Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

Started by MN Dave, April 16, 2008, 12:12:47 PM

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MN Dave


Brian

Guilty.

Actually, I haven't read it either and will be interested to hear replies as well. :)

bhodges

It is one of the best, most enjoyable books on 20th-century music I've read.  His progression, starting with Richard Strauss's Salome and going up to the present, is scholarly but not written at a level beyond the average reader (IMHO).  He includes tons of interesting vignettes, quotations and historical items, all very beautifully written.  I actually haven't finished it yet: I've been skipping around to various chapters (e.g., reading the one on Britten and Peter Grimes while seeing the opera at the Met).

From Ross's website, here are the supplements (audio files and links) for the first chapter, just to give you an idea.

And it was just nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, although it didn't win.  (Winner was The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedlander, and the other finalist was The Cigarette Century by Allan Brandt.)

--Bruce

MN Dave

Thanks, Bruce. I'll most likely pick it up based on your review.

Kullervo

Extremely readable. I finished it in about three days.

springrite

I should have the book in the next week or so. Can't wait to read it.

Henk

I received this book last week. Didn't read in it yet.

canninator

Quote from: MN Dave on April 16, 2008, 12:12:47 PM
What's the verdict on this book?

Reading it at the moment, I'm up to pre-WWII Germany. The book is well written with a nice flowing conversational style. It is informative and packed with interesting vignettes without being dumbed down. I appreciate that he has to describe the music he is talking about but I have found these (brief) sections mostly uninformative. Highly recommended on the whole.

btpaul674

Quote from: Corey on April 16, 2008, 06:38:34 PM
Extremely readable. I finished it in about three days.

Same! Wonderfully written. I couldn't concentrate on any schoolwork until I finished the book. I loved the Sibelius chapter so much I read it 3 times.

Daedalus

Quote from: btpaul674 on April 20, 2008, 08:09:37 PM
Same! Wonderfully written. I couldn't concentrate on any schoolwork until I finished the book. I loved the Sibelius chapter so much I read it 3 times.

This book sounds really promising!

I have it on a pre-order with another book that isn't out yet - you know, so that I can qualify for the free delivery on Amazon.
I will be getting it soon and I am really looking forward to making some new discoveries while reading it.
8)

D.

Catison

I read the book over a period of about two months, taking a break between each part.  My review would coincide with that of Taruskin (on the back cover).  No other author has so carefully and respectfully dethroned the composers of the 20th Century.  With all of the discussions (common on this forum several years ago) about the legacy and legitamacy of modern, neo-romantic, serial, minimalist, etc. music, it has always seemed that composers were playing on some battlefield, firing away at each other with the fabric of music itself.  Each would be dogmatically defended or vilified.  But Ross pulls the story away from the mythical into the everyday.  Composers, in his book, are everyday geniuses, as much a product of their time as their legacy was a product of their Art.  They are firmly stuck within the political and social climate and responded as any of us would have done, albeit with wonderous invention.  Whereas we might like to think of composers as completely sure of their path in history, Ross shows their outer egos were often accompanied with self doubt.  It was so refreshing to read, especially after all of the vacuous argumentation on the Internet.  I wish I could read it for the first time again.
-Brett

karlhenning

Quote from: Catison on April 21, 2008, 09:41:54 AM
. . . It was so refreshing to read, especially after all of the vacuous argumentation on the Internet.

Hear, hear!

Daedalus

#12
Does the Alex Ross book go into much detail about atonality and the various 20th century experiments with this?

This is an area, I must confess, that I struggle with  :-[ and I was hoping that the Ross book might act, at least in part, as an accessible guide.

Grateful for any replies regarding this.

D.

bhodges

Yes, he does, although his is not a "blow-by-blow" musicological analysis, but comments on how and why various composers chose the routes they did.  Early in the book, his discussions of the Second Viennese School (i.e., Berg, Schoenberg and Webern) are erudite and entertaining, and chapters 11 and 13 are respectively on "The Cold War and the Avant-Garde of the Fifties" and "Messiaen, Ligeti, and the Avant-Garde of the Sixties" (with a great chapter on Britten in between).  I empathize with your struggle with atonality; I have a number of classically oriented friends who find atonal music "disturbing," "incomprehensible," etc.  Ross might be the one to help.

--Bruce

Daedalus

Quote from: bhodges on April 21, 2008, 12:22:50 PM
Yes, he does, although his is not a "blow-by-blow" musicological analysis, but comments on how and why various composers chose the routes they did.  Early in the book, his discussions of the Second Viennese School (i.e., Berg, Schoenberg and Webern) are erudite and entertaining, and chapters 11 and 13 are respectively on "The Cold War and the Avant-Garde of the Fifties" and "Messiaen, Ligeti, and the Avant-Garde of the Sixties" (with a great chapter on Britten in between).  I empathize with your struggle with atonality; I have a number of classically oriented friends who find atonal music "disturbing," "incomprehensible," etc.  Ross might be the one to help.

--Bruce

Bruce, sincere thanks for this reply - I am looking forward to reading this book all the more now.  :)

D.

bhodges

You're welcome!  I don't have the book handy to quote a paragraph or two as an example.  I'll try to find one later that might interest you and include it here.

--Bruce

Anne

Bruce,

Would any of Bernstein's lectures at Harvard be of any help to Daedalus?

karlhenning

Maybe not; Lenny isn't really to everyone's taste.

DavidRoss

Like music without a tonal center?
"Maybe the problem most of you have ... is that you're not listening to Barbirolli." ~Sarge

"The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money." ~Margaret Thatcher

bhodges

Quote from: Anne on April 21, 2008, 05:29:55 PM
Bruce,

Would any of Bernstein's lectures at Harvard be of any help to Daedalus?

The last two lectures (below) might be, but I don't recall Bernstein going nearly as far as Ross does, in his embrace and exploration of such a wide variety of contemporary composers.  (It's been probably 20 years since I've seen these.)  Even the title below, using the word "crisis," is so different from the way Ross approaches the subject.  But all that said, the lectures are excellent and there's certainly no reason not to see them.  :D

The Twentieth Century Crisis: Arnold Schoenberg's movement toward atonality and Gustav Mahler's anticipation of the crisis in twentieth-century music. Includes performances of Ives's The Unanswered Question, Ravel's "Feria" from Rapsodie Espagnole, and Mahler's Symphony No. 9, movement 4. (133 minutes)

The Poetry of Earth: Examines how Igor Stravinsky kept tonality viable while experimenting freely with dissonance. Includes a complete performance of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex. (177 minutes)

--Bruce