The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

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The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

4.19 of 5 stars 4.19 · rating details · 3,906 ratings · 440 reviews

The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century is a voyage into the labyrinth of modern music, which remains an obscure world for most people. 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...more

Hardcover, 640 pages

Published October 16th 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published January 1st 2007)

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Jun 03, 2013 Cheryl rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Alex Ross has written an encyclopedic narrative of twentieth century music with interesting biographies of principal composers, dramatic social and political changes on the world stage, and technological advances influencing how we hear the notes today.

The reader is directed to a website for a free audio companion to enhance the lyrical text. A glossary of musical terms is a supplement on another site, and opportunities to add to your collection are ample to fill a library here or in the Cloud....more Alex Ross has written an encyclopedic narrative of twentieth century music with interesting biographies of principal composers, dramatic social and political changes on the world stage, and technological advances influencing how we hear the notes today.

The reader is directed to a website for a free audio companion to enhance the lyrical text. A glossary of musical terms is a supplement on another site, and opportunities to add to your collection are ample to fill a library here or in the Cloud.

Focusing on the first two decades of extraordinary change under the auspices of Diaghilev, the impresario of Ballets Russes, let's look at the life and collaboration of the composer Stravinsky, the choreographer Fokine, and the designer Benois.

Stravinsky was born in Russia in 1882. He heard folk songs and dances in the summers on the Polish-Ukrainian border. Although Igor read scores and improvised on the piano at an early age, he came late to composition after his father's death in 1902. He took lessons from Rimsky starting that year, but his exercises were bland and imitative.

The first flashes of genius came as late as 1907 after listening to the blended music of French and Russian sounds. Diaghilev was looking for gifted young composers to stun the Paris audiences with a visual fantasy based on the folk legend of the Firebird. Stravinsky had his chance. He combined Rimsky's tone-semitone scale and made his mark with the beat changing just as the ear gets use to the syncopation.

Stravinsky rises from common to become a phenomenon with the Firebird premiere. Stravinsky met Proust, Gide, Sarah Bernhardt, and all the major composers after the performance. Ravel wrote to everyone he thought would be influenced, "This goes further than Rimsky. Come quickly."

With choreographer Michel Fokine stage full of flowing movement, the antithesis of academic ballet, and designer Alexander Benois' carousels, sleigh bells, and a symphony of the streets, Stravinsky answered with explosions of dissonance and complexity to mimic the modern urban crowd.

Unlike the composers before him, Stavinsky was a man of the world to whom writers, dancers, and painters could relate. He represented a new kind of composer, whose mind had a more earthly focus rather than the metaphysical offerings of the nineteenth century artists.

A break from the Wagnerian past and heard today with young composers who grew up with pop music but incorporate Stavinsky's atonal and complex rhythms in today's Classical music.

Highest Recommendation for knowledge, music references, cultural understanding and entertaining prose.

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Jan 18, 2008 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-about-music

