Alex Ross - The Rest Is Noise

I didn't mean that he doesn't enjoy electronic music and / or recordings, it just doesn't seem to be his passion -- he loves Stockhausen & enthusiastically writes up 'Gesang der Jünglinge', but there are those writers who try to summon enthusiasm for Xenakis' instrumental writing and don't mention his tape works, and there are those people who think that his tape works are among the most important pieces of music created in the 20th century -- he's in one camp and I'm in the other

he's absolutely right to underline that a recording of classical music is a fake. the first time I heard Ives and Beethoven performed in a hall, you realize you can actually hear all 60-80 individual instruments -- ears capture more information than than any microphone, you can discern far more detail. you also can't ignore the social meaning, the amount of co-operation required for that many people to come together. we listen to recordings so often that it can take effort to even remember that symphonic music was not written for the medium of stereo recording, it suffers horribly. this is not a book about recorded music, or what happened to composers who started dealing with the implications of being able to record sound, this is about people who continued to write in the old style in the 20th century, focusing on the pieces that actually found & entertained larger audiences as opposed to the pieces that gripped and inspired dedicated musicians & music fans.

which is WEIRD for me because I basically consider the whole of popular 20th century classical music an anachronism, I am waiting for the book that does _not_ see a disruption in the narrative but fuses the public expansion of what is considered 'consonance' to the shift to composing with pure sound that was enabled by recordings, from Musique Concréte > Beatles > Modern Folk Electronic / Hip Hop. James Tenney's books come closest to doing this but those are for specialists (though most people on this board I'd count as specialists)

but if this book gets anyone to join in the Messiaen POV / POX thread, I'm happy

& I agree with matinee, I don't hear what's so specifically great about the Tashi version of 'Quartet for the End of Time', it's nice but the Messiaen Edition version on Erato w/ Marcel Couraud is spacier

I need to listen again before I go off, I remember the fast parts are more virtuosic on the Tashi but the two 'Praise' sections weren't anywhere near as slow or eternal, you shouldn't even be able to check your e-mail while listening to them

This sounds interesting but I'll probably wait for it in paperback.

Ross pointed out a link to his popular music taste articles today on his blog and I see now that a little over ten years ago he wrote NYT articles on Caroliner and AMM. Granted, a long time ago, but I'll still buy it as cool, even though neither of those bands is especially my cup of tea, with the exception of early AMM. I also like the fact that he's grouped AMM with "popular music."

any friend of Caroliner is a friend of mine. man, this guy is kinda impossible not to like:

http://www.therestisnoise.com/popular/index.html

Bob Dylan
Radiohead
Björk
The Death of Kurt Cobain
Pavement
Cecil Taylor / Sonic Youth
Kiki and Herb
Academia and Pop
AMM
Caroliner

hey he's on colbert!

Presenting pretty well I'd say. Colbert just asked him to pick one lesson could you take from the entirety of the 20th century and Ross visibly slumped in his chair trying to figure out how to respond to that.

"lesson you could take"

I am loving his book, which is very entertaining and approachable for a layperson like me. One minor gripe - I am waiting for the arrival of Bjork in the final chapter like a fart at the end of a good meal.

The critical pant-wetting starts to come to an end?

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/artsandentertainment/0,,2263630,00.html

"Commenting on Stravinsky's negotiations with Walt Disney and Barnum & Bailey's Circus, Ross hails the United States as 'a marketplace in which absolutely anything can be bought and sold'. At times, his grand narrative paraphrases the messianic imperialism preached by George W Bush. As Ross sees it, Messiaen brings God back to earth during a tour of America's national parks, whose geological radiance he transcribes in From the Canyons to the Stars; Bartok, having migrated from Budapest to Manhattan, plans his Concerto for Orchestra as a 'parting gift to his adopted country - a portrait of democracy in action'. It's a shame that rich America disregarded the offering and left Bartok to die in misery."

