Customer Reviews
Musical and historic, magic - By: Mr. Ivor Hibbitt, 14 Jun 2008 
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A communal review for the Cote d'Azure Men's book group of
The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross
Written for the book group by Sidney Freedman & Barry Hibbitt
Music, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is the art of combining sound, voices & instruments to achieve beauty, an expression of emotion. Shakespeare's said it more succinctlyin Twelfth Night: "if music be the food of love play on."
Many people listen to it for pleasure, whether it be the might of a major orchestra, the wall- to -wall modern or rap music, or for merely a relaxing hour or so while meditating on the meaning of life. A concerto can alter moods, stimulate the senses, hypnotise & encourage soldiers & citizens alike to follow The Flag,.
The Rest is Noise is a scholarly commentary on music allied to historyin the twentieth century, from Bruckner to The Beatles; Debussy to Duke Ellington, & covers the lives & works of nearly every musician of notein that century
The group read this book by the music critic of The New Yorker. Most members agreed that it was a good choice. It is up- to- date & many found it enlightening. It opened up a new world of music previously unknown, which they now feel inspired to explore further. Like all books on music it suffers from the disadvantage that one does not hear the music on turning the pages, rather like a programme note at a concert where no music is actually played. However, Alex Ross has to some extent remedied the problem by setting up a web site (www.therestisnoise.com), on which examples of the music he discusses can be found
It was suggested that greater insight into the musical revolution of the 20th century could be found elsewhere. Leonard Bernstein's lecture at Harvardin 1973 under the title of `The Unanswered Question' is one example and, despite being writtenin the 1930s, Constant Lambert's book Music Ho! is still as good a guide as any, because many of the truly radical changesin music occurred before World War I, when Debussy broke away from the rhetoric of German Romantic music, introducing a style of composition which required its audience to listen with their nerves rather than their minds.
Egon Wellesz, a notable composer of atonal music, gave a somewhat similar answer when asked why for so many listeners modern music was 'a terrible noise', saying that they were listening with the wrong ears! Our attempt to distinguish music from noise led nowhere. At least one member of the group found no problem at allin listening to atonal music. There followed a discussion on why others found it so difficult to assimilate. Could it be that the human ear is attuned to tonality by overtones or harmonics or is it simply the case that we get used to certain sounds?
Our psychologist pointed out that very little is known about the wayin which the human ear assimilates music. He knew of only two works that deal with the subject Some earphones, for example, seem to reproduce recorded sound very clearly, but only because the ear supplies the bass tones which are missing
. We all agreed that Ross was very interesting on music both under Stalin & Hitler. There was less agreement on the importance he gives to the operas of Benjamin Britten, although it was recollected that Rostropovich said the 20th century had seen four great composers, of whom three were Russian & the other was Benjamin Britten.'
In a sense the book is more a guide to the icons, their compositions, what drove them to create works of genius & the relationship between classical, modern, rock'n roll & jazz All methods feed off each other. All are meant to entertain with the exception of dirges, requiems & the like, i.e. music for the formal occasion.
We can hear the soulful strings, the urgent trumpets & the rolling of the drums & we can visualise the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin feathering the strings & Jacqueline Du Pre playing Elgar's concerto for celloin E Minor with a passion that overwhelms the senses.
Music of the past fifty years invokes memories for many, from the opening explosion of music that burst upon the worldin Star Wars back to the frenzied Rock Around The Clock of Bill Haley & the Comets.
It must be said that, on first reading, one or two members struggled with the book before appreciation set in.. It is a history of one hundred years of music, a compendium that combines historic events with the music of the day. Ross explains the creation & ideas that gave birth to many of the world's most loved works.
He spent fifteen years on this book. Some of his methods may be a bit technical for the average reader, yet seldom has this art form been word paintedin better colours.
