponents of Modern music. Believe it or not, music academia is actually more bigoted than the public.

Typically, Slonimsky's rant offers no valid solution to the problem of captious music criticism. But I offer that here: 1) Reduce the value of the business of formal music criticism, since music essentially is a non-verbal expression that deserves more and better appreciation than anything verbal interpretation could offer. 2) Educate music academia to discontinue, or at least reduce, spreading concepts based upon the tenets of academic interpretations of music, by spreading in its place the concept that musing, and otherwise emotionally appreciating music, is supreme in the appreciation of music.

Good luck, especially on #2, which will be very difficult to achieve. For if there's one undeniable fact of music academia, it is filled to the brim with academic types who have never mused. And they dare to call themselves musicians... (Music = muse)

I also found the use of Beethoven's name in the title to be a cheap promotional trick. Summary: Take all verbal music interpretation with a grain of salt. Then shut up and play, or listen, as the case may be.

(982 words)

...is a "fresher" expression for Nicholas Slonimsky's introduction, "Non-Acceptance of the Unfamiliar," to this howler of a compendium of musical criticism.

In a nutshell, this book is a collection of excerpts from reviews, commentary and correspondence regarding the music of forty-three composers over a 150-year span, beginning with Beethoven and ending (approximately) with Bartók, Schoenberg, Shostakovich and Stravinsky. While most of the composers are well-known, some (Henry Cowell, Roy Harris, Wallingford Riegger, Carl Ruggles, Edgar Varèse) are hardly household names. For the most part, the commentary closely follows, in time, the premieres of the works described. (In some cases, this may be years after their original premieres. It often took, in times past, years for the works to get from "the country of origin" to the venues that were the domains of the reviewers and critics. History - and this book - have shown that this extra time was not necessarily an asset in evaluating the works more accurately.)

A quick page count by composer shows that Wagner (at 27 pages), Schoenberg (at 20 pages), Stravinsky (at 19 pages), Strauss (at 16 pages), and Debussy (at 15 pages) come under the greatest critical scrutiny, or, in retrospect, the greatest "fear of the unknown." Surprisingly, other "true revolutionaries" come off somewhat better: Berlioz (at 5 pages), Mahler (at 4 pages), to name two. Even "universally-loved" composers who wrote music which these days is commonly considered accessible don't escape the critics' wrath: Bizet, Brahms, Puccini, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky are some who didn't exactly become accepted overnight.

It's not as if these music critics "who blew it" didn't know their field appropriately. More than a few (César Cui, George Templeton Strong, Virgil Thomson, to name three) were themselves composers, writing about the new music of their contemporaries. Others (Olin Downes, long-time music critic of the New York Times, Henry E. Krehbiel, similarly of the New York Tribune, and Philip Hale, similarly of the Boston Herald) were highly-respected music critics of their time, not normally given to "blowing it" as far as making a bad call against a new piece of music was concerned.

But that is what this book is about: "Blowing it, major-league big-time," usually with style and panache to spare, as well as all the buzzwords and "tricks of the trade" that suggest expertise. Then, along comes the unsuspecting reader of "the next morning's dailies." He (or she) reads the critique, and the die is cast: Wagner (or Strauss or Stravinsky or Debussy; enter a name of your choice) has just composed music that is: cacophonous; caterwauling; noise, non-music; not fit for human consumption (pick one). The reader has fallen victim to this "expert opinion." It is hard to shake this initial "expert" impression. It may take years. It may never happen. And it might have been the fault of the critic in the first instance.

There is one significant omission, perhaps curious only to those who are unfamiliar with some of the other "alter egos" which Slonimsky had: Charles Ives. Now, Ives was America's first "modern" (or, in terms that I think fit him best, our "first-and-only romantic pre-post-modern"), and his music just barely found acceptance within his lifetime, even if this acceptance came many years after he stopped composing and was quite infirm due to a variety of ailments. Slonimsky had been a friend and champion of Ives well before Ives's music caught on with the concert-going public, and I like to think that omission of Ives as a subject of such invective was a conscious decision on the part of Slonimsky, perhaps as a gift from a friend. But it is also true that much of Ives's music went unperformed during his lifetime, thereby escaping the invective it might otherwise have garnered.

