Awards

• Short-listed for Guardian First Book Award 2008
• Shortlisted for Guardian First Book Award 2008.

Overview

Winner of the Guardian First Book Award 2008 A sweeping musical history that goes from the salons of pre-war Vienna to Velvet Underground shows in the sixties. In ‘The Rest is Noise’, Alex Ross, music critic of the New Yorker, gives us a riveting tour of the wild landscape of twentieth-century classical music: portraits of individuals, cultures, and nations reveal the predicament of the composer in a noisy, chaotic century. Taking as his starting point a production of Richard Strauss's Salome, conducted by the composer on 16 May 1906 with Puccini, Schoenberg, Berg and Adolf Hitler seated in the stalls, Ross suggests how this evening can be considered the century's musical watershed rather than the riotous premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring seven years later. Ross goes on to explore the mythology of modernism, Sibelius and the music of small countries, Kurt Weill, the music of the Third Reich, Britten, Boulez and the post-war avant-garde, and interactions between minimalist composers and rock bands in the sixties and seventies.

Full Product Details

9781841154763

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Alex Ross's incredibly nourishing book will rekindle anyone's fire for music.' Bjork 'A brilliant, bracing account of all the different kinds of classical music that have permeated this last dark century. Such an entertaining, accessible and enthralling book.' Colin Greenwood, Guardian 'It's a history of 20th-century music so vivid and original in approach that it made me listen again to many pieces I thought I knew well.' Philip Pullman, Guardian 'Ranks as my non-fiction book of the year. Erudite and engaging, written with flair and passion.' Boyd Tonkin, Independent 'Combines scrupulous and inventive analyses of the 20th century's music with lavish care over that music's improvised history.' Adam Thirlwell, Guardian 'Magisterial.' Telegraph 'He places the music in social and cultural context while sticking to the score and eschewing the artworld political consensus. A miracle.' George Walden, TLS ' The Rest is Noise achieves the aim with bravura, hacking out a path leading from cacophonous European modernism to the white noise of The Velvet Underground.' Ludovic Hunter-Tilroy, Financial Times 'Alex Ross breaks new ground. This is an astonishing book.' The Times 'Just occasionally someone writes a book you've waited your life to read. Alex Ross's enthralling history of 20th-century music is, for me, one of those books.' Alan Rusbridger, Guardian 'Stunning narrative. Visionary music critic Alex Ross comes closer than anyone to describing the spellbinding sensations music provokes.' Financial Times 'A work of immense scope and ambition ! a great achievement. Rilke once wrote of how he learned to stand more seeingly in front of certain paintings. Ross enables us to listen more hearingly.' New York Times 'A sound-drenched masterpiece.' Steven Poole, Guardian

'It's a history of 20th-century music so vivid and original in approach that it made me listen again to many pieces I thought I knew well.' Philip Pullman, Guardian (Books of the Year) 'Ranks as my non-fiction book of the year. Erudite and engaging, written with flair and passion.' Boyd Tonkin Independent (Books of the Year) 'Combines scrupulous and inventive analyses of the 20th century's music with lavish care over that music's improvised history.' Adam Thirwell, Guardian (Books of the Year) 'Magisterial.' Telegraph (Books of the Year) 'He places the music in social and cultural context while sticking to the score and eschewing the artworld political consensus. A miracle.' George Walden, TLS (Books of the Year) 'The Rest is Noise achieves the aim with bravura, hacking out a path leading from cacophonous European modernism to the white noise of The Velvet Underground.' Ludovic Hunter-Tilroy, Financial Times (Books of the Year) 'Alex Ross breaks new ground. This is an astonishing book.' Bob Stanley, The Times (Books of the Year) 'Expansive and artful survey of modern music.' The London Paper (Books of the Year) 'Just occasionally someone writes a book you've waited your life to read. Alex Ross's enthralling history of 20th-century music is, for me, one of those books.' Alan Rusbridger, Guardian 'Alex Ross's incredibly nourishing book will rekindle anyone's fire for music.' Bjork 'Stunning narrative. Visionary music critic Alex Ross comes closer than anyone to describing the spellbinding sensations music provokes.' Financial Times 'A work of immense scope and ambition ! a great achievement. Rilke once wrote of how he learned to stand 'more seeingly' in front of certain paintings. Ross enables us to listen more hearingly.' New York Times 'The book achieves a remarkable interdisciplinary synthesis, in which music illuminates history as well as vice versa ! Ross has delivered a sound-drenched masterpiece.' Steven Poole, Guardian 'He's written a brilliant, bracing account of all the different kinds of classical music that have permeated this last dark century. Such an entertaining, accessible and enthralling book.' Colin Greenwood (Radiohead bassist), Guardian 'Best of all are the moments when Ross really strikes you dumb with wonder, moments when the author's passion for the supreme significance of music raises his erudition to a new level. Warm, joyful and unfailingly adroit in his evocation of music in words, Ross, with this book, establishes himself as the supreme champion of modern music.' Sunday Times 'Gripping account of the last century.' Robert Sandall, Sunday Times (Book of the Year) 'Alex Ross's riveting survey of the perpetual revolution in classical music during the 20th century manages the difficult feat of illuminating key works of music without ever being dry or difficult. Ross's book teems with interest and is a triumph of synthesis.' Katie Owen, Sunday Telegraph 'This is an extraordinary book. The Rest is Noise performs the remarkable trick of making what may be considered abstruse musical matters widely accessible. It won the Guardian First Book award, and rightly so; it's the kind of book anyone can read who, as Beecham said about the English, doesn't know much about music but likes the noise it makes. Nicholas Lezard's Choice, The Guarduan 'Ross will whisk you on to the fast-moving train that was 20th-century music; he will fascinate, challenge and delight you.' Stephen Pritchard, Observer Music Monthly 'Print is silent. Which is why the task of writing about music is so difficult. I should therefore probably explain that the noise you now ought to be hearing is the sound of my hands as they stop typing and start applauding this vital, engaging, happily polyphonic book.' Peter Conrad, Observer 'A bracingly vivid exploration of the musical 20th century ... a crackingly paced narrative that will appeal as much to the musical neophyte as the classical buff ! wonderfully evocative.' The Times 'It would be hard to imagine a better guide to the maelstrom of recent music than Mr Ross ! He has an almost uncanny gift for putting music into words. No other critic writing in English can so effectively explain why you like a piece, or beguile you to reconsider it, or prompt you to hurry online and buy a recording.' The Economist 'Alex Ross has produced an introduction to twentieth-century music that is also an absorbing story of personalities and events that is also a history of modern cultural forms and styles that is also a study of social, political, and technological change. The Rest Is Noise is cultural history the way cultural history should be written: a single strong narrative operating on many levels at once. What more do you want from a book? That it be intelligently, artfully, and lucidly written? It's those things, too.' Louis Menand, author of 'The Metaphysical Club' 'This is the best general study of a complex history too often claimed by academic specialists on the one hand and candid populists on the other ! an impressive, invigorating achievement.' Washington Post 'He makes what once seemed rebarbative not only intelligible, provocative and stimulating but even beautiful. A Triumph.' Toby Clements, Telegraph

Author Information

Alex Ross graduated from Harvard in 1990. He wrote for the New York Times from 1992 until 1996 when he became staff writer at the New Yorker. His first book, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, won the Guardian First Book Award. It was also shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Pulitzer Prize. He is also the author of Listen to This. He lives in Los Angeles.

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