The book gets something of a slating on BBC Radio 3 this week, where it is described (not entirely without justification) as "the Donald Rumsfeld view of music history".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/musicmatters/pip/5jl8c/ (link expires 15th May)

"the Donald Rumsfeld view of music history"

Ugh. What does that even mean?

it means fuck all as does this bit from the guardian review:

At times, his grand narrative paraphrases the messianic imperialism preached by George W Bush.

get on your hobbyhorse and ride

The woman in this interview bafflingly accuses Ross of failing to describe the actual music — the difference, she says, in the sounds of Schoenberg and Sibelius. I didn't come away with that at all, sounds like some serious ax-grinding.

This all smacks a bit of Americans have no business writing books about classical music.

This all smacks a bit of Americans have no business writing books abouts classical music.

This all smacks a bit of Americans have no business writing books abouts classical music.

Yeah, I must say, as an objection to that book, those kind of stock responses seem pretty 0_o

bite me England

Is that what you call it.

The woman in this interview bafflingly accuses Ross of failing to describe the actual music

Yeah, that's just flat out bizarre. And I just don't see the relevance of current US foreign policy to Ross's account of racism in "Porgy and Bess". Was there something I missed?

This all smacks a bit of Americans have no business writing books abouts classical music.

Alex Ross to host weekly new music show on Fox News channel confirmed

thanks for that radio link Tim, I love BBC morning radio

very interesting interview & round table. In abstract, Morag Grant (the female critic who's the angriest at Ross' book) has some valid points worth making: Spectralism is underrepresented, all of Germany is summed up by Helmut Lachenmann. This I agree with, but she really takes this personally and comes up with the Donald Rumsfield line. She also thinks he spends too much time on biography, the seamy details, and there's not enough musicological advocation -- but c'mon _that's the reason this book is being read outside of musicological circles_. You can sense panic from certain quarters as they realize that this is the only book on 20th century that many people will ever read, and they're taking it personally that this book has perhaps a populist agenda, emphasizing Strauss / Sibelius / Copland / John Adams while openly dismissing pivotal figures like Boulez & spending next to no time on Webern & Varèse

About the nationalism, Ross' book is very political and so I'm not surprised people have an allergic reaction to any trace of US myopia, but I didn't see it. the BBC shouldn't be complaining about the UK being underrepresented with that novel-length love letter to Britten in the middle & the pro-Thomas Adès sentiment.

& most books with a sweep this wide make a point of keeping the recent history unsettled, I was surprised Grisey & Lachenmann even got their one paragraph each, and sort of shocked to see him briefly advocate two of their most challenging pieces (ok I will link to my favorite recordings of each here and here -- got to be those recordings, especially with the Grisey)

seeing as it probably is the only book many people will ever read on 20th classical I'm happy to read even the most savage rejoinders. I loved the book, but seriously in most cases my level of my enthusiasm for any composer mentioned was in inverse proportion to the page time spent on them

except for all the fun writing on Feldman! He likes Feldman. for a second I thought that page count was so high on Morty because he'd simply imported his New Yorker profile on him almost wholesale, but then he used hardly any of his beautiful profile on Scelsi, so... hard not to suspect page time does equal editorializing

Just went to Gann's site: That the European critics' arguments are so pathetically, blusteringly weak is the surest sign yet of the strength of Alex's book.

& I thought I'd alrready linked this in this thread, but here's DeLaurenti's caveats.

http://lineout.thestranger.com/2006/05/the_rest_should_have
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=433725

ross sort of pwns delaurenti in the comments section there

maybe a little, any attempt to criticize a book that's taking such a populist tack leaves you wide open to being called a snob. I do prefer delaurenti's playlist though (perhaps understandably)

This all smacks a bit of Americans have no business writing books about classical music.

-- Hurting 2, Monday, 10 March 2008 15:22 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

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This all smacks a bit of Americans have no business writing books abouts classical music.

