Critics
By Peter Lloyd"The most insolent monstrosity ever perpetrated in the history of music." That's what one critic called Bolero. Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, was greeted with, "...stupid and hopelessly vulgar music!" by another. Yes, he was writing about one of music's most creative and revolutionarily innovative composers of all time!
How could the music critics I just quoted make such classical asses of themselves? Better yet, what can we learn from the man who wrote that Beethoven, "lacked the sense of beauty"?
For one thing, most critics would jump at the chance to be even a third-rate composer if they had half a brain. Actually, the critics I've quoted here did use only half of their brains--the wrong half. Because if they had simply listened to the music with the right side of their brains, each would have had heard an entirely different composition.
Certain people in positions of power mouth nonsense that far too many people swallow as if it were some godly decree from the holy mountain. You don't have to visit the words of some politicians, scientists, or critics for very long to uncover utter nonsense. I've devoted an entire page of quotes to the stupidity of so-called of eminent experts making complete asses of themselves.
But don't just enjoy laughing at my collection of famous follies. Let their stupidity serve as fair warning: Before you take the blue pencil to a freshly written report, before you start shaking your head at your secretary's suggestion, before you shoot down your ad agency's next presentation, consider the critic who wrote, "... it will soon fall into disuse," about Beethoven's Heroic Symphony.
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.