I Write The Music - Music For Creative Musicians - The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

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The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
By Alex Ross

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The scandal over modern music has not died down. While paintings by Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock sell for a hundred million dollars or more, shocking musical works from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring onward still send ripples of unease through audiences. At the same time, the influence of modern music can be felt everywhere. Avant-garde sounds populate the soundtracks of Hollywood thrillers. Minimalist music has had a huge effect on rock, pop, and dance music from the Velvet Underground onward. Alex Ross, the brilliant music critic for The New Yorker, shines a bright light on this secret world, and shows how it has pervaded every corner of twentieth century life. The Rest Is Noise takes the reader inside the labyrinth of modern sound. It tells of maverick personalities who have resisted the cult of the classical past, struggled against the indifference of a wide public, and defied the will of dictators. Whether they have charmed audiences with the purest beauty or battered them with the purest noise, composers have always been exuberantly of the present, defying the stereotype of classical music as a dying art. Ross, in this sweeping and dramatic narrative, takes us from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties, from Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies. We follow the rise of mass culture and mass politics, of dramatic new technologies, of hot and cold wars, of experiments, revolutions, riots, and friendships forged and broken. In the tradition of Simon Schama’s The Embarrassment of Riches and Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club, the end result is not so much a history of twentieth-century music as a history of the twentieth century through its music.

Product Details

Amazon Sales Rank: #3417 in Books
Published on: 2007-10-16
Released on: 2007-10-16
Original language: English
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
640 pages

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Anyone who has ever gamely tried and failed to absorb, enjoy, and--especially--understand the complex works of Schoenberg, Mahler, Strauss, or even Philip Glass will allow themselves a wry smile reading New Yorker music critic Alex Ross's outstanding The Rest Is Noise. Not only does Ross manage to give historical, biographical, and social context to 20th-century pieces both major and minor, he brings the scores alive in language that's accessible and dramatic.

Take Ross's description of Schoenberg's Second Quartet, "in which he hesitates at a crossroads, contemplating various paths forming in front of him. The first movement, written the previous year, still uses a fairly conventional late-Romantic language. The second movement, by contrast, is a hallucinatory Scherzo, unlike any other music at the time. It contains fragments of the folk song 'Ach, du lieber Augustin'--the same tune that held Freudian significance for Mahler. For Schoenberg, the song seems to represent a bygone world disintegrating; the crucial line is 'Alles ist hin' (all is lost). The movement ends in a fearsome sequence of four-note figures, which are made up of fourths separated by a tritone. In them may be discerned traces of the bifurcated scale that begins Salome. But there is no longer a sense of tonalities colliding. Instead, the very concept of a chord is dissolving into a matrix of intervals."

Armed with such a detailed aural roadmap, even a troglodyte--or a heavy metal fan--can explore these pivotal works anew. But it's not all crashing cymbals, honking tubas, and somber Germans stroking their chins. Ross also presents the human dramas (affairs, wars, etc.) behind these sweeping compositions while managing, against the odds, to discuss C-major triads, pentatonic scales, and B-flat dominant sevenths without making our eyes glaze over. And he draws a direct link between the Beatles and Sibelius. It's no surprise that the New York Times named The Rest Is Noise one of the 10 Best Books of 2007. Music nerds have found their most articulate valedictorian. --Kim Hughes

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Ross, the classical music critic for the New Yorker, leads a whirlwind tour from the Viennese premiere of Richard Strauss's Salome in 1906 to minimalist Steve Reich's downtown Manhattan apartment. The wide-ranging historical material is organized in thematic essays grounded in personalities and places, in a disarmingly comprehensive style reminiscent of historian Otto Friedrich. Thus, composers who led dramatic lives—such as Shostakovich's struggles under the Soviet regime—make for gripping reading, but Ross treats each composer with equal gravitas. The real strength of this study, however, lies in his detailed musical analysis, teasing out—in precise but readily accessible language—the notes that link Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story to Arnold Schoenberg's avant-garde compositions or hint at a connection between Sibelius and John Coltrane. Among the many notable passages, a close reading of Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes stands out for its masterful blend of artistic and biographical insight. Readers new to classical music will quickly seek out the recordings Ross recommends, especially the works by less prominent composers, and even avid fans will find themselves hearing familiar favorites with new ears. (Oct.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine
The classical music critic for The New Yorker, Alex Ross has a reputation as one of the most perceptive and humorous voices in the industry. Even so, The Rest Is Noiseâ€"a play on Hamletâ€™s last words, "The rest is silence"â€"is an ambitious undertaking, one that critics unanimously proclaimed a success. Rossâ€™s lively, accessible prose and striking visual images bring the music he describes vividly to life. His anecdotes are amusing, and his revelations are far-reaching and profound. Though he arranges his material in chronological order, his narrative never descends into a clunky, decade-by-decade sequence of events. Instead, Ross gauges the legacy of classical musicâ€"its shaping of jazz, swing, pop, rock, and hip-hopâ€"in this compelling book.

Customer Reviews

A Poetic History of the 20th Century as Only an Art Critic Can Give...
Other than the weather and traffic, and an occasional political talk show, audio CD's are the way to go while driving now, and this set was a unique and fascinating history of the 20th century from the vantage point of the classical musical world.

The author takes the reader through the landscape with the exquisite communication skills of a seasoned, in-depth critic, his analysis filled with beautiful, deep, and frightening metaphorical analysis of the classical creations and personas of the twentieth century, never straying from the vantage point of the classical music world.

I overlooked his occasional, obviously academically-indoctrinated, naively left-leaning personal interjections; and for a person involved so deeply with an art world that hates Bush so catatonically, they were admirably few and far between.

Knows nothing about music
I am astounded at the glowing reviews for this intellectual lightweight of a book about music in 20th century. Author Alex Ross does a frantic tap dance of maintaining a narrative with critical insights, but ultimately, he has created a vapid work of no real insight into 20th century music, except those created by popular tastes. In fact, no one I know in serious musical discussions considers his commentary worthwhile. I do not believe he understands anything about music in form, in taste, and in historical context. Really disappointing.