I almost thought that there might be a second significant omission, that of Hector Berlioz as music critic (something which he did for the better part of forty years). But the index at the back of the book did turn up one comment of Berlioz's (in a letter [dated 1861]), brief but to the point: "Wagner is evidently mad." By 1861, Berlioz and Wagner had already known each other quite well for some six years or more. Berlioz - despite trying hard - couldn't fathom the chromaticism in Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde," this despite the fact that Wagner wasn't at all bashful about borrowing some of Berlioz's better ideas in his "Romeo et Juliette" for "Tristan und Isolde."

Also curiously absent is any mention of twentieth-century British composers (Vaughan Williams, Holst, Britten, Brian, Bax and so forth). Neither Slonimsky nor Peter Schickele (of P. D. Q. Bach fame, and the writer of a fresh Foreword to this edition) posits why this might be so. There is no shortage of criticism by British critics; they have plenty to say about the musics of composers of other countries. And sheer accessibility cannot be the explanation; the Fourth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams hardly fits the mold of "instant acceptance and accessibility." Curious.

It wouldn't surprise me if every working composer already has a copy of Slonimsky's little masterpiece tucked away for "rainy day" encouragement. And if they don't, they ought to. Music lovers would do well to read how initial critical thinking can affect acceptance of new music, and how critical opinion can change "once the dust settles."

But those who stand to benefit the most from reading this book, as a cautionary tale, perhaps, are the working music reviewers and critics. They (or at least their predecessors) are the ones whose flawed judgements at the time have not withstood history's judgement, resulting in these screamingly funny "critiques."

Good for much more than just a laugh or two! Pick your favorite composer. He's probably been picked apart by someone anthologized in Slonimsky's screamer.

This book is an inspired piece of iconic significance, but
not in the way the author intended. What he DID intend
was to poke fun at music critics for their supposed
"non-acceptance of the unfamiliar." Well the critic's advocate is a role
too easy to adopt: how could anyone other than a clairvoyant
have known that such and such a composer would go on
to be lauded as a genius? Nay, the all-too-obvious benefit
of Slonimsky's hindsight, almost in itself discredits his viewpoint,
genius though he most certainly is. For what becomes clear
soon after starting the book is that the shock value and
the novelty wears off. What does NOT wear off though
is something Slonimsky never intended to protray (because
he was no clairvoyant himself and could not project the decline
of the linguistic standards in journalism subsequent to
his generation): that is the wonderful and eloquent beauty of
of the prose these music critics had. Their ability to describe
music, and its effect on the listener, by using seemingly endless
amounts of imaginative and hilarious simile, and other figurative
language is breathtaking; it's a bountiful joy to read, indicative of
a time when critics had the guts to say what they felt without
the stodgy attitude found in the cliche-ridden dross often found
in today's journalism.

After a while -- once the reader is able to
cast his mind back to a time when music was
supposed to embody truth, beauty, reason,
and be presented by ordered use of harmony,
melody and rhythm -- it is not difficult at all to
agree wholeheartedly with most of what these
writers complain about. For much of Wagner's music
DOES INDEED sound like an "inflated display of extravagance."
Webern's serialism DOES often "call to mind the activity
of insects." Schoenberg DOES "torpedo the eardrums
with deadly dissonance." And on and on. Only a Philistine
university professor (who equates fame with musical quality)
would refuse to admit it.

"...vacillating and fluid harmonies........this music is indeterminate,
vague, fleeting, indecisive, deliberately indefinite.............without
muscle or backbone......grey music forming a sort of sonorous mist....."

That (written in 1910) is the most clear-minded, honest description of Debussy's
music you will ever read. But you won't read this kind
of opinion now, because in the classical music world,
once a composer is famous, he is then off limits to
honest assessment. Only the performance receives analysis.

To be able to see what people thought AT THE TIME,
is a priceless opportunity Slonimsky has bequeathed
to us, regardless of that he did not intend it.
These review excerpts are nothing less than
a testament to the integrity and sincerity
that was once (a long time ago!) represented by men
of the critical pen. The Lexicon should be a required item on the shelf of
everyone who calls himself a writer in the field of the
performing arts. Then maybe scribes would be
more respected.