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 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
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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 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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Elentarri
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Aug 03, 2025 05:48AM
Some one has an obsession with sex... ;)
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Ha! Yeah, my first thought was that Gorky was telling us more about himself than the music being played :DBut in fairness, it probably would've been quite a shocking and scandalous style of music when it first appeared. Lots of new, sexy dances and improper behaviour :D
Reminds me of the initial response to Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring" (1913)
Yeah, I can see how that would get a similar early response, Gary! :D