-- poortheatre, Monday, 10 March 2008 15:44 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

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This all smacks a bit of Americans have no business writing books abouts classical music.

-- Ned Raggett, Monday, 10 March 2008 15:53 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

LOL how can the world's must succesful exporter of its own culture and art get butthurt about not having enough exposure and interest?
Shoulder potato farming. Incidentally the woman with the Rumsfeld line was Scottish.
Aanyway thanks to Milton for providing a balanced view on the Music Matters review. I just listened to it. I haven't read the book, though i'm interested in it, and will get a copy before long. I have to say though, any book on 20c music which leaves out Webern and Varese (particularly the former imo) has got a problem from the get-go, and I'd find it hard to understand why Copland and Vaughan Williams don't get equal time (or at least a fairer ratio) when they're of similar quality, importance and musical signifigance. I thought the Ross interview was very interesting, his point about de-centering is bang on.
One thing i would say is if this book is character-driven (and I see no problem with that in itself,) then you're inevitably going to get criticised if you leave out or dismiss some of the most important characters/composers, like Boulez or RWV, to focus on movements.
In a way, and of course i'm only going on the interview here, it's kind of necessary to reinstate some of those forgotten giants to young readers of Ross columns and new classical concert-goers, rather than to insist on minimalsism's importance. The latter has been SO promoted in recent years. And yes here's my bias, because I think the compositional quality of eg Webern/RWV is stronger than that of every single minimalist (loose term) composer, not because I want a reurn to former musical language (that would be horrible). However, anything which tackles 20c music altogether rather than dividing along artificially created lines is A Good Thing.

the BBC shouldn't be complaining about the UK being underrepresented with that novel-length love letter to Britten in the middle & the pro-Thomas Adès sentiment.
The 'BBC' is not one editorially controlled publication, like The New Yorker or Ross's book. If this book was reviewd on Radio, 2, Radio 1, Radio 4, Radio 5, BBC Music Magazine, The Culture Show on BBC2, it would get completely different opinions, and different guests from other parts of the music and art world. It prob will be reviewed and or covered in at least 3 of the above mentioned, btw. So, y'know, The BBC aint complaining about nothing, it was James fenton and Morag Grant criticising it, and Petroc Trelawney the host praising it.
And for all you complainers, i'd ask you to listen to a review of this book on Classic FM, and then judge what Radio 3 was doing with that programme before you say 'urgh'.

I thought the Donald Rumsfeld line was pretty clear in its meaning, and it's one I've heard elsewhere too - Ross's book, for anyone with decent knowledge and experience of European music (like Morag Grant, whose Serial Music, Serial Aesthetics is one of the smartest books available on the subject), can seem extremely parochial. It doesn't bother me quite so much as to throw around neo-con metaphors, but I do see where they come from.

Boulez is not left out of the book. He pops up frequently and a lot of his parts of the book were memorable.

sure Boulez is a recurring character, Ross even goes out of his way to put in a good word for his later work Répons, but relative to previous overviews Ross is taking him down more than a few pegs

the titles of Paul Griffiths' books on the 20th century (widely used as standard texts) block out his "Western Music culminates in Serialism" narrative -- Modern Music: A Concise History from Debussy to Boulez and Modern Music: The Avant Garde Since 1945 - Boulez and Beyond. His "Concise History" was the first book I'd read that really brought early 20th century classical to life for me and is absolutely the one to go to if you already know you're more interested in Varèse than Sibelius. Even the pictures are better (the pictures in Ross' book are Dull). Griffiths' later books are interesting as well but he runs into more difficulty maintaining his unified narrative once Cage & the Minimalists show up (i.e. the Americans). In fact he doesn't try, in the later chapters he just throws up his hands and starts grousing about the splinters

the online pdf of Morag Grant's book shows she leads with a chapter on electronic music (the central development that goes unintegrated or cordoned off in too many overviews) so I am definitely going to have to hunt that down. somehow. & nicely stated, Tim

Ross' latest roundup of audio links reminds me that maybe I do need to check out more Strauss - http://www.therestisnoise.com/2007/01/book-audiofiles.html

well, yup, i'm way over my head here. although all i'll say is that i def. rememebered boulez from the book and it definitely made me want to check his stuff out. which, as a classical no-nothing, i'd never even heard of him before, so maybe ross's book is doing the job?

