Shaw wrote the sentence in his weekly music column dated 10 December 1890, reviewing a Manchester band on tour in London and comparing its drummer with the London players. It stands at pages 91–92 of Music in London 1890-94, Volume I — confirmed in the scanned volume, whose own front note says the criticisms were “contributed week by week to The World during the years 1890-94.” The version that circulates — “Music may be a universal language, but it’s spoken with all sorts of peculiar accents” — is a loose paraphrase of that sentence. Thoreau wrote a different sentence about music, universal language and accents; he did not write this one.
“Though music be a universal language, it is spoken with all sorts of accents” George Bernard Shaw, music column dated 10 December 1890 (Music in London 1890-94, vol. 1, pp. 91-92). Via Quotle.info
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Provenance
The column it comes from
Work
Music in London 1890-94, Volume I
Column dated
10 December 1890 — contributed week by week to The World
Page
91–92, Constable Standard Edition, London, 1932
Author
Bernard Shaw, writing as “G.B.S.”
… but then Chaine is equally at a loss when he comes to that final crescendo roll, with its culminating stroke upon the last note of the Trold King’s dance, in the Peer Gynt suite, a moment which would be one of the highest in the life of his Manchester rival. Thus, though music be a universal language, it is spoken with all sorts of accents; and the Lancashire accent differs sufficiently from the Cockney accent to make the Manchester band a welcome variety, without counting the change from Cowen or Cusins to Hallé.
from the column of 10 December 1890
Transcribed from the scanned Constable volume, pages 91–92. The sentence is a verdict on two percussionists, not a definition of music.
1835 — Longfellow prints “Music is the universal language of mankind” in Outre-Mer, and an 1826 periodical had already called music “the universal language of nature”; both are documented by Quote Investigator ↗.
c.1840, printed 1902 — Thoreau’s The Service, headed “[written ABOUT 1840],” carries his own universal-language-and-accents sentence on page 12 of F. B. Sanborn’s edition ↗.
10 December 1890 — Shaw’s column for The World contains the sentence in full; it appears at pages 91–92 of the collected Music in London 1890-94, Volume I ↗, whose front note records that the criticisms were contributed week by week to The World during 1890-94.
2015 — Quote Investigator ↗ traces the epigram to that December 1890 review, and records Alan Lomax’s 1949 variant, “Music may be a universal language, but what a devilish lot of dialects!”
✓Public domain
The sentence first appeared in Shaw’s weekly music column in The World for 10 December 1890 — publication long before 1931, so the review is in the public domain in the United States. The text quoted here follows the collected Music in London 1890-94 (Constable, 1932), whose title page notes it was “Revised and reprinted for this Standard Edition 1932”; that edition’s apparatus and any 1932 revisions sit with Shaw’s estate and publisher, but the 1890 sentence itself is free.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Why Thoreau’s name comes up
This is one of the better-motivated misattributions on the site. Thoreau is one of the names Quote Investigator ↗ opens its inquiry with, alongside Longfellow and Alan Lomax — and the reason is that Thoreau really did write a sentence pairing “universal language” with “accents.” It just is not this sentence.
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the whole sentenceHenry David Thoreau Wrong writer
What Thoreau actually wrote, in the essay The Service, is: “In a world of peace and love music would be the universal language, and men greet each other in the fields in such accents as a Beethoven now utters at rare intervals from a distance.” The essay is headed “[written ABOUT 1840]” and was first published in 1902, edited by F. B. Sanborn ↗. Shared vocabulary, opposite argument — and none of Shaw’s wording.
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the “universal language” halfHenry Wadsworth Longfellow Earlier phrase
Longfellow’s Outre-Mer (1835) has “Music is the universal language of mankind,” and a periodical printed “Music is the universal language of nature” in 1826 — both documented by Quote Investigator ↗. That is the cliché Shaw was answering, not the source of his clause about accents.
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the wordingShaw, loosely quoted Paraphrase
The line circulates as “Music may be a universal language, but it’s spoken with all sorts of peculiar accents” — the form the questioner brought to Quote Investigator ↗. Shaw’s text has no “peculiar,” and begins “Thus, though music be…”
✓The sentence is Shaw’s, written for his weekly column dated 10 December 1890 and printed at pages 91–92 of Music in London 1890-94, Volume I ↗.
Context
It was a review of a drummer
Read in place, the line is not a philosophy of music at all. Shaw was writing up a visiting Manchester band, and his point was technical: their drummer, armed with “mighty drum-sticks,” could not touch the delicacy the London player Chaine brought to Beethoven’s E flat Concerto — but Chaine, in turn, was “equally at a loss” at the crescendo roll closing the Trold King’s dance in the Peer Gynt suite. Different tone, not better or worse tone. Hence the accents.
The joke only works because the first half was already a cliché. “Music is the universal language of mankind” had been in circulation since Longfellow’s Outre-Mer in 1835, and a periodical had called music “the universal language of nature” as early as 1826, both documented by Quote Investigator ↗. Shaw takes the received phrase and adds the clause that punctures it — which is why the sentence survives detached from the concert that provoked it.
Shaw was not defining music. He was defending a provincial band’s tone.
What Thoreau actually wrote
In The Service, an essay headed “[written ABOUT 1840]” and printed only in 1902, Thoreau wrote, in the section titled “What Music Shall We Have?”: “There is as much music in the world as virtue. In a world of peace and love music would be the universal language, and men greet each other in the fields in such accents as a Beethoven now utters at rare intervals from a distance.”
That sentence puts “universal language” and “accents” in the same breath, which is very likely why Thoreau’s name gets attached to Shaw’s epigram. But the two say opposite things: Thoreau imagines a world in which music would become the universal tongue; Shaw takes the universality for granted and points at the local accents in it. The manuscript went to Margaret Fuller for The Dial and was not printed; it reached the editor F. B. Sanborn long after Thoreau’s death, and he published it in 1902.
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1856–1950 · Irish playwright, critic & weekly music columnist for The World
Before George Bernard Shaw was the playwright of Pygmalion and Saint Joan, he was one of London’s sharpest working music critics. In May 1890 he began a weekly column in the society paper The World, signed “G.B.S.,” and kept it up for more than four years; those columns were later gathered into the three volumes of Music in London 1890-94. The universal-language line is pure column-writing — a joke about two drummers, made in passing, that outlived the concert it was written about.
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Cite this
Primary source
Bernard Shaw, Music in London 1890-94, vol. 1 (London: Constable and Company, 1932), 91–92; music column dated 10 December 1890, originally contributed to The World.
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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Though music be a universal language, it is spoken with all sorts of accents’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/though-music-be-a-universal-language-it-is-spoken-with-all/