This book took me way too long to read, which is a little strange because I found it very interesting and quite inspiring. I'm tempted to give it five stars, but I'm too much of a dilettante when it comes to cough, serious music to not necessarily take everything that the author is saying at face value. I do have two complaints about the books though, the first is that the author clearly dislikes the one of the few people I probably do count as an actual hero of mine. I don't hold it strongly ag...more This book took me way too long to read, which is a little strange because I found it very interesting and quite inspiring. I'm tempted to give it five stars, but I'm too much of a dilettante when it comes to cough, serious music to not necessarily take everything that the author is saying at face value. I do have two complaints about the books though, the first is that the author clearly dislikes the one of the few people I probably do count as an actual hero of mine. I don't hold it strongly against him that he finds Adorno to (what's the word), not necessarily wrong, but some kind of extremist snob for lack of a better word. Every time Adorno makes an appearance on these pages he comes across like a rapid attack dog of anti-everything except for strict Schoenberg non-mass appeal. Which might be true, I've never really delved into his music writings too deeply, but the picture of him as an enfant terrible is I like a bit of a cartoonish exaggeration.
The second complaint I would have of the book is that it kind of stops short of being a history of 20th century music and kind of peters out around 1976 with Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. A few other composers are talked about and works that they release in the same year, but all talk of the last quarter of the century is treated in a very fragmentary and stilted manner. Maybe there isn't much to talk about, but the style of the book changes in the last fifty pages or so in a way that makes the very end of the book read like a series of notes the author made on a handful of composers and records. In this last section there are also name droppings of pop artists like Radiohead, Sonic Youth and Bjork, which pulls together the history of serious music with pop music, but without doing much more than dropping the names in the swirl of the kind of chaotic finish.
The author also uses the phrase 'moshpit of the mind' which is almost totally inexcusable in the context it's given in, and actually shouldn't be used by anyone. It's moments like that which seem to make the author trying to hard to sound hip, but there isn't anything hip about using the word moshpit, and really the only people who would ever say something like that are someone's dad who heard the word and thinks it's what with it people are saying. I can't hold this against the author too strongly though.
All in all I really enjoyed this book, and it's treatment of pre-World War 2 music especially in Germany was very informative to me. I have a feeling that anyone seriously into modern music will find the book to be missing some of their favorites, or think the book treats certain movements too quickly, but as a general overview of a chaotic century's musical trends this book seems to do it's job just fine.(less)

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Dec 30, 2011 Austen rated it 2 of 5 stars

Ross brings a lot of enthusiasm to the subject of 20th Century classical composition. Unfortunately, that is one of the few highlights here. The book's problems are many. It is probably a little too dense and heavy on music theory for many casual readers, but also too light and uncritical to make waves in a scholarly sense. Books of that sort tend to only succeed when the writing is taut and engaging. But this is too long by at least a third (a whole chapter on Britten, really?). Ross is also in...more

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Dec 29, 2007 Gary rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: cultural creatives, anyone interested in 20th century music / art

alex ross is one of the few remaining music critics for a major american periodical (there used to be many more, but it's a dwindling profession/art), in his case, 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 feel it. and he's young, so his ears aren't burdened with decades of ear wax, "received wisdom," archaic prejudice, etc.

how rare is it to ever find anyone who can write about music!? (an impossible cha...more

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Jan 28, 2008 Tosh rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: the music adventurer and who credit at Amoeba Music

Alex Ross' wonderful trip to the 20th Century via the world of classical music and it's composers. As I mentioned I had very little knowledge of classical music - especially modern. I knew Glass, Reich, Satie, but overall this is pretty much a new world music wise.

Saying that this is also the history of cultural life in the 20th Century. The best chapeters deal with Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia and how they used music -and how it affected the composers of that place and time.

In a distant way...more

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Dec 05, 2008 Bob King rated it 4 of 5 stars

I heard many positive comments on this book, and being a lover of contemporary classical music, finally picked up a used copy. What's unique about the writing is that Ross mixes in just the right amount of historical context to the lively music scene of the past hundred years. You get into the heads of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Strauss and Copland -- just to name a few -- and come to understand that their musical styles were tightly woven into the politics of the time. Schoenberg and his students...more I heard many positive comments on this book, and being a lover of contemporary classical music, finally picked up a used copy. What's unique about the writing is that Ross mixes in just the right amount of historical context to the lively music scene of the past hundred years. You get into the heads of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Strauss and Copland -- just to name a few -- and come to understand that their musical styles were tightly woven into the politics of the time. Schoenberg and his students totally broke with the traditions of tonality in reaction to the decadent 19th century museum culture that romantic classical music had become. We learn about the influence of jazz on classical music (Stravinsky and Copland loved it, and you'll hear shades of jazz in a number of their works.), how Aaron Copland's leftist political stance helped lead him to develop his populist, American style of music, John Cage and his introduction of chance elements to music composition, electronic music and minimalism's return to tonality and "easy listening" after the thorny paths of 12-tone composition. The author's descriptions of various pieces of music are wonderful. My only criticism is how much time he spends explaining various parts of operas. Maybe that's because I don't care much for opera. As you read the book, you'll want to listen to many of the pieces, which are described so enticingly. I found my CD collection growing throughout. Some of the greatest discoveries for me were the music of Alban Berg and Anton Webern, pupils of Arnold Schoenberg, and Sibelius' 5th Symphony. Webern's "funeral march" in his Six Pieces for Large Orchestra is one of the most frightening five minutes of music I've ever heard. The other movements around it show off amazing and unusual orchestral color you've never dreamed of hearing. Then there's the joyful main theme of Sibelius' 5th symphony that just takes your heart away. If nothing else, Ross's book introduced me to some of the finest music I've ever heard. (less)