That neo-con comparison is madness, what's the diff between that and all the Ross' 'yearning for Hitler's hate' stuff?!

Even Griffiths is sorta struggling w/most post-1970s music tho'. Hopefully all the debate surrounding the Ross will mean that more is published on 20th (and 21st) century music.

'That neo-con comparison is madness, what's the diff between that and all the Ross' 'yearning for Hitler's hate' stuff?!'

1. Neo-conservatism is an ideology a fair few of whose basic tenets are considered basically acceptable today, certainly in America, unlike Nazism.
2. The criticism of Ross is about the views of an individual, not those of a whole nation.
3. For all neo-conservatism is a hideous and dangerous ideology, and will cause millions of deaths when carried out, it does not actually have total genocidal dehumanisation at its very heart, as an end in itself.

Can anyone recommend any books on pre-20th century classical music? I keep feeling that I'd like to go further back, and surely there are some good books around?

Charles Rosen's The Classical Style is a good one for Mozart/Haydn/Beethoven. His book on the Romantic era comes recommended by other people, although I've not read it.

Thanks - although Amazon reviewers seem to suggest that knowing some musical theory might be necessary?

I can't vouch for this as I haven't read it yet, but it's next in line after I finish Hegarty's "Noise/Music" -- Stove's 'A Student's Guide to Music History'. Looks like broad strokes & it's way short, under a hundred pages.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933859415

toby, what kind of books are you looking for exactly? if you're music theory is minimal, think about reading biographies of the composers. if you can't understand the technical aspect, knowing a composer's biography will make you feel like you understand his music, and some of the theory will rub off on you.

maynard solomon's biographies of beethoven and mozart are standard. (mozart's letters are great, too.) berlioz's autobiography is a classic, although it's more useful for anecdote than fact. ditto wagner x 10. harold schonberg's The Lives of the Great Composers might be a good place to start, too. you can see who interests you first..

if you want theory books, Rosen's The Classical Style is standard and not as challenging as his book on the Sonata form. The Beethoven Quartet Companion (ed. Winter and Martin) is more approachable, and it concerns more than the quartets.. i have a book just on counterpoint but i haven't tried to read it yet.

(i live in paris and boulez still conducts here! like, every week! it kind of looks like Weekend at Bernies III, but he gets the job done.)

Nice to see IanP make a post here :-)

"2. The criticism of Ross is about the views of an individual, not those of a whole nation."

The fact that she mentions an once major figure in US politics seems to make it, in part, to be about the nation. But what this and the Hitler's hate stuff have in common is the reaching out for provocation (this after her initial remarks never got the remainder of the panel going...not the best panel discussion, that the host of it found it 'engaging' ws hilarious coming in after her criticisms).

Anyway, her instincts on this bk are also shared by me -- and its not that he doesn't write about Nono's late style or that he doesn't think Chris Dench or James Clarke is British music. I found myself nodding at the bits where she talks about the writing on Shostakovich with the unconvinced feeling, kind of what I get from his New Yorker stuff. Hoping to be turned onto Peter Grimes by the end of it all tho'.

Instincts on instincts is all I can have as I haven't read it.

Toby - if you want a really broad stroke introduction to all classical music from the Babylonians onwards, you could do worse than Paul Griffiths' A Concise History of Western Music. It's a bit too sweeping for me (it crams all that history into 300 pages), and I don't agree entirely with some of Griffiths's conclusions, but it covers most of the important points and is a nice read too. It's got a glossary which is partly useful, partly redundant ("Volume: loudness", anyone?), and recommended further reading and listening. Even though the 20thC occupies only the last few chapters, Griffiths' recommended recordings here are much more comprehensive and interesting than those in Ross's book, so it's worth a glance for that alone.

