Location: Home > Music, Stage & Screen > Bestsellers > The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

Author: Alex Ross
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Category: Book

List Price: ~~Ł20.00~~
Buy New: Ł11.00
You Save: Ł9.00 (45%)

New (25) Used (2) from Ł11.00

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

6 reviews
Sales Rank: 332

Media: Hardcover
Pages: 624
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.6
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.2 x 2.1

ISBN: 184115475X
EAN: 9781841154756
ASIN: 184115475X

Publication Date: March 3, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new book dispatched from stock in the UK

Also Available In:

•	Paperback - The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
•	Hardcover - Rest is Noise, The: Listening to the Twentieth Century
•	MP3 CD - The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

Similar Items:

•	Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
•	Works of Igor Stravinsky [22cd]
•	This Is Your Brain on Music: Understanding a Human Obsession
•	Miracles of Life
•	Mozart: Symphonies 38-41

Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...

3 out of 5 stars

BARELY LISTENING April 10, 2008
1 out of 3 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.

5 out of 5 stars

An exciting tour of a musical century still ill-understood April 4, 2008
3 out of 4 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.

5 out of 5 stars

A 'must read'. March 27, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful

One of the most complete and satisfying books of its genre. It is easy to read, and draws you through the Music and Musicians of the 20th century. The only problem is the expense, for one is always making notes as to which CD to order next!!

5 out of 5 stars

Why We Love To Hate Modern Classical Music February 14, 2008
15 out of 22 found this review helpful

There are two aspects to this book - the literal and the revelation. The literal has been described elsewhere in these reviews variously as exhilarating and astonishing. I totally agree. The massive research, the easy familiarity with the most obscure observations, and the impact of the historical context makes this book well worth owning.

The revelation came in the form of explaining why we hate modern classical music so very much. The reason is poetry. Modern classical music is like modern poetry; if you can't read it, you can't appreciate it. Imagine hearing a poem by e e cummings. Unless you see the text, you've missed the lack of punctuation, the spacing, the geometric splashing of the words on paper. You've missed 90% of it by only hearing it.

So with modern classical music. Unless you can read music, and have the music in front of you, you cannot possibly appreciate the progressions, the geometry, the calculus of the piece. That is why composers cited by Ross have taken their bows facing the orchestra, sticking their butts out towards the audience. The audience be damned; they can't possibly appreciate it. Only musicians can enter the temple. At numerous points towards the end, melody is identified as a horror to be avoided at all costs. Astonishing peer pressure among composers ensures that no one steps out of line and writes something pleasant to hear. The objective is to break new ground in sound, but call it music.

You can look at modern classical as movie soundtrack, and of course many composers earned their living that way. They fill in moods, complement scenes, create atmospheres. But even that has gone away. Today, it's all about mathematics, it seems. Twelve tones, interminable repetition, and instrument abuse are the cornerstones as composers seek to stand out from the pack.

Too bad. The public just wanted a diverting night out on the town. A tune they could hum on the way home. Composers have joined the establishment in their own anti-establishment way. Like banks and health insurance companies - the customer be damned. We're doing what we want, for us. Period. Alex Ross explains it all in fascinating detail. My only criticism is his website. How wonderful it would be if every musical description in the book had a sound file counterpart, referenced to that same chapter and page, on the website. Then we could hear what he described in such incredible detail and evaluate and appreciate his analysis and description of it. Maybe even fit it into context. As it stands, there are some clips, but that's about it. Too bad, but hardly a reason not to buy this important work of love.

5 out of 5 stars

Composing Classical Music from 1900-1950 February 11, 2008
16 out of 21 found this review helpful

If you would like to know more than you do now about classical composition in the first half of the twentieth century, The Rest Is Noise is a valuable resource. If you are curious about what happened from 1950 through today in classical composing, you'll get a thumbnail sketch of what the most experimental composers did.

I loved the title. How many times I've heard people describe music that employs dissonance or isn't to their taste as "just noise."

New Yorker music critic Alex Ross has fun with that concept by suggesting that various types of classical music written since Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring often have more in common than you would expect. His constant references back to common elements among the schools is a particular strength of this book.

Mr. Ross clearly favors those works that have gained the broadest audiences. Those who mainly experiment for themselves and small audiences don't receive much attention, even when their advances are conceptually significant for expanding what can be done with composition.

What's the style of the book like? I can best compare it to reading extended program notes where you connect the dots between one night's performances and the rest of the season's series. In addition, he is a little more candid about the personal lives of the composers than most program notes would provide. He seems particularly interested in exploring the homosexual and lesbian tendencies of the composers and the various musical figures he writes about.

I was very impressed by Mr. Ross's ability to explain various innovations, many of which are unfamiliar to me. He employs a combination of metaphors, references to other musical works, and scientific explanations to get the points across. In doing so, he displays excellent ability to conceptualize and to write about music.

My main regret as a I read the book was that it didn't have a companion CD set that would allow me to quickly listen to the works that he is describing. Although I obviously didn't need that for the works that have become standards in the repertoire, many references aren't to anything very standard.

Mr. Ross also seeks to describe the twentieth century as seen through its composers. Although he certainly develops some useful themes like the role that governments play in encouraging and discouraging composition, I thought that this aspect of the book worked less well by being incomplete. But where important themes were addressed, the material certainly was interesting.