Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time (Washington Paperbacks)

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 Bartk, Schoenberg, Shostakovich and Stravinsky. 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.