George Bernard Shaw wasn’t shy in sounding off on classical music

The famed English playwright was also an esteemed music critic, though he wrote under the pseudonym Corno di Bassetto, 1888 to 1889, before moving on to a more respectable newspaper for four years. There, he signed his reviews G.B.S.

For perspective, he was an ardent advocate of Richard Wagner, which put him in opposition to Johannes Brahms.

Here are some sharp notes.

1. “Hell is full of musical amateurs.”
2. “A man who can tolerate Bach and Scarlatti on a modern piano can tolerate anything.” (He was the first converts to the original instruments camp of early music.)
3. “Nine times out of ten, when a prima donna thinks that I am being thrilled by her vibrant tones, I am simply wrestling with an impulse to spring on stage and say ‘My dear young lady, pray don’t. Your voice is not a nail, to be driven into my head.’”
4. “There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.”
5. He did concede some points. “Mind, I do not deny that the Requiem is a solid piece of music manufacture. You feel at once that it could only have come from the establishment of a first-class undertaker.”
6. He redefined the scope of the job, saying “I purposely vulgarized musical criticism, which was refined and academic to the point of being unreadable and often nonsensical,” or more to the point, “I believed that I could make musical criticism readable even by the deaf.” To wit:
7. “Handel is not a mere composer in England: he is an institution. What is more, he is a sacred institution. … Every three years there is a Handel Festival, at which his oratorios are performed by four thousand executants, collected from all the choirs in England. The effect is horrible; and everyone declares it sublime. … If I were a member of the House of Commons, I would propose a law making it a capital offence to perform an oratorio by Handel with more than 80 performers in the chorus and orchestra, allowing 48 singers and 32 instrumentalists.” He was way ahead of his time on the size issue.
8. Many of the musical affectations of the time drew his fire. Regarding one imposed on a Mozart aria, he commented, “The effect of this suburban grace can be realized by anyone who will take the trouble to whistle ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ with the last note displaced an octave.”
9. To him, a “poor performance was a personal insult to be treated accordingly.”
10. Still, stridently avoiding pale cliché, he did praise those who surpassed his standards. Describing one singer, he wrote, “I was consoled by a human caress after an angelic discourse.”