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Title: The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
ISBN: 0374249393
Author:
Alex Ross
Publicate Date: 2007-10-16
Publish: 2007-10-16
List Price: $30.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $19.77
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $14.52
Amazon Merchant Price: $19.80
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Not what I was expecting
I was expecting a book that would explain more about 20th century [classical] *music*, but instead this book is mainly biography mixed with a bit of history. If you don't already have a strong background in music theory you will be lost; even if you have a strong background in pre-20th century music you will not learn much about 20th century music here. The book was a big disappointment in that respect.
The snippet from the Amazon.com review sums it up: "The second movement, by contrast, is a hallucinatory Scherzo...[t]he movement ends in a fearsome sequence of four-note figures, which are made up of fourths separated by a tritone...." If you don't know what "Scherzo", "fourths", or "tritones" are, this book will not explain them to you.
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2: A tough mountain to climb
I'm learning a lot about 20th-century music from The Rest is Noise, but it's a tough read. The book is clearly well researched, however, in an effort to cite sources, the author disrupts the narrative flow. Consider the following sentence:
"Strauss sketched a choral work based on Goethe's text, and, as Jackson discovered, some of that material went into Metamorphosen."
"Jackson" here is Timothy Jackson, a researcher mentioned in an earlier paragraph. Inline citations like this are peppered throughout the book, making it very difficult to focus on the story at hand. I think it would have been better if these citations were in the form of endnotes.
The book takes a detached, scholarly tone throughout. Nonetheless, it is a very informative and thorough review of 20th century classical music, and I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.
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3: A review of 20th Century music for the tutored and untutored
I found this book immensely edifying. I have no musical training but have an eclectic interest in music. This book is written in a very readable manner without reducing its scholarly value. I found in it some things I did know and much with which I was unfamiliar. It has led me to listen to music of some 20th century composers with whom I was less familiar or not at all familiar. I would highly recommend this work for all persons, scholared or unscholared, who have an interest in the history, present, and future of the classical music genre.
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4: don't waste your time
If you have to write a paper on this so-called music, this book might be useful, but other than that the author tries to find meaning when there is nothing there to find. The "music" he writes about is painful to the ears, the book is painful to the eyes.
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5: Superb company as you listen to 20th century art music
In non-fiction, I look for incisive ideas, readable style, the hooks of interesting storytelling. This book has all that, plus subject matter that is dear to my heart: the ambitions, innovations, and personal histories of great music-makers. Follow along with music discussed in the book and you've got a gesamtkunstwerk of spectacular proportions.
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