To continue the little digression on invective –
Some time ago, composer and playwright Stephen Sondheim wrote a book called Look, I Made a Hat which amongst many other wry observations contains the following paragraph, which I find expresses exactly what it is I enjoy about reading uncomprehending criticism. It might also be comforting for those who feel “unfairly trashed” (and who hasn’t?)…
There are theatre people who claim to be immune to public criticism, and perhaps some really are, but I haven’t met any who have convinced me. When I first entered the arena, and for a long while was not treated kindly by most critics, the reviews had a perversely salubrious effect on me, although I was far from immune. Every time I felt unfairly trashed, I retreated to my copy of Nicolas Slonimsky’s Lexicon of Musical Invective, a startling and hilarious, if discomfiting, compendium of published criticism about everyone from Beethoven to Copland. To read the sneering and uncomprehending reviews the likes of Brahms and Ravel received made me feel akin to them, and by association as innovative, brilliant and misunderstood.
Slonimsky’s display of these monumental misjudgments should be required reading for every artist, particularly those just starting out. Older artists are less vulnerable because they’ve survived: they’ve learned they can be wounded but not killed, that what once was devastating has become merely annoying. And if they survive long enough, they become venerable, which is decent compensation. The solution, of course, is not to read reviews of your own work, although the temptation is hard to resist. Who knows: one of them might refer to you as the greatest writer since (fill in name of most admired writer here); but learn to resist you do.
Here is a smattering of reactions to his book, written mainly by professional critics!
“LA Weekly” – I’ll make a deal with Mr. Sondheim: I’ll agree to refrain from composing show tunes if he’ll agree to keep to his side of the great, critic-artist divide.
Michael Billington in the Guardian – “Artists often hate critics; they also need the stimulus of public comment.”
NYTimes Sunday Book Review – “he’s most defensive when dealing with critical or commercial failures; of “Assassins” — which many critics panned — he declares, ‘The show is perfect.'”
And here is Sondheim dissing “South Pacific”!
I truly regret not going to his series of lectures when he was Visiting Professor of Drama at Oxford in 1989
Some music by Sondheim for Baritone and Guitar – Sunday Song Set
