Alex Ross “The Rest is Noise”
You might already know Alex Ross’ work at the New Yorker, where he critiques and muses about music regularly, but please check out The Rest is Noise (I am ordering my copy today), which “aspires to be not just a history of 20th-century music but a history of the 20th century told through the history of music.” (via Very Short List) Alex Ross keeps a blog in which he discusses music, culture and The New Yorker regularly as well, I encourage you to check it out.
Beginning with the scandalous premiere of Strauss’s Salome and ending with a study of John Adams’s Nixon in China, Ross’s first book (out October 16) is always mindful of how events directly shape art: There could be no Aaron Copland without the Great Depression and the New Deal, and no Kurt Weill without the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism. (And no Bob Dylan without Kurt Weill.) The book also reminds us that there was once a time when serious composers partied, Us Weekly–style, with celebrities, fellow artists, and heads of state. At 624 pages, it bites off a lot, but it also gives you plenty to chew on.
I’m currently particularly interested in Ross’ New Yorker piece about how technology has transformed the way music sounds. The article is called The Record Effect and discusses the beginnings of music listened via phonograph and the early disputes surrounding this revolution, including John Philip Sousa’s assertion that the recording of music would be its demise. Near the end of the essay, Ross circles around to discuss Glenn Gould’s backturn on live performance to concentrate solely on recording in 1964, and, as Ross says, “… Praised recordings for their vast archival possibilities, for their ability to supply on demand a bassoon sonata by Hindemith or a motet by Buxtehude. He gloried in the extraordinary interpretive control that studio conditions allowed him.”
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