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Jan 05, 2008 Joe rated it 4 of 5 stars

I began this book almost wholly ignorant of most of its central figures. I knew that "twelve-tone music" was something controversial and supposedly inaccessible, but I didn't know what it was or if I'd ever heard any. So there may be major composers skipped, controversies skirted, opinions presented as fact; I probably wouldn't know.

What I do know is that Alex Ross is a wonderfully passionate music writer, and he did a great job tying the history of 20th century music into the cultures it came f...more

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Jan 17, 2008 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ross, whose articles in the New Yorker I have followed religiously for years, and continue to anticipate with a zeal otherwise reserved for The Wire, delivers a multi-layered and exhaustively researched portrait of a century's music and its reception. His account includes not only a collection of nuanced miniature biographies of composers—both the duly celebrated and the tragically neglected—and sweeping, intertextual analyses of "the music"—from jazz rags and pop songs to symphonic masterworks—...more

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Dec 12, 2012 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, music, all-time-favorites

A stellar tour of 20th century serious music.

I approached this book hoping to learn more about 20th century music from an admirably fluid and entertaining writer. Ross' book exceeded my expectations, opening up whole universes of music I might never have encountered otherwise.

Writing about musical innovation and invention in a way that comes across meaningfully to readers is a massive challenge, particularly if they (like me) only know just a bit about the craft of music. Spotify was an absolute...more A stellar tour of 20th century serious music.

I approached this book hoping to learn more about 20th century music from an admirably fluid and entertaining writer. Ross' book exceeded my expectations, opening up whole universes of music I might never have encountered otherwise.

Writing about musical innovation and invention in a way that comes across meaningfully to readers is a massive challenge, particularly if they (like me) only know just a bit about the craft of music. Spotify was an absolutely essential companion: their catalog is impressively thorough, and it was a revelation to be able to pull up and listen to, say, something by Ruth Crawford Seeger while reading about her work. Ross also set up a website therestisnoise.com (still live) as a worthy companion to the book, which lets him share selections illustrating his narrative.

Ross does a largely impressive job connecting trends in music to twentieth century history (the middle third of the book is mostly concerned with how composers became entangled with or entangled themselves with the nasty politics of totalitarian regimes, and then Cold War orthodoxies).

For a 600 page book trying to contain a global century, Ross' work covers a lot of ground. However, composers outside the European-American orbit do seem to get short shrift, and if you want to learn about music from the last 30 years of the twentieth century, this is not the place to start. Unlike the masterful opening chapters, the last fifty pages seem like a rushed encyclopedic attempt to name-check composers around the globe, but one doesn't learn much about the work of these exotic non-western, sometimes even female specimens. In retrospect, Ross might have been better served to end this book in the 60s, and leave more recent work for another time. The most interesting development of that last section - the erosion of the high barrier between serious and "pop" music - deserved much more elaboration and exploration.

All that said, I loved reading this. I was surprised by how much modern music I was already at least a little familiar with. I never really realized that Bartok, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Sibelius, and Prokofiev all belonged to the most recent century. I also went into the book thinking of 20th century music as mostly forbidding, dissonant "difficult" stuff.

