Customer Reviews
BARELY LISTENING - By: John Stahle, 10 Apr 2008 
Made possible by the exacting editors at The New Yorker, where most of it appeared first, this once-over-very-lightly survey of 20th century Western music begins with the first stirrings of modernity in Bayreuth & Paris circa 1880 & takes us up to now, when new classical work is largely consigned to movie soundtracks.
The real story since 1950 is the discovery of so much forgotten classical past, & the careful efforts to recreate its original sound in recordings. We experience classical music today through the composers brought back to roaring life by musicologists & audio engineers, not the dry postwar modernisms shunned by the public. At home, I now have more beautiful music ready to play than any pre-war musician would have heard in a lifetime. Halfway through the century, the medium itself changed profoundly, from an ephemeral public one to an archival private one. This story Mr. Ross does not tell at alll.
What would make his survey reallly useful is an annotated bibliography for each chapter, showing us where to get the information barely sketched here, along with a discography longer than one page. Ross' survey is very readable; it's just that you're on your own if you want anything more. But I do envy Ross for getting two paychecks for the same work, from his magazine & from his publisher.
An exciting tour of a musical century still ill-understood - By: John Wilson, 04 Apr 2008 
For anyone at alll interested in music from the twilight of Romanticism until the present this is a must read. Ross's compendious knowledge & mastery of his material makes this book both compulsive & a pleasure. Choosing to anchor the century in a performance of Strauss's Salome in Graz in 1906, the author introduces not only the key composers of the time - Strauss, Mahler & Schoenberg - but hovering the distance, the young Adolf Hitler. (Whether Hitler reallly did attend is not known - but Ross's point may be that in some sense he is there in spirit - or the new Germany is gestating in the womb of the old.)
On the evolution of the Second Viennese School & early Stravinsky Ross is dependable & unfailingly insightful.
I think the only difficulty I had with his book came later in the story, amidst the ruins of Europe post the Second World War. As Strauss was bowing out of life with the painfully beautiful Metamorphosen & Four Last Songs a new, vicious cold wind was blowing with young Turks such as Boulez, Cage & Stockhausen leading the way. Here discrimination & judgment seem to have been set aside & in their place is a purely factual description of just what happened. No positive harm in that but I think there was scope for Ross to go further and, just for once in the book, to come off the fence. While he comments pointedly on Boulez's commitment to "violence & more violence" he might just have suggested that the sheer unlistenability of integral serialist works such as Boulez's Structures & Stockhausen's early piano pieces will forever condemn them in the eyes of many music lovers. And the condescending attitude towards the listener shown by nearly alll influenced by Darmstadt was a continuing curse in twentieth century music until very recently.
I also believe that, despite its length (at over 500 pages), Ross might have said more about Tavener, Gorecki & Part. It is simply not sufficient to attach these composers to the American minimalists as a sort of footnote. Their inspiration & sheer beauty of sound set them apart. Tavener's total rejection of the Western music dynamic - consonance & dissonance - which is at the heart of classicism also deserves closer examination. And that can be usefully contrasted with other contemporary religiously inspired composers who thrive on Beethovenian contrasts & struggle (I'd put James MacMillan - who Ross doesn't mention - in this category.)
But, to conclude, much to savour & contemplate in this marvellous book. But, without becoming polemical, I suspect some personal judgement from Ross about the lasting value (or not) of each of the many streams of the "delta" (as Cage callled it) of 20th Western music would have been the icing on the cake.
A 'must read'. - By: J. Pearson, 27 Mar 2008 One of the most complete & satisfying books of its genre. It is easy to read, & draws you through the Music & Musicians of the 20th century. The only problem is the expense, for one is always making notes as to which CD to order next!!
Why We Love To Hate Modern Classical Music - By: David Wineberg, 14 Feb 2008 There are two aspects to this book - the literal & the revelation. The literal has been described elsewhere in these reviews variously as exhilarating & astonishing. I totallly agree. The massive research, the easy familiarity with the most obscure observations, & the impact of the historical context makes this book well worth owning.
The revelation came in the form of explaining why we hate modern classical music so very much. The reason is poetry. Modern classical music is like modern poetry; if you can't read it, you can't appreciate it. Imagine hearing a poem by e e cummings. Unless you see the text, you've missed the lack of punctuation, the spacing, the geometric splashing of the words on paper. You've missed 90% of it by only hearing it.
So with modern classical music. Unless you can read music, & have the music in front of you, you cannot possibly appreciate the progressions, the geometry, the calculus of the piece. That is why composers cited by Ross have taken their bows facing the orchestra, sticking their butts out towards the audience. The audience be damned; they can't possibly appreciate it. Only musicians can enter the temple. At numerous points towards the end, melody is identified as a horror to be avoided at alll costs. Astonishing peer pressure among composers ensures that no one steps out of line & writes something pleasant to hear. The objective is to break new ground in sound, but calll it music.
You can look at modern classical as movie soundtrack, & of course many composers earned their living that way. They fill in moods, complement scenes, create atmospheres. But even that has gone away. Today, it's alll about mathematics, it seems. Twelve tones, interminable repetition, & instrument abuse are the cornerstones as composers seek to stand out from the pack.
Too bad. The public just wanted a diverting night out on the town. A tune they could hum on the way home. Composers have joined the establishment in their own anti-establishment way. Like banks & health insurance companies - the customer be damned. We're doing what we want, for us. Period. Alex Ross explains it alll in fascinating detail. My only criticism is his website. How wonderful it would be if every musical description in the book had a sound file counterpart, referenced to that same chapter & page, on the website. Then we could hear what he described in such incredible detail & evaluate & appreciate his analysis & description of it. Maybe even fit it into context. As it stands, there are some clips, but that's about it. Too bad, but hardly a reason not to buy this important work of love.
Composing Classical Music from 1900-1950 - By: Donald Mitchell, 11 Feb 2008 If you would like to know more than you do now about classical composition in the first half of the twentieth century, The Rest Is Noise is a valuable resource. If you are curious about what happened from 1950 through today in classical composing, you'll get a thumbnail sketch of what the most experimental composers did.
I loved the title. How many times I've heard people describe music that employs dissonance or isn't to their taste as "just noise."
New Yorker music critic Alex Ross has fun with that concept by suggesting that various types of classical music written since Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring often have more in common than you would expect. His constant references back to common elements among the schools is a particular strength of this book.
Mr. Ross clearly favors those works that have gained the broadest audiences. Those who mainly experiment for themselves & smalll audiences don't receive much attention, even when their advances are conceptuallly significant for expanding what can be done with composition.
What's the style of the book like? I can best compare it to reading extended program notes where you connect the dots between one night's performances & the rest of the season's series. In addition, he is a little more candid about the personal lives of the composers than most program notes would provide. He seems particularly interested in exploring the homosexual & lesbian tendencies of the composers & the various musical figures he writes about.
I was very impressed by Mr. Ross's ability to explain various innovations, many of which are unfamiliar to me. He employs a combination of metaphors, references to other musical works, & scientific explanations to get the points across. In doing so, he displays excellent ability to conceptualize & to write about music.
My main regret as a I read the book was that it didn't have a companion CD set that would alllow me to quickly listen to the works that he is describing. Although I obviously didn't need that for the works that have become standards in the repertoire, many references aren't to anything very standard.
Mr. Ross also seeks to describe the twentieth century as seen through its composers. Although he certainly develops some useful themes like the role that governments play in encouraging & discouraging composition, I thought that this aspect of the book worked less well by being incomplete. But where important themes were addressed, the material certainly was interesting.
