Shaw on Brahms

If Brahms was unduly rough on the music of colleagues, he got his comeuppance from the pen of George Bernard Shaw, who had this to say about the German Requiem:


There are some sacrifices which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to Brahms’s Requiem.

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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.

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…his Requiem is patiently borne only by the corpse.


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The admirers of Brahms had a succulant treat at the Richter concert last week. His German Requiem was done from ene to end, and done quite well enough to bring out all its qualities. What those qualities are could have been guessed by a deaf man from the mountanous tedium of the unfortunate audience, who yet listened with a perverse belief that Brahms is a great composer…

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…the colossally stupid Requiem, which has made so many of us wish ourselves dead.

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[after it] the very flattest of funerals would seem like a ballet…