There is plenty of that, no doubt. A sidenote: it's interesting to ponder how acclimated we have become to dissonance and atonality from movie scores; there isn't much in Schoenberg that will really startle somebody who grew up in the 70s watching movies.

I had also forgotten until Ross reminded me that there's a long list of 20th century music - not all "difficult" - I already loved: Debussy, Ravel, Copeland, Satie, and Stravinsky for starters (but also Eno, Gershwin, Ellington and Monk). And he turned me on to sublimely lovely music by people I'd never heard of before.

I look forward to many hours exploring the neglected corners of modern music Ross introduced me to, folks we are really unlikely (for no good reason) to hear on the radio like Berio, Ligeti, Xenakis and Lou Harrison, not to mention folks you've heard of but may not have heard like Cage, Stockhausen and Riley.

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May 22, 2009 Barnaby Thieme rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: music, favorites

This ambitious, thrilling guide to notational music in the twentieth century admirably succeeds in its many goals. Alex Ross, recent recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, is an accomplished music critic of the New Yorker. He maintains one of the most readable blogs on the internet: http://www.therestisniose.com.

In this his first book Ross traces the development of music from Strauss's epoch-inaugurating "Salome" through to the work of John Adams, considering modernism, jazz, neo-classicism,...more This ambitious, thrilling guide to notational music in the twentieth century admirably succeeds in its many goals. Alex Ross, recent recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, is an accomplished music critic of the New Yorker. He maintains one of the most readable blogs on the internet: http://www.therestisniose.com.

In this his first book Ross traces the development of music from Strauss's epoch-inaugurating "Salome" through to the work of John Adams, considering modernism, jazz, neo-classicism, the avant-garde, serialism, experimental music, and minimalism along the way. Special attention is payed to Sibelius, Schoenberg, Britten, Shostakovich, Cage, Reich, and Adams, but no relevant composer goes un-noted. Ross considers nearly every figure I could name, from the infamous (Stravinsky, Ellington) to the obscure (Kagel, Adès ... even Einstuerzende Neubauten gets a mention).

"The Rest is Noise" is a vivid and extraordinarily entertaining retrospective look at the century. Music becomes a template for considering the great social, historical, and psychological currents that defined the period. One of many examples: the fury and sorrow this reader felt learning of the debasement of Shostakovich by petty Soviet bureaucrats gives way to a deeply disquieting sense of unease when Aaron Copland received nearly identical at the hands of the McCarthy subcommittee.

I hoped this book would provide a context for understanding the more bewildering forms of music the last century produced, and it surpassed my high expectations. It does not require a degree in music theory to follow the evolution of chromaticism from Strauss to Stravinsky to Bartok to Schoenberg -- one needs only ears, a half-dozen CDs, and willingness to go on the journey. The rewards are many and profound.

This book is written for the layperson. It contains no musical notation at all, and very little close analysis. Ross's judicious and restrained use of technical terminology is carefully explained. A basic knowledge of the rudiments of theory and some of the broad threads of the history of notational music probably enhance reading this book. Other than that mild disclaimer, I heartily recommend it to anyone with interest in the subject matter. (less)

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Nov 06, 2008 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: music, history

This is a fantastic book for the most part.

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 soundtrack. Both tonal and atonal masters get good coverage, with Schoenberg, Strauss, Stravinsky and Mahler casting the longest shadows.

Ross is the music critic for The New Yorker, and his pithy style carries over qui...more

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Apr 19, 2009 Brooke Shirts rated it 5 of 5 stars

Alex Ross is, in my opinion, one of the better writers for 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 the music and explain its placement and importance in history is stellar, I was frustrated with my unfamiliarity with some of the pieces he describes. Here's a sample, from a description of Schoenberg:

"The music ha...more

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Mar 26, 2008 Jesse rated it 4 of 5 stars

