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 A great read, recommended to anyone with even a passing interest in music September 25, 2008
This is a huge subject, and Alex Ross does a great job of covering it. Not everyone will be happy if their pet composer or movement has been tackled only briefly (if at all), but it would be impossible to fit the entire century into a single volume. As a result of reading this I have been moved to listen to Schoenberg and Strauss (esp. the Metamorphosen) for the first time; they are challenging works but rewarding and it has been great to have my musical horizons expanded by reading this book.
For me, the book was worth buying for the chapter on Sibelius alone; the passage describing the walk around Ainola and linking it to Sibelius' music is just superb - it sent me straight back to my CD collection to dig out and listen to the symphonies after years of not playing them.
Overall that is the most wonderful thing about this book - it inspires you to listen to more music.
Musical and historic, magic June 14, 2008
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
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A communal review for the Cote d'Azure Men's book group of
The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross
Written for the book group by Sidney Freedman and Barry Hibbitt
Music, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is the art of combining sound, voices and instruments to achieve beauty, an expression of emotion. Shakespeare's said it more succinctly in Twelfth Night: "if music be the food of love play on."
Many people listen to it for pleasure, whether it be the might of a major orchestra, the wall- to -wall modern or rap music, or for merely a relaxing hour or so while meditating on the meaning of life. A concerto can alter moods, stimulate the senses, hypnotise and encourage soldiers and citizens alike to follow The Flag,.
The Rest is Noise is a scholarly commentary on music allied to history in the twentieth century, from Bruckner to The Beatles; Debussy to Duke Ellington, and covers the lives and works of nearly every musician of note in that century
The group read this book by the music critic of The New Yorker. Most members agreed that it was a good choice. It is up- to- date and many found it enlightening. It opened up a new world of music previously unknown, which they now feel inspired to explore further. Like all books on music it suffers from the disadvantage that one does not hear the music on turning the pages, rather like a programme note at a concert where no music is actually played. However, Alex Ross has to some extent remedied the problem by setting up a web site (www.therestisnoise.com), on which examples of the music he discusses can be found
It was suggested that greater insight into the musical revolution of the 20th century could be found elsewhere. Leonard Bernstein's lecture at Harvard in 1973 under the title of `The Unanswered Question' is one example and, despite being written in the 1930s, Constant Lambert's book Music Ho! is still as good a guide as any, because many of the truly radical changes in music occurred before World War I, when Debussy broke away from the rhetoric of German Romantic music, introducing a style of composition which required its audience to listen with their nerves rather than their minds.
Egon Wellesz, a notable composer of atonal music, gave a somewhat similar answer when asked why for so many listeners modern music was 'a terrible noise', saying that they were listening with the wrong ears! Our attempt to distinguish music from noise led nowhere. At least one member of the group found no problem at all in listening to atonal music. There followed a discussion on why others found it so difficult to assimilate. Could it be that the human ear is attuned to tonality by overtones or harmonics or is it simply the case that we get used to certain sounds?
Our psychologist pointed out that very little is known about the way in which the human ear assimilates music. He knew of only two works that deal with the subject Some earphones, for example, seem to reproduce recorded sound very clearly, but only because the ear supplies the bass tones which are missing
. We all agreed that Ross was very interesting on music both under Stalin and Hitler. There was less agreement on the importance he gives to the operas of Benjamin Britten, although it was recollected that Rostropovich said the 20th century had seen four great composers, of whom three were Russian and the other was Benjamin Britten.'
In a sense the book is more a guide to the icons, their compositions, what drove them to create works of genius and the relationship between classical, modern, rock'n roll and jazz All methods feed off each other. All are meant to entertain with the exception of dirges, requiems and the like, i.e. music for the formal occasion.
We can hear the soulful strings, the urgent trumpets and the rolling of the drums and we can visualise the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin feathering the strings and Jacqueline Du Pre playing Elgar's concerto for cello in E Minor with a passion that overwhelms the senses.
Music of the past fifty years invokes memories for many, from the opening explosion of music that burst upon the world in Star Wars back to the frenzied Rock Around The Clock of Bill Haley and the Comets.
It must be said that, on first reading, one or two members struggled with the book before appreciation set in.. It is a history of one hundred years of music, a compendium that combines historic events with the music of the day. Ross explains the creation and ideas that gave birth to many of the world's most loved works.
He spent fifteen years on this book. Some of his methods may be a bit technical for the average reader, yet seldom has this art form been word painted in better colours.
His scope is vast, from Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler at the debut of Salome in Graz in 1906 to the drum banging battle cries of the two world wars, Shostakovich's patriotic Leningrad and that famous war tribute to Russia that angered Stalin because it was not patriotic enough. Nostalgia; The Warsaw Concerto, The Star-Spangled Banner t he Vietnam peace peons, We will Overcome, then Rock `n Roll era, Let's Twist Again, the modern operas where Ross emphasis the works of Benjamin Britten, in Peter Grimes and Billy Budd operas that spell out an allegiance to a then persecuted section of society.
Within the brotherhood of men- not many women- great names pass by like leaves in the wind, visible one moment and then gone, blown away, but leaving behind the subtle rustling sound of greatness.
