The rest is noise : listening to the twentieth century

The Rest Is Noise is a voyage into the labyrinth of modern music, which remains for many people an obscure and forbidding world. While paintings of Picasso and Jackson Pollock sell for a hundred million dollars or more, and lines from T. S. Eliot are quoted on the yearbook pages of alienated teenagers across the land, twentieth-century classical music still sends ripples of unease through audiences. At the same time, its influence can be felt everywhere. Atonal chords crop up in jazz. Avant-garde sounds populate the soundtracks of Hollywood thrillers. Minimalism has had a huge effect on rock, pop, and dance music from the Velvet Underground onward.The Rest Is Noise shows why twentieth-century composers felt compelled to create a famously bewildering variety of sounds, from the purest beauty to the purest noise. It tells of a remarkable array of maverick personalities who resisted the cult of the classical past, struggled against the indifference of a wide public, and defied the will of dictators. Whether they have charmed audiences with sweet sounds or confronted them with dissonance, composers have always been exuberantly of the present, defying the stereotype of classical music as a dying art. The narrative goes from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties, from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies. We follow the rise of mass culture and mass politics, of dramatic new technologies, of hot and cold wars, of experiments, revolutions, riots, and friendships forged and broken. The end result is not so much a history of twentieth-century music as a history of the twentieth century through its music.

The Rest Is Noise takes the reader inside the labyrinth of modern sound. It tells of maverick personalities who have resisted the cult of the classical past, struggled against the indifference of a wide public, and defied the will of dictators

The Barnes & Noble Review

Just as living air-conditioned lives has led us to be simultaneously both less aware and more sensitive to the constant invention of the weather, so has our by now complete immersion in a world of recorded sound altered our perception of the power of music. Certainly when it comes to classical composition, our listening is, generally speaking, less rapt and more impatient; the commodifying of opera, symphony, string quartet, and even the most innovative compositional forms into so many CDs has stripped them of their sense of larger destiny as cultural and historical meaning distilled into fleeting moments of experience in the life of the listener. In this rich, stimulating, and thoroughly satisfying book, New Yorker music critic Alex Ross restores that sense of destiny by "listening to the twentieth century," leading us from a 1906 performance of Strauss' Salome (conducted by the composer and attended by Puccini, Mahler, and Schoenberg) to Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. Attuned to the way musical meaning, though "vague, mutable, and, in the end, deeply personal," can underscore and even echo the movements of history, Ross puts his agile intelligence, eclectic ear, and superb critical skills to use in enriching our experience of -- or, better yet, introducing us to -- the works of composers as varied as Stravinsky and Sibelius, Britten and Xenakis. Combining his enviable erudition with a gift for fashioning compelling narrative paths through thorny but exhilarating aesthetic and intellectual terrain, peopled with maverick minds and compelling personalities, Ross has written a fascinating, even exciting book, one that will inform a lifetime's listening. --James Mustich

The scandal over modern music has not died--while paintings by Picasso and Pollock sell for millions of dollars, works from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring onward still send ripples of unease through audiences. Yet the influence of modern music can be felt everywhere. Avant-garde sounds populate the soundtracks of Hollywood thrillers. Minimalist music has had a huge effect on rock, pop, and dance music from the Velvet Underground onward. Music critic Alex Ross shines a bright light on this secret world, taking us from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties, from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to New York in the sixties and seventies. We follow the rise of mass culture and mass politics, of new technologies, of hot and cold wars, of experiments, revolutions, and riots. The end result is not so much a history of twentieth-century music as a history of the twentieth century through its music.--From publisher description. Pt. 1. 1900-1933. The golden age : Strauss, Mahler, and the fin de siècle Doctor Faust : Schoenberg, Debussy, and atonality Dance of the earth : the Rite, the folk, le jazz Invisible men : American composers from Ives to Ellington Apparition from the woods : the loneliness of Jean Sibelius City of nets : Berlin in the twenties pt. 2. 1933-1945. The art of fear : music in Stalin's Russia Music for all : music in FDR's America Death fugue : music in Hitler's Germany pt. 3. 1945-2000. Zero hour : the U.S. army and German music, 1945-1949 Brave new world : the Cold War and the avant-garde of the fifties "Grimes! Grimes!" : the passion of Benjamin Britten Zion Park : Messiaen, Ligeti, and the avant-garde of the sixties Beethoven was wrong : bop, rock, and the minimalists Sunken cathedrals : music at century's end.