As a music major, I studied 20th century classical music. However, it seemed to be placed at the end of the music history courses as kind of a novelty. The dark plots of the 20th century operas were marveled at. We thought that Harry Partch's 43 note scale was interesting, but never really considered if anything serious was done with it. I have no recollection of learning about any of John Cage's ideas. I'm pretty sure I would have loved Steve Reich's music if I had been exposed to it at that ti...more As a music major, I studied 20th century classical music. However, it seemed to be placed at the end of the music history courses as kind of a novelty. The dark plots of the 20th century operas were marveled at. We thought that Harry Partch's 43 note scale was interesting, but never really considered if anything serious was done with it. I have no recollection of learning about any of John Cage's ideas. I'm pretty sure I would have loved Steve Reich's music if I had been exposed to it at that time. The 20th century music that was usually performed where I studied was either jazz, or neo-classical, or jazzy classical music (Gershwin). So what I left school with was extensive jazz knowledge, but kind of a vague, weird, slightly scared perception of what 20th century classical had to offer. I wasn't really eager to check it out for myself.

So Alex Ross' book was the 20th century classical music course that I wish I had the opportunity to take. He writes beautifully and gives nice historical context for the music he discusses. The 20th century door has been swung wide open for me, and out of it is coming great, relevant, very interesting music. Since reading the book, I've been inspired to check out the Second Viennese School (Shoenberg, Webern, Berg) and the the lineage of serialism. Also the 50's New York avant-garde (John Cage, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown). I had already been interested in these composers after reading "Silence" by Cage about a month ago, but The Rest Is Noise put them into better focus for me. Checking out this music has been very inspiring to my own musical endeavors.

Notable chapters of the book are the ones about music in Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany, it being hard to believe what composers of those countries went through. A sad point that Ross makes is how there seems to be a growing gap between new classical music and the general public. Mahler was a celebrity in his time, causing heads to turn on the street. The average American today probably couldn't name one living composer, except perhaps John Williams (and after listening to Mahler, and the Second Viennese School, I know where everything he wrote came from). But music is a part of society, no doubt. I guess the pop music today is like the folk music of yesterday.
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May 08, 2008 Lawrence A rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, new-york-history, music-arts

This is a truly amazing critical and historical survey of "classical" or "composed" music in the 20th century by an author conversant in both the "high art" of the European composers and their progeny, and the ragtime, jazz, folk, rock, and hip-hop music that informed and informs 20th-century composition throughout the world. Beginning with Wagner and Mahler, the giants of late-19th-century European composition, Ross traces the musicial, social, and political dimensions of those who followed, an...more

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Dec 15, 2007 Andy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Not sure what this book ultimately is - it's neither truly educational nor openly personal in approach. It's somewhere loose and in-between - like a series of magazine articles that each aims simply to be interesting more than anything else, often via flourishes that don't necessarily add up to anything, tasteful though they may be. That said, it's always intelligent and I enjoyed reading it. The outline of the chapters sketches a framework for thinking about 20th century music that's more reaso...more

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Mar 13, 2008 pianogal rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: music

This one vacillates between a 3 and a 4. When Ross talks about listening to the 20th century - he mean the WHOLE thing. Everything from Strauss to the Velvet Underground. He also includes quite a bit of theory behind the myriad of pieces he mentions. I thought it was fine - if a bit overexplanatory - but for the novice music lover who has no idea what a tritone is, this book might prove to be too much. If a comprehensive overview of Mahler to minimalism sounds like more than you can handle, get...more

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Dec 02, 2008 Ben rated it 5 of 5 stars

This ranks with some of the best non-fiction for laymen out there (much of which is written by John McPhee.)

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 some ways it is the chronicle of necessity of the implosion of an art form. In other ways it suggests a crippling hubris in those who imploded it. It is also the story of how technology changed society. It is also the story of...more

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Sep 10, 2012 Shoshana rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult, nonfiction

Ok, so I had been reading this steadily throughout June, got within fifty pages of the end, got distracted, and didn't pick it up again until the day it was due, on which I finished it and simultaneously remembered how great it is.

