The Rest Is Noise

Listening to the 20th Century

By: Alex Ross

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 23 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

The Rest Is Noise takes the listener inside the labyrinth of modern music, from turn-of-the-century Vienna to downtown New York in the '60s and '70s. We meet the maverick personalities and follow the rise of mass culture on this sweeping tour of 20th-century history through its music.

Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, is the recipient of numerous awards for his work, including two ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards for music criticism. In addition, he was named a 2008 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, given for achievements in creativity and potential for making important future cultural contributions.

©2007 Alex Ross (P)2007 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

• National Book Critics Circle Award, Criticism, 2007

The best book I've "read" on the subject

Being a music student, I am surrounded by information on my obsession of choice. However, I find that it is difficult to find good sources for more contemporary music development, style and history. This book provides more than an overview, as it carefully delves into nearly every imaginable aspect of western music in the last century.

Great, entertaining and very informative

But, The chapter on Brittin felt hella too long. Overall great though. Thanks for the knowledge

Excellent in all respects

What did you love best about The Rest Is Noise?

A superb combination of history, biography and musical analysis

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Rest Is Noise?

The extent to which the US government, in Germany after WW II, used music to shape the culture away from Aryan extremism.

Which character – as performed by Grover Gardner – was your favorite?

No characters, a nice piece of non-fiction. He's got a great, and well measured voice. Really appreciated it.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Not sure one would be made but how about Jazzing up the Repertory.

Any additional comments?

If you've got half an ear for classical music and haven't caught on to modernism (which is almost 100 years old now) this is the book for you. You'll refer back to it many times.

Learned so much!

I'm a professional musician and I spent an entire semester as an undergrad studying 20th century music, but there were many times during my listen to "The Rest..." when I went- hey, I didn't know that!
Ross starts us out at the turn of the 20th century in the hotbed that was German late-Romantic music (Strauss, Mahler), and we walk through the remainder of the 20th century, not necessarily in chronological order. Instead, Ross deals with places and chunks of time, putting composers and the way they wrote into the context of social and political history: Weimar Germany, Nazi Germany, 20's Paris, New-deal USA, Soviet Russia, Post- WWII Europe, 60's NYC, and so on. The trick for the listener is to remember that this is world history seen through the lens of music history.
Yeah, you're gonna learn quite a bit about what went on musically. But even if you already knew a lot about that, you're gonna understand what it was like to be a musician, why composers wrote music the way they did at certain times and places, and how people reacted to that music.
I would caution the listener that it's a fairly musically sophisticated book. Ross hastens to assure us that he did not write it as a music history text, but as a guide for the educated concertgoer/ listener, and I think that's true. However, be prepared for some fairly advanced terminology. This is not for the newcomer to the world of "classical" music.
It's taken me almost 2 months to wade through this book. It's long and dense, and I went back over some sections again because I just really wanted to absorb all the information. It's totally worth the work though, for a fine understanding of musical history and just-well- history. Ross also has a website connected with the book which is chock full of exerpted recordings of the pieces he discusses.

Learn! Listen! Enjoy!

Enables a View of Musical History

I feel I benefited from the knowledge invoked in this book. At times it was difficult and I had to listen over again.
Being able to listen to the music on my own was helpful. Anyone who would enjoy many varieties of music should be listening and / or reading "The Rest is Noise ".

Outstanding

This book is just sensationally good, and Grover Gardner does a fine job narrating it. I think the only way this could possibly have been any better is if the music which was being discussed occasionally played in the background... but that's probably too complicated.

I'd Read Ross Even He Just Wrote Warning Labels

When I began reading this book I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. I had the mistaken impression that this was a history of music of the 20th century across all musical genres. It is not that. This book focuses on the history of classical music of the 20th century. It covers jazz, but only how jazz affected and was affected by classical music.

I had half a mind to forego reading the rest of it. Boy am I glad I didn't. I'll be frank, I don't have a particular driving interest in the classical music of the 20th century and even after reading the book, while I am better informed, I have not suddenly become a fan of the genre. It was worth it to read this book just to hear Ross string words together. This guy can write. I kept reading just to find out what chain of words he was going to use next. He's that good.

This is the kind of guy you would quote without attribution at a dinner party to set yourself apart as the most erudite person in the room. I'd give anything to be able to write like this. Ross has a 10th degree black belt in the English language; that's the bottom line.

One note I'd like to add as a point of critique about the format. This audio book would be so much better served if excerpts from the pieces of music being described could be inserted at the proper points. I get that this probably isn't possible with the licencing of some of the music, but it would certainly bring the audio book full circle. It would be the entire package. For all that Ross is a master of using English to describe music, when he tells me that Charlie Parker "scribbled lightning in the air," I like the sound of the words. But what does that sound like in music? This book is great, set it to music and it would be a masterpiece.

It’s a lot to take in.

I love learning more about any type of music, but the more modern music sometimes leaves me mystified. Call me old fashioned, but I like music that means something. I appreciate John Cage, Arnold Schoenberg and the rest of the gang, but I can’t wring any meaning out of their compositions. They don’t write things that I would play when I’ve had a tough day. I would like to hear something that is at least memorable or reproducible. Many of the composers mentioned here do write music like that, and I can get with that. It doesn’t have to be tonal, just understandable.

It seems weird to me that many so called straight line composers such as Beethoven or Liszt were thought of as “way out there” in their time, but even weirder to think that someday people will look at a lot of this incomprehensible (to me) music and wonder why we couldn’t see the beauty of it and love it. So the world goes.

I have bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music and even at that, this book was hard to keep up with. If you don’t have some pretty good understanding of music and music history, don’t waste your time. It will bury you.

Worth the time and the listen.

Would you listen to The Rest Is Noise again? Why?

I might not listen to it again, but I'm glad I listened to it once.

What other book might you compare The Rest Is Noise to and why?

Vanity Fair? Daniel Deronda? Something big.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Not possible--too intense.

outstanding

This fascinating book will be of substantial interest to the general reader/listener as well as to people with a deeper interest in classical music. Ten years ago I used it as a guide to first getting a grip on the landscape of 20th century classical music, and following his recommendations I found a ton of music that I now love and listen to regularly. Beyond that, the book is no less a compelling opportunity to look at twentieth-century culture in Europe and the United States through the lens of culture, which is in itself a fascinating journey to take. Revisiting it as an audiobook, it's every bit as enjoyable.

And I do emphasize "the United States and Europe," because Ross overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, Germany, France, England, and Russia.

This book is well read by Grover Gardner, and I especially appreciated the grace with which he handled the pronunciation of a multitude of non-English names.