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

He Writes What He Cares About and So I Care

If you could sum up The Rest Is Noise in three words, what would they be?

How fusty old composers overcame life's vicissitudes to produce meaning in sound -- Alex Ross's prose makes his critical ear accessible to me. Walking in the park, listening to his words, I could almost hear the tension of the notes that made the first listeners uneasy.

B-O-R-I-N-G!!!!!!!!!!!!

if it was intended to be a history book about music...for the general reader...it missed the mark by a mile....if you, like me, have absolutely zero knowledge about music....cannot play an instrument...don't know the difference between a sharp or a flat.....stay away from this book.....too technical for me....and I suspect the general public.

Excellent for serious music enthusiasts

This book is an important contribution to writings and analyses of 20th century music. It deals largely with 'serious' musical art forms and does so, for the most part, in great depth. By providing the political and social backgrounds during the lives of some composer, Ross enriches the book with valuable contexts that help us to understand the music of each period. He continually makes interesting connections between each composer with both their peers and mentors, providing some astonishing insights that are not commonly known. Fascinating stuff! The period in Europe between 1900 and 1945 is most effectively delivered and illuminating, as is American art music in the 50's and 60's.

Ross is a wonderful writer who employs rich descriptive language and a nice balance between facts and occasional humorous antidotes. The narrator does a fine job of endeavoring to bring the text to life without letting too much unnecessary drama get in the way. It's a large book, and he moves it along at a good pace.

As already indicated by several other reviewers, this book is not for everyone. It would be particularly relevant to the serious music enthusiast, students and music educators, and arts historians. Recommended.

Solid and Fun Listening

This audiobook is to classical music what Bill Bryson's A Brief History on Nearly Everything is to Cosmology. If you enjoyed that work, you will enjoy this. It is packed with insight not only into the masterworks of classical music, but the lives of the composers, their unique relationships with each other, and the history of the time. Its brilliant, and I could not get enough. The narrator is a perfect complement to the book.

Wonderful if you have some musical training

I really, really loved this book. However, I think that some other listeners might be put off by the need to really have a musical background to fully enjoy this book. If you don't know what a dominant 7th or a tritone is, for example, you might find long sections of this book tedious. But, if you've studied music or are a really serious aficionado, then this book is hard to put down.

A bit pretentious

An interesting perspective on primarily 20th century classical music. I found the approach however somewhat too pretentious for my taste. The author seemingly has a bias toward particular social/political viewpoints which bleed into the narrative - so depending on your own viewpoints, you might be sympathetic to the presentation or find yourself getting occasionally annoyed. Helpful to have access to a classical library by which to sample the composers and works discussed in the book. I have a subscription to Rhapsody which was helpful to dive into throughout the exploration provided by this book.

Very helpful.

This is actually a pretty scholarly book helping the reader understand modern and contemporary music. However, this is a book which would benefit a great deal if it included musical examples as the story develops.

Silent noise

Smart and erudite journey, full of insights about great composers. An opportunity lost by excluding telling music segments in Audible version, contrasting Ross' recent Wagnerism.

comprehensive

no better synopsis of western music...stuck to it, glad i did. learned a lot about the personal lives

Disconnected series of factoids

I was really looking forward to this book, but it was impossible to get into. There really is no theme whatsover to each chapter. It's a laundry list of "interesting" facts that the author managed to unearth--the type of stuff you would hear an obnoxious music enthusiast using to try to impress people at a cocktail party.