The Rest is Noise is a gossipy, readable, detailed, utterly enthusiastic, and inspiring intro to a century of modern music. The first time I tried reading it, a few years ago, I had to return it to the library while I was still in the second chapter, because I kept sto...more

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May 10, 2012 Kevin O'Brien rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, music

Art is always in dialog with the time of its creation, so this book is looking at 20th century music. But in saying that, you have to understand that it is so-called "classical" music that the author is looking at. That may be a bad term to use, since there is a technical meaning of classical that refers to a specific music of a time (Mozart and Haydn are classical, Mahler definitely is not), so some people use the term "serious" music instead, but I happen to think that the music of John Coltra...more

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Aug 08, 2011 Juan-Pablo rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In the Preface, Ross writes: "[...]Still, even if history can never tell us exactly what music means, music can tell us something about history. My subtitle is meant literally; this is the twentieth century heard through its music." If you are looking for a History of Music, this book will surely disappoint. However, if you want to read the History of the Twentieth Century through Music, this book is a really enjoyable ride.

This is largely the story of how composers, musicians, and the society...more

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Apr 30, 2011 Andrew rated it 5 of 5 stars

By the last scene of Act I, when the brutish Drum Major forces himself on Marie to the tune of dissonated C-major chords and the strains of “We poor people,” the method of the opera is clear. Strongly dissonant writing suggests the working of abstractions: the cruelty of authority, the relentlessness of fate, the power of economic oppression. Tonal elements represent basic emotions—a mother’s love for her child, a soldier’s lust for flesh, Wozzeck’s jealous rage. The theme contradicts Schoenber...more By the last scene of Act I, when the brutish Drum Major forces himself on Marie to the tune of dissonated C-major chords and the strains of “We poor people,” the method of the opera is clear. Strongly dissonant writing suggests the working of abstractions: the cruelty of authority, the relentlessness of fate, the power of economic oppression. Tonal elements represent basic emotions—a mother’s love for her child, a soldier’s lust for flesh, Wozzeck’s jealous rage. The theme contradicts Schoenberg’s utopian notion that the new language could replace the old. Instead, Berg returns to the method of Mahler and Strauss, for whom the conflict of consonance and dissonance was the forge of the most intense expression. Consonance is all the sweeter in the moment before its annihilation. Dissonance is all the more frightening in contrast to what it destroys. Beauty and terror skirmish, fighting for Wozzeck’s hollow soul.

***

Racking up praise and award nominations upon its release in 2007, Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century is a dense, compelling thesis. Across continents and cultures, Ross examines the nature of musical composition in the 1900’s, looking at the effect music—primarily classical—had on politics, culture, war, and people, and the countering role that a world in flux and at war had on the composition and evolution of music and compositional styles and methods.

Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, presents a wealth of research that dissects musicians, composers and their art, moving linearly through the century, with multiple lenses: from the perspectives of the composers—their personalities, histories, political affiliations, and their private lives; through detailed analysis of the theory and structural composition of specific pieces; filtered through the eyes of politicians, leaders, and common folk as they traverse through economic collapse, wars, social and racial development, and the cultural transitions of art as it moves from European nations to North America, giving birth to new styles and approaches along the way. The synthesis between the two—how music affected the world and the world affected music—is handled beautifully, deftly guiding readers to understand the timelessness of theories outlined in Janet Wolff’s The Social Production of Art, that “Everything we do is located in, and therefore affected by, social structures.” As with any art, no composer works in a vacuum—their work is changed through their interaction with the world, and the world’s interpretation of their work changes their methods of production. The two concepts are forever intertwined, something which Ross goes to great lengths to illustrate in every chapter of this book.

The breadth of information in The Rest is Noise is almost staggering. Never has my training in classical music and theory been more useful than in reading this book. Ross doesn’t shy away from employing detailed musical theory in any of his analyses, and the text is stronger for it. The richness of content, especially in the first two sections (covering the first half of the century, up until the end of the Second World War), offers a certain level of authenticity that often makes the book feel less like a historical tome and more like a hybrid of styles that relies—possibly too much for some readers—upon one’s in-depth knowledge of the theory and techniques at hand more than it does culture and history.

