Alex Ross - The Rest Is Noise

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...

How remarkable that Bjork and Radiohead should be so complimentary about a book which is complimentary about Radiohead and Bjork.

I knew why this thread would be revived.

Looking forward to the book when I get round to it though.

Yes, it looks v. good indeed on speed reading but the hype is detaching from its qualities.

Just won a MacArthur "Genius" award that comes with $500,000

and book's out in paperback next month, so maybe i'll actually read it.

This isn't just one of the best books about music I've ever read, it's one of the best books I've ever read.
Hugely informative, with an remarkably compelling narrative. (I too went to the piano to pick out the chords Ross describes.)

Starting this now! I'm very excited to read it after going through this thread.

has someone put together a well-edited audio compilation to go with this book? would love that to listen along.

he's got audio samples galore over at therestisnoise.com, but i dunno if someone's done a comp of all that stuff ... incredible book.

Yeah a 2CD compilation of chamber works by these guys would be something I'd be up for.

Its a year and several threads on...just wondering if people who didn't listen to a lot of classical before opening this bk have listened to a bunch, gone to the odd concert and if so what was it?

Unfortunately I feel too set in my ways to ever pick this up :-( xp

i went into a short composed music phase after reading it. my ipod had to be refreshed around when i finished the book so for a while (about a week or two) i didn't have any rock music on my ipod, just some of the stuff ross discussed, though i got tired of that pretty quickly. also went to see a john adams opera (a flowering tree), which was fun.

I got Nixon in China and Strauss' Salome after I finished it, but haven't really followed up with much careful listening.

Got into Morton Feldman, Stockhausen, Mahler, Sibelius a bit after reading this ... Knew a little about them, but the book got me to go buy the records. Also made me start digging deeper into Stravinsky's later stuff. Oh and Shostakovich, too. I mean, there is a lifetime's worth of music in this book, for real.

Ah, nice. One of the marginal things I've picked up when this bk hit was the notion that lots of people were going to read it and get onto listening to the old records, maybe go to concerts that would never otherwise. As for myself I've never gotten into a type of music like that, it would usually be a paragraph length review, then I'd build an interest after trying lots of names and then start hunting for in depth books/histories...

Reading this just now. Not really living up to the hype, though it's good. Not interested in the reams of stuff about Britten and it was somehow inevitable that he would think the best thing Messiaen ever did was the piece inspired by America.

The best parts of the book IMO are the bits about Berg's operas. Ross is amazing there. Also the sections on Sibelius and Feldman are awesome. Sibelius is one my v favorite composers and has hardly ever been given his due in writings on the 20c (he was far more the modernist than he is perceived).

Tom D is it that you don't care for Britten's music or just don't care to know extraneous stuff abt him?

Both. The stuff on Sibelius definitely made me want to check the miserable old bastard out.

Five to start you on Sibelius:

1. Symphonies 4 and 7, Tapiola- Maazel/Vienna PO (Decca Legends)
2. Symphonies 5 and 6- Colin Davis/London SO (LSO Live label)
3. The Oceanides/The Tempest/Nightride and Sunrise- Segerstam/Helsinki PO (Ondine label)
4. Violin Concerto- zillions of eligible choices. Heifetz, Hahn, Kraggerud, Ida Haendel, Julian Rachlin are all great IMO.
5. Symphony 2, Luonnatar and Pohjola's Daughter- Bernstein/NYPO (Sony)

If u are on eMusic I can suggest some top choices from there instead.

Thanks, yeah, I'll get round to him someday I hope!

If u are on eMusic I can suggest some top choices from there instead.

I'd like these suggestions, please.

Well, since you can still cherry pick from certain classical labels on eMusic, here's what I say--

--Cherry pick Symphony 5 (4 credits) off the Colin Davis LSO disc listed above, then Symphony 6 (4 creds) off the BIS label (Vanska/Lahti SO)
--Get the whole Ondine disc of Symphony 4 and Pohjola's Daughter with Segerstam/Helsinki PO, even if it's a 12-cred DL. Vanska's 4th is too slow.
--If the Oceanides/Tempest/Nightride disc on Ondine, listed above, is on the 12-track whole album plan, get that. If it's not, cherry pick Oceanides off BIS (Vanska/Lahti SO again) and I guess hold off on the track-heavy Tempest music (but it's Sib's last major work for orchestra and you should hear it sometime).
--You could drop 12 credits on Heifetz in the concerto (coupled with Tchaikovsky I think?), or on Hilary Hahn (hers comes with a knockout Schoenberg concerto). Or just cherry pick the Kavakos/Vanska off BIS for 3 creds
--Cherry pick Luonnatar (Vanska/Lahti/BIS) and the Six Humoresques (Kang/Jarvi/Gothenburg SO/BIS)
--Cherry pick Colin Davis/LSO in the seventh symphony (LSO Live label)

This is a review of Taruskin's The Oxford History of Western Music, written by Franklin Cox, a cellist and composer that I really admire.

A few notes:

- Its a 45 page review (part one of two) of a book in five vols in several thousand pages.

- Learning much about historical methodologies, romanticism and modernism, politics and hsitory.

- It is very well-written, thorough and rigorous with long footnotes, not light and breezy like Ross, but if you wanted to pick up on the perils of writing a history -- and how the author's politics and nationality, which was touched on above -- can cause disruption to this kind of project, and also on the hurt that the 20th century (the last two hundred years of classical) has caused then let this be your guide, I say.

Ooh thanks! I have the Taruskin 19th century, Early 20th century and late 20th century volumes in PDF but haven't read any of them yet.

OK so I'm almost done with that Taruskin review PDF and wow I knew Taruskin was a crank and a scold but did not know what a real radical-reactionary he is. Astonishing that he was Oxford's man to do such a centuries spanning authoritative project. He's easily as far out as the young Boulez (in the opposite direction) but is way old enough to know better; he comes off, if Cox is to be believed (and the excerpts are pretty damning) like he wants to be a new Zhdanov.

Thanks a lot for posting it.

I came across more (potentially) cranky stuff from Taruskin in the comments section of this blog too btw.

Really like to read ”Prokofiev Hail… And Farewell?”

I trust Cox's compositions and playing of the Cello, so I think I'll trust his piece. Cox does try to give credit where he can but it must be hard when an entire tradition of musical avant-garde (that Cox is v much a part of) is getting thrashed. I hesitate because I don't know Taruskin's own writings that well, and like Mark (and Cox) says he does seem to be a good writer who knows early music.

Also I only found out recently that Charles Rosen died so onto this piece on Carter

Wait what WHAT? Rosen is dead?

Damn

The Romantic Generation is in like my top 5 non fiction works ever

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).