His scope is vast, from Richard Strauss & Gustav Mahler at the debut of Salomein Grazin 1906 to the drum banging battle cries of the two world wars, Shostakovich's patriotic Leningrad & that famous war tribute to Russia that angered Stalin because it was not patriotic enough. Nostalgia; The Warsaw Concerto, The Star-Spangled Banner t he Vietnam peace peons, We will Overcome, then Rock `n Roll era, Let's Twist Again, the modern operas where Ross emphasis the works of Benjamin Britten,in Peter Grimes & Billy Budd operas that spell out an allegiance to a then persecuted section of society.
Within the brotherhood of men- not many women- great names pass by like leavesin the wind, visible one moment & then gone, blown away, but leaving behind the subtle rustling sound of greatness.
Here is the naïve Richard Strauss, rejuvenated for a time & thinking the Nazis are his friends. Finally disillusioned when his daughter-in-law's passport is stamped Sara, the German title given to female Jews. His genius overrides, it seems, his compassion & he works on as millions diein The Holocaust. Many, many fellow musicians playin concentration camps for the death dealing SS, not for their supper but for their lives
Alex Ross has written a splendid book. Those who like music but do not know how or why it was written will find a new world to explore & possibly new sounds of music to enjoy. His superb website is a concert hall, just a few clicks away on the computer, to discover a veritable minefield of musical information. Bravo, Mr Ross, Bravo. END
unlikely to help you with that cd storage problem... - By: disturbedchinchilla, 23 May 2008 Given that whole books could be written about virtually every single composer Alex Ross mentionsin this mammoth survey, you'd be forgiven for thinking that 'The Rest is Noise' would be heavy on filler & light on critical insight. Whilst it's fair to say that as the musical world diversifies post-1950, Ross spends less & less time looking at the work of individual composers - this should take nothing away from an astounding work of scholarship.
Like any critic, Ross clearly has his own tastes & prejudices - composition to him is at its best when it addresses a popular audience. It's therefore unsurprising that he devotes more pages to composers such as Mahler, Strauss, Stravinksy, Sibelius & Britten over the 20th century's kookier figures. However, Ross is not simply bolstering the canon - Cage, Feldman, La Monte Young & Harry Partch are all given warm appraisals, even though none of them have been absorbed into the contemporary repertory.
Ross is gifted with a both a keen analytical ear (and eye) & a great generosity of spirit. Whilst he explores the darker totalitarian affiliations of composers such as Strauss, Webern, Orff & Shostakovich, he redeems them all from the blunt considerations of popular myth. In fact the only figurein the whole book who is subject to undisguised contempt is Pierre Boulez. In Ross' account he comes across as an arrogant, two-faced hypocrite - capable of acts of quite atrocious slander towards the very composers who made his work possible (Messiaen, Schoenberg, Stravinsky). It says a lot about Ross, that despite this he still finds time to admire Boulez's 'Marteau sans Maitre'.
Ross writes about music vividly, combining technical analysis with metaphorical explanations - so if, like me, you wouldn't know a tritone if it hit you over the head with a sausage, there's plenty here to provoke & engage. As far as I know, the only book covering similar ground to this is Michael Hall's 'Leaving Home' (written as a companion to the excellent TV series). Hall's book is definitely worth tracking down, even if it is sometimes a little technically abstruse its approach.
Ross' historical approach is enriching & rewarding - this is a rigorously researched book with a deeply humane tone- I don't expect to come across a better work of non-fiction this year.
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 modernityin 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 soundin 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 heardin 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 all.
What would make his survey really 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 all interestedin 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 centuryin a performance of Strauss's Salomein Grazin 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 really did attend is not known - but Ross's point may be thatin some sense he is therein spirit - or the new Germany is gestatingin 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 laterin 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 harmin that but I think there was scope for Ross to go further and, just for oncein 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 themin the eyes of many music lovers. And the condescending attitude towards the listener shown by nearly all influenced by Darmstadt was a continuing cursein 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 & contemplatein 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 called 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!!