Thanks for all the book recommendations - I suspect that broad and basic is exactly what I want at the moment, but I'll be checking out everything that's been suggested so far. Stove looks kinda crazy from his website, though, which gives me the fear.

http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/random_rules_alex_ross

Pretty good.

The Band, "Whispering Pines"

I like the "Kingdom Come" Alex Ross better.

I was waiting for somebody to add something about the "King Harvest" Alex Ross.

i have never read a single o_0 sentence in a ross piece. he also seems like the nicest guy ever. he's like the criterion collection of music critics.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/ee/The_Wire_Snoop.jpg/250px-The_Wire_Snoop.jpg
he meant janus but he aint know it

Haven't read the book yet, but this is exactly the sort of browntonguing guaranteed to put me off ever doing so.

On his site...he has broken new ground in thinking aloud about music on a virtually daily basis.

I warned you, Tom, you should have taken out a copyright...

yeah, otm

Somehow I can't imagine a writer being asked a similar question... unless it was by Kirsty Wark

I know pieces by and have heard of everybody in these programmes obv, but often I don't know a lot about them whereas with Cage, for example, I could tell you his life story, quote bits from 'Silence' and 'A Year From Monday', used to take mushrooms and listen to him for a weekend, I know his stuff pretty well.

Its not so much about life stories, more about how the chance procedures he was employing clashed with what Boulez was doing, and Cage was one of the first that stoood his ground, and with the help of David Tudor made quite a mark in those years in the early 50s. You can't overlook that and then talk about America's contribution to European music as money via the CIA.

Apparently Boulez and Cage were in v frequent and friendly postal correspondence during the early darmstadt time.

It has been published

Scurrilous rumours abound about the closeness of their friendship

He Hammers the Master

iirc, Boulez biography claims that there's no evidence of Pierre ever having been on a date let alone in a relationship with anybody

I want to read that correspondence, though, even though Boulez-in-print makes me uncomfortable

This won't make me popular on this thread but I prefer his conducting to both his composing and his commentifying. I like some of his music a lot (mainly Marteau, Pli Selon Pli and Rituel) but could live without it; whereas as a conductor he's fucking irreplaceable to me.

I've read some of the Boulez-Cage correspondence, Boulez is generally amiable unlike the usual persona (a nice quote I came across recently had André Souris describe the youthful Boulez as a 'little savage', 'full of a sort of anonymous rage') but I don't recall finding much of huge interest. Lots of "hey your new piece is quite good, I hope you like my new piece" and the like. But also v precise technical discussions that I don't have the knowledge to understand.

Also Cage was probably too nice to make for a good interlocutor in the gossipy shit stirring dickhead hilarity that I get the impression was rife in those scenes. Souvtchinsky one day writing a letter to Stravinsky saying how much of an arrogant jerk Boulez is then the next day writing to Boulez saying how important he is to him, Boulez saying that he barely spoke to Souvtchinksy for years when they were still writing weekly letters, &c &c.

xp i don't know about prefer but he is a major major conductor true, he's done my favourite version of Mahler's 8th for a start

that's my favorite mahler 8 too.

no Jon you're pretty otm. Several compositions of his rule my school tho

I think there was about 10 mins in my listening life where I cared about conducting as a thing at all...I think the 2nd Piano Sonata and Marteau are all time. The 3rd Sonata is also brill, really underrated. Saw a great perf by Ian Pace who is on this disc I've been meaning to hunt down, and as we're talking about the both Cage and Boulez...

Howard Goddall is touching on similar ground but I think I'll seek punishment elsewhere tonight.

I read the Boulez-Cage correspondence years back. Morton Feldman made it sound really juicy in his writings but yeah it's very polite and courteous.

These days I never bother with nor think about B's own compositions,but I listen to his Debussy one hell of a lot.

