The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
by Alex Ross
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alex RossEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-10-14
ISBN: 0312427719
Number of pages: 704
Publisher: Picador
Book Reviews of The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
Book Review: Greg Lazarev
Summary: 5 Stars
It is difficult to write a book about music without supplementary music CDs. It is even harder if the subject of the book is music of 20-th century, and the book is quite comprehensive (704 pages). Nevertheless, I read The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century with great interest in relatively short time. The style is lucid even for a layman like me. The book has received a lot of critical acclaim: it won a National Book Critics Circle, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
The book consists of three Parts. Part I (1900 - 1933) starts at the turn of the 20-th century with culmination of the Romantic tradition (Mahler, Strauss, and early Schoenberg). Ross shows how its majestic, apparently invincible structure starts to crumble under multiple influences: Debussy's impressionist movement, the rhythms of Stravinsky ("Rite of the Spring"), the impact of jazz (Gershwin, Milhaud, Ravel), and most of all by the break with tonality (Second Viennese School: Schoenberg, Berg, Webern). ('Lonely' Sibelius does not fit nicely into this scheme). Part II (1933-1945) continues with music in a politically charged time: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia (Shostakovich), and FDR America (Copland). In Part III (1945-2000) we are witness to multiple movements: the culmination of atonality (Boulez and Darmstadt School), the further break with tradition (Cage, Stockhausen), islands of tonality (Britten, Shostakovich), minimalism (Riley, Glass, Reich) and the post-romantic tradition in Eastern Europe (Schnittke, Pärt, Lutoslawski).
This brief synopsis does not do the book justice. The author, Alex Ross, is a well known music critic, whose articles appear regularly in The New Yorker. The book not only provides a broad panorama of music of 20-th century, but it also goes into the atmosphere behind the changes in musical style. The biographies of well known (and not so well known) composers together with analysis of their essential works are provided. You may feel the author's passion: more pages are devoted to music that is closer it to author's taste (e.g. Berg, Britten, Adams). You also may feel (am I imagining this?) the author's confusion in the direction music took after the World War II. But "Der Zeit Ihre Kunst" (any particular age has its own art), and Alex Ross does an excellent job showing the impact of new music (Cage, etc.) on all contemporary music, including the composers that maintain tonality in their music (Schnittke, Adams, Ades, etc.).
Personally speaking, In music I am an unrepentant lover of the late romantics' (Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss), and their followers (Elgar, Shostakovich). I am quite interested in contemporary music as long as it is primarily tonal (Britten, Schnittke, minimalism, etc.). Pure atonal music does not make an emotional impact on me (there are few exceptions; Webern is one of them). Perhaps because I am not a music professional, I am in no position to appreciate the honesty, rigor and mathematical beauty of serial musical compositions.
There were three items on my agenda before I've started reading "The Rest is Noise":
a) Discover composers who wrote in the first half of the 20-th century who were previously unknown to me. Particularly the late Romantics.
b) See whether the book may generate a spark for listening to and the appreciation of pure atonal compositions.
c) The same as the first item but for the second half of the century and without romantic constraints. Anything goes as long as the framework is primarily tonal.
Answers to first two items were primarily negative. I found some pieces of music from the first half of 20-th century that I've added to my queue ("Der Ferne Klang" by Schreker, Complete "Lyric Suite" by Berg, "Symphony #1" by Popov, some Stravinsky works), but overall there were surprisingly few. Additionally, there was no change in my attitude towards atonal music. The more I read, the less I understood the almost total prevalence of atonal music on the West from the mid 40's through the middle 70's. (Apparently, according to Alex Ross, it is still the same in today's Germany). I realize that it may be a reaction to the affinity of Hitler's regime with Romantic music in general and with Wagner in particular; denazification was quite instrumental in this process. But to such degree and for so long? This is above me.
The answer for the third item was definitely positive, and it has fully justified the negative response to the first two questions. There are few composers completely unknown to me (Kurtag), but there are MANY works that I've put in my queue and plan to listen in the near future. Here is a partial list:
Messiaen - "Des Canyons aux Etoiles"
Gubaidulina - "Offertorium"
Pärt - "Credo", "Für Alina"
Berio - "Sinfonia"
Ligetti - "Horn Trio"
Kurtag - "Stele"
Adams - "Nixon in China" (full opera)
Finally, the unexpected bonus. The late Thomas Mann novel "Doctor Faustus. The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn" (1947) (Doctor Faustus (Everyman's Library)) is mentioned in "Rest is Noise" multiple times. The history of the fictional composer Adrian Leverkühn can be viewed as a microcosm of the intellectual and musical history of Europe (particularly Germany) in the first half of the 20th century. The novel has had a tremendous impact on many young composers, and Alex Ross found it to be the great literary compliment in his discussion of music of 20th century. Thomas Mann is the most musical writer I know. I read most of his books (including "Doctor Faustus") and they had a very strong impression on me at the time. But this was a LONG time ago. It seems like the right time to reread and rethink this novel again. The rediscovery continues!
Summary of The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism
A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year
Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007
Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007
A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007
In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, 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 up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.
A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007
In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, 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 up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.
Anyone who has ever gamely tried and failed to absorb, enjoy, and--especially--understand the complex works of Schoenberg, Mahler, Strauss, or even Philip Glass will allow themselves a wry smile reading New Yorker music critic Alex Ross's outstanding The Rest Is Noise. Not only does Ross manage to give historical, biographical, and social context to 20th-century pieces both major and minor, he brings the scores alive in language that's accessible and dramatic. Take Ross's description of Schoenberg's Second Quartet, "in which he hesitates at a crossroads, contemplating various paths forming in front of him. The first movement, written the previous year, still uses a fairly conventional late-Romantic language. The second movement, by contrast, is a hallucinatory Scherzo, unlike any other music at the time. It contains fragments of the folk song 'Ach, du lieber Augustin'--the same tune that held Freudian significance for Mahler. For Schoenberg, the song seems to represent a bygone world disintegrating; the crucial line is 'Alles ist hin' (all is lost). The movement ends in a fearsome sequence of four-note figures, which are made up of fourths separated by a tritone. In them may be discerned traces of the bifurcated scale that begins Salome. But there is no longer a sense of tonalities colliding. Instead, the very concept of a chord is dissolving into a matrix of intervals." Armed with such a detailed aural roadmap, even a troglodyte--or a heavy metal fan--can explore these pivotal works anew. But it's not all crashing cymbals, honking tubas, and somber Germans stroking their chins. Ross also presents the human dramas (affairs, wars, etc.) behind these sweeping compositions while managing, against the odds, to discuss C-major triads, pentatonic scales, and B-flat dominant sevenths without making our eyes glaze over. And he draws a direct link between the Beatles and Sibelius. It's no surprise that the New York Times named The Rest Is Noise one of the 10 Best Books of 2007. Music nerds have found their most articulate valedictorian. --Kim Hughes
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