Composer and musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky published a fascinating and delightful book entitled Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven’s Time (Slonimsky 1965). The book is a collection of what Slonimsky called “biased, unfair, ill-tempered, and singularly unprophetic judgments” (p. 3) about famous composers and their works. We find, for example, the Gazette Musicale de Paris on August 1, 1847, saying of Verdi, “there has not yet been an Italian composer more incapable of producing what is commonly called (...) a melody.” And this publication stuck to its guns. On May 22, 1853, it said of Rigoletto that it “lacks melody. This opera has hardly any chance to be kept in the repertoire.” The May 1804 issue of Zeitung für die Elegente Welt proclaimed Beethoven’s Second Symphony is a crass monster, a hideously writhing wounded dragon, that refuses to expire, and though bleeding in the Finale, furiously beats about with its tail erect................ (shrink)

This paper is an overview of aspects of the French journal Annales des Sciences Psychiques (ASP, 1891-1919) with emphasis on nineteenth century developments. The ASP was founded by Charles Richet and Xavier Dariex. The development of the journal was assisted both by the prestige and influence of Richet as a scientist and of Félix Alcan as a publisher. For the nineteenth-century period the journal emphasized cases and experiments over theories. Much of this was about spontaneous telepathy and physical mediumship. Some (...) of the authors included in the pages of the ASP were Émile Boirac, Ernesto Bozzano, Albert de Rochas, Giovanni Battista Ermacora, Paul Joire, and Julian Ochorowicz. There were translations of the work of members of the Society for Psychical Research, such as Frederic W. H. Myers. In 1908 the ASP was affiliated with the Sociétè Universelle d’Études Psychiques, becoming its official publication. The ASP was important in establishing standards and in providing a forum for the development of psychical research in France. (shrink)