The Rest is Noise : Listening to the Twentieth Century

Alex Ross
The Rest is Noise :  Listening to the Twentieth Century

The Rest is Noise : Listening to the Twentieth Century
ISBN: 9781841154763
Publication Date: 1 May 2009

In 'The Rest is Noise', Alex Ross, music critic of the New Yorker, gives us a riveting tour of the wild landscape of twentieth-century classical music: portraits of individuals, cultures, and nations reveal the predicament of the composer in a noisy, chaotic century. Taking as his starting point a production of Richard Strauss's Salome, conducted by the composer on 16 May 1906 with Puccini, Schoenberg, Berg and Adolf Hitler seated in the stalls, Ross suggests how this evening can be considered the century's musical watershed rather the riotous premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring seven years later. Ross goes on to explore the mythology of modernism, Sibelius and the music of small countries, Kurt Weill, the music of the Third Reich, Britten, Boulez and the post-war avant-garde, and interactions between minimalist composers and rock bands in the sixties and seventies. About The Author Alex Ross is music critic of the New Yorker magazine. He was born in Washington, DC and studied English literature and music at Harvard College. He first wrote music criticism for the New Rebuplic and for Fanfare. He has also written articles on film and television for the Times Sunday Arts and Leisure section. He has also contributed to Lingua Franca, Transition, BBC Music Magazine, Slate, Feed, Spin, and the forthcoming new edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.