<![CDATA[The Rest Is Noise]]>

false <![CDATA[The Rest Is Noise]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255584185m/2786094.jpg 392563 15 The scandal over modern music has not died down. While paintings by Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock sell for a hundred million dollars or more, shocking musical works from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring onward still send ripples of unease through audiences. At the same time, 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. Alex Ross, the brilliant music critic for The New Yorker, shines a bright light on this secret world, and shows how it has pervaded every corner of twentieth century life. 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. Whether they have charmed audiences with the purest beauty or battered them with the purest noise, composers have always been exuberantly of the present, defying the stereotype of classical music as a dying art. Ross, in this sweeping and dramatic narrative, takes us 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. In the tradition of Simon Schama’s The Embarrassment of Riches and Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club, the end result is not so much a history of twentieth-century music as a history of the twentieth century through its music. 2373496 book 16 10 2007 The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century total:728|5:308|4:316|3:83|2:14|1:8| 728 3084 2113 206 4 5 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 01 19:47:32 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 18 06:18:29 -0800 2008 serious music to not necessarily take everything that the author is saying at face ...more...]]> 5 4 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat Dec 29 07:43:03 -0800 2007 Sat Dec 29 07:52:02 -0800 2007 the new yorker. he attends a concert more than once if possible, with the score and without, in order to both understand the music and ...more...]]> 4 4 false false Mon Jan 28 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 18 06:35:03 -0800 2007 Mon Jan 28 20:56:23 -0800 2008
Saying that this is ...more...]]> 4 2 false false Thu Dec 04 05:28:21 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 05 09:32:10 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 2 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Jan 05 16:31:41 -0800 2008 Sat Jan 05 16:46:01 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 2 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Dec 20 07:57:12 -0800 2007 Thu Jan 17 07:13:06 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Mar 31 10:08:52 -0700 2009 Fri May 22 11:47:38 -0700 2009 http://www.therestisniose.com....more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu Nov 06 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Sep 13 07:39:38 -0700 2008 Thu Nov 06 15:55:31 -0800 2008
Beginning with Mahler and Richard Strauss, Ross brings the century's greatest composers and their works to life. The book is part musical criticism, part history, telling the major events of the Twentieth Century through the accompanying soun...more...]]> 5 1 false false Sun Apr 19 16:02:51 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 26 12:30:12 -0700 2008 Sun Apr 19 16:02:51 -0700 2009 The New Yorker. This history of 20th-century art music is quite a feat: how to make some of the world's most difficult music accessible and understandable to the average music fan?

Really, even though Ross' ability to describe ...more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Mar 18 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Mar 22 14:17:48 -0700 2008 Wed Mar 26 18:52:46 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu May 08 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Oct 30 10:45:15 -0700 2007 Thu May 08 08:23:19 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat Dec 15 21:48:56 -0800 2007 Sat Dec 15 21:49:00 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Mar 07 10:16:10 -0800 2008 Thu Mar 13 17:23:05 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Wed Feb 13 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Feb 05 07:16:49 -0800 2008 Wed Feb 13 07:54:09 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Dec 02 10:21:00 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 02 10:21:19 -0800 2008
A glut of information, generously larded through with singular anecdotes and quotes, surrounded by the obvious and intense love for the subject felt by Alex Ross.

In som...more...]]> 2 0 false false Sat May 30 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 10 20:01:31 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 10 20:04:12 -0700 2009 The Rest is Noise is a more or less chronological narrative of 20th century classical music, beginning with Richard Strauss and more or less ending with John Adams. Initially culled from Ross’ various New Yorker essays, concert reviews, and liner notes, Ross has done a nice job of se...more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Jul 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 09 21:08:07 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 09 21:19:03 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Apr 29 14:18:19 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 29 14:31:05 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Apr 20 05:13:55 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 20 05:21:31 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Apr 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 15 07:14:30 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 15 07:17:04 -0700 2009 Civilisation, the great art history book (and TV series) of my youth.

The sections on music under Stalin and Hit...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=2786094