The Rest Is Reviews
The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross has just been published in the UK (and received the National Book Critics’ Circle award for criticism this weekend. It’s a lengthy survey of 20th century ‘classical’ music, with a lot of mini-biography and history thrown in. The approach is social history rather than music theory, I suppose, so don’t expect to see crochets and quavers!
I got a copy of the US edition for Christmas and I read it slowly over the course of about a month, and enjoyed it; seeing the reviews this week is therefore very interesting. The Observer says that it is a “vital, engaging, happily polyphonic book” but takes some shots at the US-centric nature of some aspects that resemble a Bush-style ‘messianic imperialism’. On An Overgrowth Path (a must-read music blog) talks about the book and links to BBC Radio 3 coverage. I think it’s a wonderful book; in my view, the last couple of chapters are too rushed (we chug along happily and then around the mid-50s the speed takes off and then we’re done, and a little more about music technology would have been very appropriate. Footnote fanatics note: 100 pages of small-print notes that I’m still getting ideas from, although you’d expect no less from the New Yorker’s music critic!
Anyway, Ross has a long-running blog and has been posting video links, audio clips etc ; you could lose yourself for hours in this site, and then when you’re finished, subscribe to the blog too…