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Title: The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
ISBN: 143320794X
Author:
Alex Ross
Publicate Date: 2007-12-01
Publish: 2007-12-01
List Price: $44.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: MP3 CD
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $28.32
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $22.99
Amazon Merchant Price: $34.16
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| Customer Review: |
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1: 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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2: 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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3: 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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4: 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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5: A Fine Summary
Writing about music is hard. Over the years, musicians have developed systems of notation for music and yet many musicians have a hard time looking at a sheet of notes and hearing the music. Written words are even more difficult to transform into sound, let alone understanding. We may know what an escape tone is, but we can't always recognize it in listening. All this is by way of saying that even though "The Rest is Noise" is an excellent history of music of the twentieth century, it is no substitute for listening.
The book is primarily about classical music written in the twentieth century. It is organized temporally and then geographically, but the author necessarily jumps around a bit to develop his themes. One of the main themes seems to be the development of atonal music and then the evolution of that music into more current styles. The author will often try to describe a piece talking about its tonality and modulation. Even those trained in music theory may find it difficult to transform the words into an understanding of the nature of the music itself. This is not to suggest that the author is not an interesting writer. His style is sprightly, and surprisingly, for some of the technical discussions, quite interesting. It's no wonder he won a MacArthur award.
The history consists of detailed discussions of the lives of some of the century's great classical composers linked together by stories about lesser composers and general movements, reflecting his original articles on the composers, which appeared in the New Yorker magazine. Although one might quibble that some important figures haven't gotten enough page space, Ross's emphasis seems to be about right, with a few exceptions. One area the author scants is American neo-romantic composers. At the same time the author does not focus on orchestras or audiences, with the result that one would never know from the book that many twentieth century listeners seemed to prefer to listen to more tonal music then that on which the author focuses. Similarly, while the author does occasionally explore what happened in non-classical music before the end of World War II, like the influence of the gamelan or jazz, little of the century's popular music before 1945 is explored.
Ross recognizes that words alone cannot tell the story of twentieth century music and includes a list of thirty recommended recordings. No one should believe that hearing just these recordings will give the listener a full understanding of what happened in classical music in the last century. Instead, I can see that a person wishing to understand the direction of twentieth century music can keep this book at hand, and devote a lifetime to listening to the music that it discusses.
Some critics have complained that the content is too trivial or too difficult. On the other hand, a professor of early music I know, who has little experience with twentieth century music, said this was a fine introduction. I think that's a good summary.
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