In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest is Noise is an astonishing ...
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In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.
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Seller's Description:
Fair. There is either a name, note, or insciprtion on the inside cover. There is light writing/highligting in this book w/ sticky tabs. There is some crinkling to some of the pages possibly from water There is a lot of wear and tear on the cover There are stains or residue on the cover This is a paperback copy There is staining on the text block edges There are some tears on the corners of the spine but doesn't effect biding Fast Shipping-Each order powers our free bookstore in Chicago and sending books to Africa!
This is a well written book, unlike a boring college text book. I was suprised that the author took a storyline approach, which made these musical (artists) come to life as real people.
Still reading but for all its worth the investment.
pianist
Nov 19, 2009
Alex Ross is one of the most intelligent music critics writing today. His critical essays in The New Yorker are "must" reading for professionals as well as music lovers. He has always made a specialty of contemporary music, and is open to the most radical and avant-garde movements. His writing style favors clarity and lucidity, and he conveys the impression that he knows what he's talking about.
riverrun
Sep 15, 2008
A Musical Journey
Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise contextualizes twentieth century modern classical music historically, and in that way informs the reader about both the music and history. I found the long chapter about Russian composers under Stalin especially informative. In addition Ross shows how the innovations of modern music seeped into the late century's pop music, and indeed how strict categories of classical, pop, folk and world music become increasingly less definable and more permeable. From Strauss to Ligeti, from tonality to atonality, from late Romantic to bebop to minimalism, the author manages to cover a wide swath of the past century's sounds. If I have any reservations, it's that Ross perhaps minimizes or understates the influence of post-bop jazz, particularly of Miles Davis's jazz-rock and John Coltrane's Eastern-influenced improvisations. But that aside, a vastly informative musical journey.
