The Lexicon of Musical Invective is an American musicological work by Nicolas Slonimsky. It was first published in 1953, with a revised and expanded second edition appearing in 1965. The book is an anthology of negative musical criticism, focusing primarily on works that later became part of the standard classical repertoire and on composers now widely regarded as canonical, including Beethoven and Varèse.
The material is systematically organized, with entries arranged alphabetically by composer and chronologically within each section. The volume also contains an index titled the “Invecticon,” or “Index of Invectives,” which categorizes recurring critical expressions under thematic headings, ranging from “aberration” to “zoo,” and provides references to the corresponding passages.
The structure of the work highlights the rhetorical strategies and stylistic devices employed in critical writing, including metaphorical language and unconventional comparisons. The juxtaposition of critiques drawn from different historical periods—often directed at works that later achieved recognition—reveals recurring patterns of resistance to musical innovation and contributes to the book’s ironic and often humorous effect.
In a preface titled Non-Acceptance of the Unfamiliar, Slonimsky identifies a central theme of the collection: the tendency of critics to reject unfamiliar artistic developments. A later edition, published in 2000, includes a foreword by Peter Schickele, titled If You Can’t Think of Something Nice to Say, Come Sit Next to Me, which offers a humorous reflection on the work and its implications.
The book has been regarded as a reference resource for the study of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century musical reception. Its entries were extensively used in , a work published in 1965 by and Jean-Claude Carrière. A Spanish translation by , titled Repertorio de vituperios musicales, was published in 2016. Concepts illustrated by Slonimsky’s compilation have subsequently been applied in the analysis of critical reception in other musical genres, including popular music.
Context The Lexicon of Musical Invective developed over a period of more than twenty years and was shaped by the career of Nicolas Slonimsky, as well as by his contact with a number of prominent composers of the early twentieth century.
A Russian musician in exile The October Revolution forced Slonimsky, a Jewish musician born in Petrograd, into exile. In his autobiography, he described the city as "as good as dead" by the summer of 1918, due to the chaos of the final months of World War I and the onset of the Russian Civil War. During this period, widespread violence, including the White and Red Terror, was accompanied by antisemitic attacks and pogroms.
Slonimsky initially traveled to Kyiv, where he assisted the family of the composer Alexander Scriabin, who had died in 1915. There, he became associated with a circle of intellectuals that included Boris de Schlözer. He also founded a “Scriabin Society” with the aim of supporting the composer’s family. During this period, he participated in efforts to locate Scriabin’s son, Julian Scriabin, who had disappeared at the age of eleven; the circumstances of the child’s death remained unclear.
Slonimsky subsequently moved through several cities, including Yalta, Constantinople, and Sofia, before settling in Paris in 1921. There, he worked briefly with the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, which enabled him to establish connections with émigré composers such as Stravinsky and Prokofiev. His professional relationship with Koussevitzky, however, proved unstable, and in 1923 he accepted a position at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.
The American avant-garde After relocating to the United States, Slonimsky pursued a career as a conductor, receiving favorable attention in his early performances. This success led to a renewed collaboration with Koussevitzky and prompted his move to Boston in 1927, where he became involved with leading American composers of the period.
Among his contemporaries were George Gershwin and Aaron Copland, whom Slonimsky introduced to one another. Another central figure in this milieu was Henry Cowell, who promoted modernist composers in his writings. Slonimsky actively supported the work of composers he regarded as innovative, organizing performances of their music in both the United States and Europe.
In 1928, Cowell established a connection with two composers, Charles Ives and Edgard Varèse, who had an influence on him. During the subsequent five years, Slonimsky presented the works of these composers in the United States and Europe, along with those of Cowell, Chávez, Carl Ruggles, Wallingford Riegger, and Amadeo Roldán. Notable concerts included:
Three Places in New England by Ives, New York, January 10, 1931 (world premiere). Intégrales by Varèse, Paris, June 6, 1931. Arcana by Varèse, Paris, February 25, 1932 (European premiere). Ionisation by Varèse, Carnegie Hall, New York, March 6, 1933 (world premiere). Ecuatorial by Varèse, New York, April 15, 1934 (world premiere).
In her biography of Varèse, Odile Vivier observed that the Paris concerts of 1931–1932 were generally well received, although such performances remained relatively infrequent.
Concerts and critiques A significant number of Slonimsky’s concerts in the United States and Europe were financed by Charles Ives, who had accumulated considerable wealth through his career in the insurance industry. Benefiting from favorable exchange rates for the U.S. dollar in the early 1930s, Nicolas Slonimsky organized a series of concerts in major European cultural centers, including Paris and Berlin. These activities eventually led to an engagement at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. The venture, however, proved financially unsuccessful, in part because of the conservative preferences of its traditional patrons. Following this setback, Slonimsky abandoned his conducting career and turned to writing, later describing the transition as a move “from baton to pen".
