‘bleeding chunks’

views updated

‘bleeding chunks’. Phrase sometimes used by writers on mus. when referring to operatic extracts played out of context in the concert-hall. It is a quotation from a programme-note by Sir Donald Tovey on Bruckner's 4th Sym. in his Essays in Musical Analysis, Vol.II (1935), p.71. Tovey wrote: ‘Defects of form are not a justifiable ground for criticism from listeners who profess to enjoy the bleeding chunks of butcher's meat chopped from Wagner's operas and served up on Wagner nights as Waldweben and Walkürenritt’.

More From encyclopedia.com