Music: The Stockbrokers' Critic

I could make deaf stockbrokers read my two pages on music, the alleged joke being that I knew nothing about it. The real joke was that I knew all about it.

—George Bernard Shaw

G.B.S. was right. During two decades (1876-94) of intermittently covering London concert halls and opera houses, he emerged as the finest music critic in the English language. And over the years, his acerbic judgments have worn remarkably well—a consequence, explained Shaw, of the fact that "G.B.S. never commits himself on a musical subject until he knows at least six times...