Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

[dyn]

i generally find taruskin extremely irritating, illuminating, irritating, [chuckle chuckle here and there], exasperating, extremely illuminating, and pedantic

but never dull. so 

Indeed. Whatever Taruskin's flaws, one can never accuse him of being insufficiently entertaining.

[aquablob]

Vaughan Williams is covered in Vol. 3 of the softcover edition (I think in response to criticism over neglecting him in the hardbacks).

I tend to agree that Taruskin's volumes on twentieth-century music are the most problematic, but I also view that as inevitable. And I'm not sure that it's really fair to criticize him for setting some limits. Had he included jazz, for instance, and given it the thorough treatment that the topic deserves, he'd have written another whole volume! Same for popular music. Sure, he could have thrown in an extra chapter or two to give those subjects a more substantial nod, but then we'd just accuse him of tokenism. So I think he made a good choice by sticking with the "literate Western" tradition, even as that tradition becomes increasingly elusive in the final volumes. He's pretty upfront about this, and he acknowledges the difficulties and unavoidable inconsistencies—what more could he do?

But I do agree with some of the other criticisms leveled in this thread. Women and nonwhites could get more coverage (although to be fair, in earlier volumes he gives female composers better coverage than one typically finds in other historical surveys), film music gets short shrift.

It ain't perfect, but it's pretty damn good scholarship overall.

[jochanaan]

...John Zorn (who is, apparently, only a classical musician)...