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I found this quite fun - who knew how catty all these great composers could be about each other?
- "He has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour." - Rossini on Wagner
- "After Rossini dies, who will there be to promote his music?” - Wagner on Rossini
- “A composer for one right hand.” - Wagner on Chopin
- "He composes by splashing his pen over the manuscript and leaving the issue to chance." - Chopin on Berlioz
- “A regular freak, without a vestige of talent.” - Mendelssohn on Berlioz
- “A tub of pork and beer.” - Berlioz on Handel
- “He’d be better off shovelling snow than scribbling on manuscript paper.” - Richard Strauss on Schoenberg
- "He is no longer of any interest to me, and whatever I may have learned from him, I am thankful to say I misunderstood." - Schoenberg on Strauss
- "Such an astounding lack of talent has never before been united to such pretentiousness." - Tchaikovsky on Strauss
- "He can’t compose a single note without someone’s help.” - Tchaikovsky on Borodin
- ""What a giftless bastard! It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed as a genius." - Tchaikovsky on Brahms
- “Hygienic, but unexciting.” - Liszt on Brahms
- “Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?” - Stravinsky on Villa-Lobos
- "Bach on the wrong notes." - Prokofiev on Stravinsky
- “He wrote marvellous operas but dreadful music.” - Shostakovich on Puccini
- "A man of great talent who lacks the essential quality that makes great masters." - Bizet on Verdi
- "A very tolerable imitation of a composer.” - Vaughan Williams on Mahler
- “If he'd been making shell-cases during the war it might have been better for music.” - Ravel on Saint-Saëns
Composers in the collage:
First row - Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Händel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven;
Second row - Gioachino Rossini, Felix Mendelssohn, Frédéric Chopin, Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi;
Third row - Johann Strauss II, Johannes Brahms, Georges Bizet, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Antonín Dvořák;
Fourth row - Edvard Grieg, Edward Elgar, Sergei Rachmaninoff, George Gershwin, Aram Khachaturian