I'm with Julio, conducting means nothing to me tbh, OK so I'm disgusting savage, tell me about it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y17-pJZ9nEg

i couldn't even pinpoint what it is about conducting per se but a good conductor shapes the performance and is a handy tag to identify a work that's still obviously collaborative. i've seen professional musicians talk about conductors as if they make a huge difference and i'm happy to accept that.

Oh nooo this discussion again? 90% of a conductor's job is "talking to the musicians" and the other 10% is "setting the tempo". I think xyzzzz_'s attitude is healthy as a listener, as there is that tendency toward creating false synapses between "what the performance sounds like" and "the backstory and the politics of the conductor". But conductors are like heads of state, they won't actually directly change the appearance of the country or what goes on there, but they will affect the way people talk about things

"Talking to the musicians" of course includes "suggesting points of articulation/accenting" and "balancing the sections against one another" and "setting the tempo" includes "controlling the rubato", so.

Boulez is one of those very few conductors because of whom the whole myth-making ~conductor~ thing even exists; I can't even think of half a dozen like him whose style is so identifiable by ear alone. Conducting should not be mythologized but there have been conductors who basically had some kind of fucking voodoo and B was one.

this roughly equates to the difference between being a romanticism/early modernism devotee and a post-war specialist, where for the latter it is quite rare to find more than a single recording of many orchestral pieces

boulez is pretty singular, even on these shitty laptop speakers i could easily identify the difference between say maaze's and boulez' 'nocturnes' within about five seconds

i suspect a lot of that probably owes to assiduous work by sound engineers who can ably record boulez' differentiation/spaciation of sound

i don't think anybody's backing an extreme auteur theory of the conductor here. just acknowledging that Boulez's done good work.

Xxpost

To some extent. Though if you include recorded/captured radio broadcasts you often end up with alternates aplenty. And the more popular postwar figures... I have at least 4 diff Lutoslawski 3rds and there are at least that many more in the catalog.

it's not a question of 'good work' it's that boulez is in aggregate terms more distinctive as a conductor than as a composer, since early stockhausen/barraqué/maderna/pousseur etc approach some fairly similar territory whereas there is no analogue for him as a conductor

I should mention that a few of Hans Zender's Mahler recordings display a Boulez-like 'hallucinatory clarity'

I think of Boulez's orch recordings the same way I think of Michelangeli, Zimerman, or Moravec's piano playing -- the balancing and pinpoint clarity is so fine it gets almost uncanny valley

boulez is deified in the conductor trade, i know someone who studied with him and has a level of infatuation that would be considered strange in another context

I think I misused 'uncanny valley'. Sorry. Should have just said 'surreal' instead.

if you have to use a proper noun as a musical adjective, it's better than 'silent hill'

If Boulez had embraced his resemblance to Marlon Brando and taken the Apolalypse Now razor blade route, this conversation wouldn't be taking place.

just heard a radio trail for tonight's ep..."post-war...blah blah...rediscovered melody and beauty...blah blah...all lived happily ever after" ugggh

so far this third episode is dumb and dull but then i suppose i know cage fairly well. is john adams really quite as much the fusty conservative in general as he is in the role he's fulfilling in this show?

suck it modernism, you lost, john adams and george benjamin won.

as i understand it.

these sorts of programmes are always terrible and there is no reason to watch them beyond dull curiosity

I am almost gonna miss the car crash. Almost.

He's v careful to say whether anybody lost or won, classical goes on making its sensuous and sumptuos noise. Dreadful.

Revived this thread bcz I get the impression this is the kind of thing Alex Ross likes to think he is doing in his writing when listening to this analysis of Beefheart's 'Frownland' (it might be worth its own thread)

I kinda like it once it gets past 10 mins when he actually starts talking about the music, he nicely explains the vocab to someone who isn't familiar, then breaks it down the piece into 7 blocks (still going on as I press the submit button on this post).