The book is not perfect, however. The third section, detailing the entire second half of the century, feels more disjointed and less investigative than the first two sections. Though the focus throughout the book is on the evolution and impact of predominantly classical music, I would have liked more time devoted to the elements of such composition and how they have been modified and transposed through the growth of specifically North American styles—rock, pop, jazz, experimental, and avant-garde. While classical composers are given their due throughout the book, composers and musicians of more contemporary styles are presented as second-tier players in the grand scheme. This doesn’t tarnish the book’s overall quality, but it’s an unfortunate oversight all the same.

The Rest is Noise is a rich, savoury read. Ross’s analysis is always engaging as he slowly unravels a narrative vein to the century that few would likely have known or given thought to. Like all artists, the musicians and composers of the twentieth century were players and puppets at the same time—installing themselves in social and political circles, invisible or otherwise, while maintaining whatever artistic autonomy they could. Some changed the world, but all were changed by the world.(less)

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Apr 22, 2011 Tony Gleeson rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a remarkable overview of the music of the twentieth century, brimming with insight and an obvious enthusiasm for the subject. Ross-- the music critic for the New Yorker-- accomplishes the difficult task of neither talking down to his audience nor affecting pretentious airs, while taking on the monumental task of presenting the continuum of modern music in the context of world events and social trends. To his credit, he deals with all manner of music of the past century, including stage m...more

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Apr 06, 2011 Adam Jacobson rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: criticism, art-and-music

Everyone has different fantasies about what career they would have chosen if they didn't do what they currently do. For me, I would love to be a New Yorker essayist/critic. I'm not saying that it would use all my talents or would tempermentally suit me--that's why it's a fantasy. It just seems so cool.

Which brings me to this book. Which I absolutely loved (thus the five stars). Roos has a combines a comprehensive knowledge of his subject, 20th century "classical" music in the broadest sense, a t...more

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Oct 27, 2010 lyell bark rated it 4 of 5 stars

good things about this book:

a) learn a lot of kewl things about your favorite 20th c. composers. schoengerg thot of musical notes as a weird physionognomy thing! berg, webern and schoenberg all enlisted for wwi service and here was a cute picture of them all geared up but it's not printed. morton fieldman was a sibelius fan! messiaen was straight laced and boring, in his personal life newayz! stravisky was on the payolla of the cia even tho he didn't know it! the cia also funded and promoted ins...more good things about this book:

a) learn a lot of kewl things about your favorite 20th c. composers. schoengerg thot of musical notes as a weird physionognomy thing! berg, webern and schoenberg all enlisted for wwi service and here was a cute picture of them all geared up but it's not printed. morton fieldman was a sibelius fan! messiaen was straight laced and boring, in his personal life newayz! stravisky was on the payolla of the cia even tho he didn't know it! the cia also funded and promoted institutes and festival for dudes like boulez, cage, and otehr dudes who practiced 12-tone, atonal, experimental music since it was in opposition to [late] romanticism [hitler's favorites, 'natch] + was was looked on with suspicion by the soviets. c00l

b) learn kewl things about composers u don't listen to! copeland didn't write fanfare for teh common man for kitschy stupid beef advertisemtnts! he actually wrote it for "the common man" i.e. the proletariat mass of humanity who were going to get 2 live in social-democratic or communist paradises. haha, jokes on you copeland, now you're associated in the popular imagination with beef commercials, AND we live in a late-capitalist hellhole on a planet that's dying, hohoho.

c) the dude can write well about music, not overly personal response stuff, but not too dry and academic either! altho if you have no musical grounding maybe look up things like "sonata form" and "scherzo" 'and "ostinato" and "triads" maybe...?