Although not all of these concerts involved premieres, they were often of considerable importance. On 21 February 1932 in Paris, Slonimsky conducted Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 1, with the composer as soloist. The performance and its reception were noted favorably by composers and critics such as Darius Milhaud, Paul Le Flem, and Florent Schmitt, who published their favorable critiques in Comœdia and Le Temps. More broadly, the reactions of critics in both France and Germany frequently matched the provocative character of the music itself. In his autobiography (1988), Slonimsky recalled the “extraordinary torrent of invective” elicited by modern compositions, citing in particular a hostile review by Walter Abendroth of a work by Wallingford Riegger:
Such reactions contributed to Slonimsky’s decision to compile a collection of critical invective, which would later form the basis of The Lexicon of Musical Invective. In 1944, on the occasion of the seventieth birthday of Arnold Schoenberg, Slonimsky presented him with a selection of particularly severe reviews of his works, a gesture reportedly received with humor by the composer of Pierrot Lunaire.
A further stimulus for the project arose from Slonimsky’s work on Music Since 1900, an extensive chronological survey. In the course of research conducted in libraries in Boston and New York City, he examined numerous nineteenth- and twentieth-century newspaper articles. Among the examples he later cited was an 1841 critique of Frédéric Chopin published in The Musical World (London), notable for its highly disparaging tone.
In 1948, the collection of musical anecdotes he published () dedicated a section to "pleasant and unpleasant" critiques, selected for their brevity and wit. Examples include concise and ironic observations on composers such as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Chopin."
The following year, Carl Engel introduces Nicolas Slonimsky as a "the lexicographic beagle of keen scent and sight" in his preface to the Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians.
Presentation
From lexicon to index According to Nicolas Slonimsky, the Lexicon is defined as “an anthology of critical attacks on composers since the time of Ludwig van Beethoven.” Its selection principle deliberately reverses that of conventional publicity practices: instead of isolating favorable excerpts from otherwise mixed reviews, the work compiles negative, biased, or dismissive judgments, often notable for their lack of foresight.
In the introduction, Slonimsky outlines the organization and use of the volume. Composers are listed alphabetically, from Béla Bartók to Anton Webern, with critiques presented in chronological order within each entry. A separate section, titled the “Invecticon” (or “Index of Invectives”), classifies quotations thematically under keywords ranging from “aberration” to “zoo".
Some of these keywords are further qualified by clarifications such as “in music” or “in a pejorative sense.” Slonimsky employs a degree of humor in guiding readers through the index, notably suggesting consultation of the entry “ugly,” which directs to numerous composers and pages, beginning “practically” with Beethoven.
The author acknowledges that certain critiques were included for their unusual and spicy character, and he does not shy away from seeing Vincent d'Indy, who was the first composition teacher of Edgard Varèse, referred to as the "father-in-law of dissonance"; Stravinsky as the "caveman of music"; and Webern as the "Kafka of modern music."
Invective-composed composers The Lexicon of Musical Invective is an anthology of articles dedicated to forty-three composers from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Béla Bartók Ludwig van Beethoven Alban Berg Hector Berlioz Georges Bizet Ernest Bloch Johannes Brahms Anton Bruckner Frédéric Chopin Dmitri Chostakovitch Aaron Copland Henry Cowell Claude Debussy César Franck George Gershwin Charles Gounod Roy Harris Vincent d'Indy Ernst Křenek Franz Liszt Gustav Mahler Darius Milhaud Modest Moussorgski Sergueï Prokofiev Giacomo Puccini Sergueï Rachmaninov Maurice Ravel Max Reger Wallingford Riegger Nikolaï Rimski-Korsakov Carl Ruggles Camille Saint-Saëns Arnold Schönberg Robert Schumann Alexander Scriabin Jean Sibelius Richard Strauss Igor Stravinsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Edgard Varèse Giuseppe Verdi Richard Wagner Anton Webern
Limitations of the scope In the preface to the 2000 edition of the Lexicon, composer and musicologist Peter Schickele raises the question, “Why begin with Beethoven?” After reviewing the author’s arguments, he identifies two principal reasons.
First, the expansion of mass-circulation print culture in Europe following the French Revolution altered the relationship between artists and the public, placing critics in a more influential position. Second, the dual Romantic ideal embodied by Ludwig van Beethoven combines the notion of artistic genius shaped by fate with that of an artist in tension with contemporary society.
Schickele also cites remarks by the musicologist H.C. Robbins Landon concerning the premiere of Haydn's Military Symphony. Landon characterized the work as fully integrated into the cultural context of its time, suggesting that audiences immediately understood and appreciated it. Schickele describes this claim as “provocative,” noting that such instances are rare in music history. A similar view is expressed by Guy Sacre, who argues that “it is with Beethoven that the gap commonly observed between artist and audience begins."