The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
by Alex Ross
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alex RossEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2007-10-16
ISBN: 0374249393
Number of pages: 640
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Book Reviews of The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
Book Review: Composing Classical Music from 1900-1950
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
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