bad things about this book:

a) narrative view of hitory sort of smooths things over and is a bit too simplistic and pat. but i guess if you're covering like 10 or 20 major composers in depth in their historical context, their associated aesthetic movements, and lots of lesser known [mostly] dudes in a single 540 page volume, things will get compressed... but your favorite 2nd string associate of the 2nd viennese school may only get a name-check [nikos skalkottas :-( ]

b) the stuff about rock music felt sort of tackd on, but it's like 2 pages out of 500 so it's not that big a deal. also he used the word "achingly" a couple times, which i associate with pitchfork, who are of course the purveyors of all music trite, kitschy, and stupid; please use a different word...

c) his central thesis is a bit obvious and the last chapter is sort of rushed, but he doesn't really have many cannonical figures to work with so to speak, so it's understandable....

overall pretty good book imo if yr interested in 20th c. composed/notational/art-music-in-the-european-tradition/notational music. i can't really see someone being like "damn, time to listen to moses und aron and die soldaten and the galgoitic mass!" but maybe, who knows. the best chapters were imo th ones that stayed focused on one or two figures, or the ppl i knew least about [in my case copeland, he was actually sort of cool >,>] + alex ross has got a nice blog with samples and stuff, and like if you don't know waht an a minor chord sounds like you can literally listen to it on wikipedia, whoa, if you're totally in the dark about that sort of thing. ok(less)

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Jul 16, 2010 Brian rated it 3 of 5 stars

Well, I must commend Alex Ross on a thorough history of the first half of the 20th century. Its insights into and narratives about the Second Viennese school as well as Stalinist Russia are quite detailed and fun to read. He also has what I think is a pretty good blog that continues his advocacy of new music.

I am a little miffed, however. My first critique is of how he handled Benjamin Britten. Granted, my first encounter with Britten was A Death in Venice which is probably the worst way to try...more

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Mar 16, 2010 William Ramsay rated it 4 of 5 stars

This in not a book for everyone. But if you love classical music you will find it a means of widening your horizon. This is the history of 20th century music. We all know Beethoven and Mozart, but how many of us know Reich and Young. Well, we do, actually, because much of what they created as classical forms has morphed into Rock and Pop. Classical music in the 20th century has much to do with composers trying to make a living in the shadow of Beethoven and Mozart and mostly starving in the proc...more

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Jul 09, 2009 T Fool rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed-books

One’s ignorance -- one being the hodge-podge listener of all musics obviously known and rarely rare -- that ignorance smacks right up against this book, which blends interesting tidbits of ‘great man’ biography and historical watersheds with the motivations mysterious and crass whereby putative genius stretches and recombines the old into the what’s not been there before.

The incubation of novelty gets explained in terms both of audience reaction and insider musical techno-language. But even wi...more

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Apr 29, 2009 Patrick Pants rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was at odds when I started reading this book. I felt that when I was in college attempting to become a musician, my interest in 20th century music was minimal. (note: NOT minimalist!) Over the past few years however, my thoughts and ideas on music and shifted more toward the artists represented in this book.

There is an excellent amount of history on composers and even actual pieces in this book. Alex Ross does an amazing job of connecting the dots for readers who do not have as extenseive a m...more

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Apr 20, 2009 Josh rated it 4 of 5 stars

A gigantic survey, with all the weaknesses of surveys: speed, superficiality, and the eventual creation of a vague hum in my head, as if I'd been listening to, rather than just reading about, all these works over the last two weeks, at high volume and through very large headphones. That having been said, the biggest compliment I can think to give Ross's book is that, two weeks ago, I knew nothing about classical music; now I know something and have the desire to learn and listen to much more. So...more

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Apr 15, 2009 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: music

The great charm of this book comes from the way Ross ties together the work, the lives of the composers, and the general trends in history much in the way Kenneth Clark did in Civilisation, the great art history book (and TV series) of my youth.

The sections on music under Stalin and Hitler are particularly dramatic. When politicians decide that serious music is truly important, it turns out that not every artist benefits. Nobody really wants a critic that can have you killed if they don’t like y...more

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Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. From 1992 to 1996 he wrote for the New York Times. His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, was published in 2007 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and became a national bestseller....more

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