Here is the naive Richard Strauss, rejuvenated for a time and thinking the Nazis are his friends. Finally disillusioned when his daughter-in-law's passport is stamped Sara, the German title given to female Jews. His genius overrides, it seems, his compassion and he works on as millions die in The Holocaust. Many, many fellow musicians play in concentration camps for the death dealing SS, not for their supper but for their lives
Alex Ross has written a splendid book. Those who like music but do not know how or why it was written will find a new world to explore and possibly new sounds of music to enjoy. His superb website is a concert hall, just a few clicks away on the computer, to discover a veritable minefield of musical information. Bravo, Mr Ross, Bravo. END
unlikely to help you with that cd storage problem... May 23, 2008
38 out of 39 found this review helpful
Given that whole books could be written about virtually every single composer Alex Ross mentions in this mammoth survey, you'd be forgiven for thinking that 'The Rest is Noise' would be heavy on filler and light on critical insight. Whilst it's fair to say that as the musical world diversifies post-1950, Ross spends less and less time looking at the work of individual composers - this should take nothing away from an astounding work of scholarship.
Like any critic, Ross clearly has his own tastes and prejudices - composition to him is at its best when it addresses a popular audience. It's therefore unsurprising that he devotes more pages to composers such as Mahler, Strauss, Stravinksy, Sibelius and Britten over the 20th century's kookier figures. However, Ross is not simply bolstering the canon - Cage, Feldman, La Monte Young and Harry Partch are all given warm appraisals, even though none of them have been absorbed into the contemporary repertory.
Ross is gifted with a both a keen analytical ear (and eye) and a great generosity of spirit. Whilst he explores the darker totalitarian affiliations of composers such as Strauss, Webern, Orff and Shostakovich, he redeems them all from the blunt considerations of popular myth. In fact the only figure in the whole book who is subject to undisguised contempt is Pierre Boulez. In Ross' account he comes across as an arrogant, two-faced hypocrite - capable of acts of quite atrocious slander towards the very composers who made his work possible (Messiaen, Schoenberg, Stravinsky). It says a lot about Ross, that despite this he still finds time to admire Boulez's 'Marteau sans Maitre'.
Ross writes about music vividly, combining technical analysis with metaphorical explanations - so if, like me, you wouldn't know a tritone if it hit you over the head with a sausage, there's plenty here to provoke and engage. As far as I know, the only book covering similar ground to this is Michael Hall's 'Leaving Home' (written as a companion to the excellent TV series). Hall's book is definitely worth tracking down, even if it is sometimes a little technically abstruse its approach.
Ross' historical approach is enriching and rewarding - this is a rigorously researched book with a deeply humane tone- I don't expect to come across a better work of non-fiction this year.
 BARELY LISTENING April 10, 2008
15 out of 26 found this review helpful
Made possible by the exacting editors at The New Yorker, where most of it appeared first, this once-over-very-lightly survey of 20th century Western music begins with the first stirrings of modernity in Bayreuth and Paris circa 1880 and takes us up to now, when new classical work is largely consigned to movie soundtracks.
The real story since 1950 is the discovery of so much forgotten classical past, and the careful efforts to recreate its original sound in recordings. We experience classical music today through the composers brought back to roaring life by musicologists and audio engineers, not the dry postwar modernisms shunned by the public. At home, I now have more beautiful music ready to play than any pre-war musician would have heard in a lifetime. Halfway through the century, the medium itself changed profoundly, from an ephemeral public one to an archival private one. This story Mr. Ross does not tell at all.
What would make his survey really useful is an annotated bibliography for each chapter, showing us where to get the information barely sketched here, along with a discography longer than one page. Ross' survey is very readable; it's just that you're on your own if you want anything more. But I do envy Ross for getting two paychecks for the same work, from his magazine and from his publisher.
An exciting tour of a musical century still ill-understood April 4, 2008
21 out of 26 found this review helpful
For anyone at all interested in music from the twilight of Romanticism until the present this is a must read. Ross's compendious knowledge and mastery of his material makes this book both compulsive and a pleasure. Choosing to anchor the century in a performance of Strauss's Salome in Graz in 1906, the author introduces not only the key composers of the time - Strauss, Mahler and Schoenberg - but hovering the distance, the young Adolf Hitler. (Whether Hitler really did attend is not known - but Ross's point may be that in some sense he is there in spirit - or the new Germany is gestating in the womb of the old.)
On the evolution of the Second Viennese School and early Stravinsky Ross is dependable and unfailingly insightful.
I think the only difficulty I had with his book came later in the story, amidst the ruins of Europe post the Second World War. As Strauss was bowing out of life with the painfully beautiful Metamorphosen and Four Last Songs a new, vicious cold wind was blowing with young Turks such as Boulez, Cage and Stockhausen leading the way. Here discrimination and judgment seem to have been set aside and in their place is a purely factual description of just what happened. No positive harm in that but I think there was scope for Ross to go further and, just for once in the book, to come off the fence. While he comments pointedly on Boulez's commitment to "violence and more violence" he might just have suggested that the sheer unlistenability of integral serialist works such as Boulez's Structures and Stockhausen's early piano pieces will forever condemn them in the eyes of many music lovers. And the condescending attitude towards the listener shown by nearly all influenced by Darmstadt was a continuing curse in twentieth century music until very recently.
I also believe that, despite its length (at over 500 pages), Ross might have said more about Tavener, Gorecki and Part. It is simply not sufficient to attach these composers to the American minimalists as a sort of footnote. Their inspiration and sheer beauty of sound set them apart. Tavener's total rejection of the Western music dynamic - consonance and dissonance - which is at the heart of classicism also deserves closer examination. And that can be usefully contrasted with other contemporary religiously inspired composers who thrive on Beethovenian contrasts and struggle (I'd put James MacMillan - who Ross doesn't mention - in this category.)
But, to conclude, much to savour and contemplate in this marvellous book. But, without becoming polemical, I suspect some personal judgement from Ross about the lasting value (or not) of each of the many streams of the "delta" (as Cage called it) of 20th Western music would have been the icing on the cake.
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